Survey: Competition in Higher Education

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a bibliometric mapping and economic interpretation of the literature on competition in higher education. Drawing on 1470 Scopus‐indexed articles (1961–2023), we combine descriptive bibliometrics, a keyword co‐occurrence network, and a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) of harmonized author‐assigned keywords with a unified economic framework that distinguishes two functions of competition: an evaluative–optimizing mechanism, in which institutions are compared against criteria treated as known in advance, and a generative–discovery mechanism, in which decentralized experimentation reveals information that cannot be fully specified beforehand. Both the co‐occurrence network (modularity ) and the MCA reveal a pronounced conceptual asymmetry: the field is organized around a large, central, internally elaborated vocabulary of rankings, performance, quality assurance, reputation, efficiency, and institutional positioning, while discovery‐oriented concerns—innovation, institutional diversity, scientific incentives, and the organization of knowledge production—are less central and less coherently consolidated within the retained author‐keyword structure. We connect this asymmetry to the policy chronology—massification, performance‐based funding, deregulation, the Bologna process, and global rankings—through which the evaluative–optimizing function has been progressively institutionalized. The contribution is threefold: a large‐scale map of the field, an economic distinction between two functions of competition, and a reading of why the literature's conceptual structure has taken its present, asymmetric form.