Vol 7, No. 1, May 2011, pp. 1-4 http://reflectingeducation.net © Institute of Education, University of London ISSN 1746-9082 Policies and Practices in Higher and Professional Education Editorial Dr Vincent Carpentier Institute of Education, University of London This Special Issue of Reflecting Education presents a selection of papers based on the dissertation work from students on the MA in Higher and Professional Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. It represents a great opportunity for students to disseminate the results of their research to a wider audience. The programme welcomes students from a wide-range of backgrounds and work contexts (academics, managers, administrators and academic-related staff; professionals in areas such as medicine, law and the arts; professional development and accreditation consultants; widening participation and access officers; and policy-makers) who seek to develop critical insights into higher education policies and practices in the UK and overseas. The programme offers them an opportunity to explore, share and challenge existing knowledge and personal and professional experience by engaging with different ideas, concepts and values. Making connections between theory, policy and practice is particularly important in a contested area such as higher education. A closer look at history shows that debates regarding higher education policies and practices have been the norm rather than the exception. Today’s context certainly does not contradict such assertion. The programme proposes to reflect and explore critically some of the past, contemporary and future changes in the world of higher and professional education. Key areas of the field are considered such as the purpose and nature of higher education; funding mechanisms; access and widening participation policy; questions of management and quality evaluation; research and teaching and learning activities; the relationships and tensions between professionalization, autonomy and accountability. Students are invited to reflect on each of these issues but also to connect them (they tend to be compartmentalised) by engaging with several sets of questions and debates. I will focus on three of them here: the aims of higher education, the conception of policy at national and global levels and their implementation by institutions. Most debates on the alternative ways of developing higher education policies and practices do (or should) lead to reflect on the nature and the aim(s) of higher education. This area of the field questions the complementarity, or increasingly the competition, between the social, geopolitical, political, cultural or economic forces which influence the expansion (or contraction) of higher education. How can we keep a balance between learning for its own sake and professionalization? Is higher education a public, private or mixed good? The programme seeks to stimulate a reflection on those issues which we think can best be informed by interdisciplinarity, by mobilising insights from philosophy, history, economics and sociology and other disciplines.