Education policy and research on higher education in Belgium

In 1988 Guy Neave wrote that 'the educational 'explosion' in Western Europe was not simply a matter of economie interest or pragmatism. It also went hand-in-hand with what could be qualified faute de mieux as a 'moral cornmitment' enshrined in the notion of equality of educational opportunity' (Neave 1988, p. 274). I can agree with that, but I have the feeling that economie interest is not always far away from policies promoting equal opportunities. Looking back over the results of research concerning higher education in Belgium, one can show that the selection of the topics of research was very dose to the higher education policy issues of a particular period. Certainly in the post-war period, a moral commitment to equality of educational opportunities was defended by political partjes and other pressure groups, but the universities were interested in having larger numbers of students not only for the sake of moral principles but also because their funding was based on their numbers of students. Moreover, the opposition between the two language and the two ideological groups (see below) made universities and their researchers more interested in the question of how to expand the number of students of their particular group. No doubt this had important moral consequences, but it did not diminish the economie benefits for the universities. Once the intellectual reserve seemed to have been exhausted, attention shifted to other topics of research than the social background of the students. This process was certainly also influenced by the autonomy given to the different language groups in the country as regards educational policies. I will elarify this process by briefly describing, first, the Belgian higher education policy in the years 1945-1980 and 1989-1999 and, second, the research concerning higher education in these periods.status: publishe