Neoliberalisation of Higher Education

European Educational Research Journal, 2006

This article is based on a keynote paper presented to the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), University College Dublin, 5-9 September 2005. The massification of education in European countries over the last 100 years has produced cultures and societies that have benefited greatly from state investment in education. To maintain this level of social and economic development that derives from high quality education requires continual state investment. With the rise of the New Right, neo-liberal agenda, there is an attempt to offload the cost of education, and indeed other public services such as housing, transport, care services etc., on to the individual. There is an increasing attempt to privatise public services, including education, so that citizens will have to buy them at market value rather than have them provided by the state. Europe is no exception to this trend of neo-liberalisation. Recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports, including one on higher education in Ireland, (2004), concentrate strongly on the role of education in servicing the economy to the neglect of its social and developmental responsibilities. The view that education is simply another market commodity has become normalised in policy and public discourses. Schools run purely as businesses are a growing phenomenon within and without Europe, and there is an increasing expectation in several countries that schools will supplement their income from private sources, even though they are within the state sector. In this article, the writer presents both a critique of the neo-liberal model of marketised education and a challenge to academics to work as public intellectuals both individually and with civil society organisations to develop a counterhegemonic discourse to neo-liberalism for higher education.

Review of European Studies, 2020

This paper addresses some of the challenges and drawbacks associated to the ongoing worldwide process of marketization (neoliberalization) in higher education. Neoliberalism—the prevailing model of capitalist thinking based on the Washington Consensus—has conveyed the idea that a new educational and university model must emerge in order to meet the demands of a global productive system that is radically different from that of just a few decades ago. The overall argument put forward is that the requirements, particularly the managerial and labor force needs of a new economy—already developing within the parameters of globalization and the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs)—cannot be adequately satisfied under the approaches and methods used by a traditional university. Neoliberalism affects the telos of higher education by redefining the very meaning of higher education. It dislocates education by commodifying its intrinsic value and emphasizing directly tran...

2019

Aims of the Palgrave Critical University Studies Series Universities everywhere are experiencing unprecedented changes and most of the changes being inflicted upon universities are being imposed by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion, and with little understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or destroyed. The over-arching intent of this series is to foster, encourage, and publish scholarship relating to academia that is troubled by the direction of these reforms occurring around the world. The series provides a much-needed forum for the intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of ill-conceived and inappropriate university reforms and will do this with particular emphasis on those perspectives and groups whose views have hitherto been ignored, disparaged or silenced. The series explores these changes across a number of domains including: the deleterious effects on academic work, the impact on student learning, the distortion of academic leadership, and the perversion of institutional politics. Above all, the series encourages critically informed debate, where this is being expunged or closed down in universities.

This paper looks at how higher education (HE) in the UK has been transformed since the advent of neo-liberalism in the 1970s. It is based on my personal experiences over four decades, as well as the research literature, and argues that the changes in HE have been the direct result of policy changes shaped by neo-liberal thinking. After a brief outline of the recent history of HE, I look in detail at how the management systems have changed, both in individual institutions, and in the management of the HE system as a whole, through the application of the 'new public management' approach. Resistance to these changes has been problematic, given a wider economic culture increasingly centred on individual performance, not collective purposes. Although it might be possible to recreate an imagined ideal of collegiality and critical engagement, a truly alternative future for HE needs to begin from rethinking the education system as a whole, basing it around the promotion of substantive equality of wealth and power throughout society.

Learning and Teaching, 2014

Over the past decades, higher education has been profoundly restructured across the world. With remarkable consistency educational reforms have been put forward that rest on a particular and similar rationale: to achieve global competitiveness and adapt to the advent of the so-called ‘knowledge economy’. The ramifications for universities have been dramatic: institutions have changed, roles of students and university employees have been re-defined and the concept of knowledge itself altered.

2002

The Marketisation of Higher Education (Palgrave), 2021

This paper explores some contemporary issues and challenges facing those working in Adult and Higher Education and possible responses: - contexts and critiques of the ongoing neoliberalisation of both university and wider society - possible responses rooted in critical educational theories speaking to the need for educations for eco-social justice

2007