Dr Vincent Carpentier
IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society
Vincent Carpentier is a Reader in History of Education at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. He was responsible for CGHE Project 7, ‘A historical lens on higher education staffing: UK and France’. Key outcomes from this project included papers such as Three Stories of Institutional Differentiation: Resource, Mission and Social Inequalities in Higher Education (Policy Reviews in Higher Education 2021) and Academic Workforce in France and the UK in Historical Perspectives (Comparative Education 2023- with Emmanuelle Picard), recently reported in the Conversation (2023) . He was also a Co-Investigator on Project 8, ‘Local and global public good of higher education: 10 nation study’ examining the French context presented in the paper Public Good in French Universities: Principles and practices of the “Republican” Model of Higher education (Compare 2022- with Aline Courtois).
His comparative work on the historical relationship between educational systems, Kondratiev cycles and social change is located at the interface of history of education and political economy. Vincent’s research explores the historical and contemporary connections and tensions between funding, equity and quality in higher education at both national and global levels.
He is an Associate Editor of the London Review of Education and a member of the scientific committee of the French Network on HE research (RESUP) (since 2020).
CGHE publications
CGHE research projects
- Local and global public good contributions of higher education: a comparative study in six national systems
- Local and global public good of higher education: 10 nation study
- A historical lens on higher education staffing: UK and France
- Internationalisation of HE as a public good: a comparative study in four national systems
- Pathways to personal and public good: understanding access to, student experiences of, and outcomes from South African undergraduate higher education
- Higher education participation and macro-economic fluctuations: a historical and comparative study
Past Events
- CGHE Conference on ‘The public good role of higher education’
- CGHE Annual Conference 2024 – The Future of Higher Education
- CGHE Annual Conference 2023 – From Higher to Tertiary: Democratising Post-School Education
- CGHE Annual Conference 2022 – Higher education knowledge in a plural world
- CGHE Annual Conference 2021: Remaking higher education for a more equal world
- Public good, French universities and the Republican model of higher education
- HE participation and macro-economic fluctuations: a historical and comparative study
Select publications
- Universités : comment les inégalités se sont renforcées en France et au Royaume-Uni.
The Conversation, October 2023 - Academic workforce in France and the UK in historical perspectives.
September 2023 - Structuration et sélections dans les systèmes éducatifs accessibilité, disponibilité et atteignabilité de l’enseignement supérieur au Royaume-Uni.
Céreq Echanges, February 2021 - Three Stories of Institutional Differentiation: Resource, Mission and Social Inequalities in Higher Education.
Policy Reviews in Higher Education, February 2021 - Public Good in French Universities: Principles and practices of the “Republican” Model of Higher education.
Compare, January 2020 - “Higher Education in Modern Europe”. In John L. Rury, Eileen H. Tamura (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of The History of Education. New York, USA: Oxford University Press, 259-274, 2019
- Financement et transformation des logiques, des espaces et des contours de l’expansion des systèmes d’enseignement supérieur. In L. Demers, J. Bernatchez, M. Umbriaco (Eds.), De l’administration à la gouvernance des universités: Progrès ou recul? L’expérience du Québec (pp. 13-34). Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2019
- “Historical Perspective, Research in Higher Education”, In P. Teixeira, J. C. Shin (Eds.), Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions, 2018. Dordrecht: Springer.
- Subsidy, Tuition Fees and the Challenge of Financing Higher Education in South Africa, In: P. Ashwin & J. Case (eds) Pathways to the Public Good: Access, Experiences and Outcomes of South African Undergraduate education, African Minds (with G. Ouma), 27-43, 2018
- International Perspectives on Equality of Higher Education Opportunities: Models and Strategies for Accessibility and Availability, In: P. Ashwin & J. Case (eds) Pathways to the Public Good: Access, Experiences and Outcomes of South African Undergraduate education, African Minds (with Y. Lebeau and J. Välimaa), 95-111, 2018
- Postface: Logiques d’expansion de l’enseignement supérieur, modèles de financement et professionnalisation: une approche historique
Formation Emploi, 138, 185-202, 2017 - State education, crisis and austerity: an historical analysis through the lens of the Kondratiev cycles
Education and the state: international perspectives on a changing relationship, 2015
Other presentations
- 2023: “Looking back at the funding and development of higher education systems in France, UK, USA and Canada: prospects and challenges, Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Research Conference, Aston University, 7 December.
- 2023. “Academic profession and higher education systems in France and the UK: Historical and prospective perspectives, Conference of the French Network of Research in Higher Education, ENS Lyon, 19 October.
- 2023. “Historical perspectives on funding, expansion and institutional differentiation of higher education systems in hard times in France, the UK and the USA, Congress of the French Association of Political Economy, 7 July.
- 2023. “Long-term trends in funding and staffing, Centre for Global Higher Education Annual Conference, UCL IOE, 22 May.
- 2022: “A Historical Lens on Higher Education Staffing in France and the UK”, Centre for Global Higher Education Annual Conference, UCL IOE, 25 May.
- 2022: Competition vs. Cooperation in Times of Crisis: Reimagining European Collaborations?, Policy Dialogues- Amba-Series on the new Geopolitics of Higher Education and Research- the British Council/French Embassy in the UK, UCL Faculty of Laws, London, 16 May.
- 2022: Inward student mobility and the transformations of higher education systems in France and the UK since the 1920s, Centre for Global Higher Education Seminar Series, UCL IOE, 26 April.
- 2021: Neonationalism and HE in France and England, Policy Futures Webinar on Neo-nationalism and the universities in a geopolitical perspective, University of Aarhus, 10 November.
- 2021: Keynote: Persistence and Transformations of Inequalities in Higher Education in the UK and France: 1920-2020, Conference of the French Network of Research in Higher Education, ENS Lyon, 14-15 October.
- 2021: International Students and the transformations of Higher Education Systems in France and the UK Seminar of the Laboratoire de l’Education – Invited Speaker, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 20 October.
- 2020: Keynote: Structure and selections in education system: a comparison between the UK and France 26th Longitudinal Series – CEREQ: Selection from the education system to the labour market, Toulouse, 12-13 November.
- 2020: Global Inequalities, Centre for Higher Education Studies Symposium on What is global leadership in higher education?, UCL Institute of Education, 17 June (With Elaine Unterhalter).
- 2019: International Students and the Expansion and Differentiation of Higher Education Systems in France and the UK: a historical perspective Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Research Conference, Newport, 11-13 December.
- 2019: “A historical lens on the connections and tensions between resource, mission and social differentiations in UK higher education”, UK History of Education Society Conference, UCL Institute of Education, 8-10 November.
- 2019: The Question of Fees in UK higher education Conference Debates- Invited Speaker, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 12 March.
