Neoliberalism, Economism and Higher Education
Neoliberalism, Economism and Higher Education

Author: Almantas Samalavičius

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2018-04-18

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 152750980X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This concise volume presents a series of conversations conducted by its editor with internationally renowned educators, scholars and social critics. The primary focus is on a set of important social and cultural issues and the complex nature of the global contemporary crises in higher education and economics, and the values and goals educational institutions pursue and produce. Contributors to this volume discuss why the present systems of higher education are ailing almost everywhere, and which remedies have turned out to be their poison. The contributions here investigate how and why universities and the knowledge they seek have become hostages to an ideology based on neoliberalism, economism and a fundamentalism of the market. These ideologies have reshaped higher education and contributed to its commodification and commercialization, transforming educational institutions according to a model that originated in the domains of global business enterprises. Bureaucratization and the growth of a managerial class in higher education have led to universities that focus on what is purportedly marketable, while neglecting the commitment to the pursuit of truth, the education of character and the cultivation of civic values that informed older educational models. The contributors to this book argue, from many different angles, for resistance to these recent developments within higher education.

Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education
Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education

Author: Henry A. Giroux

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1642590924

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An accessible examination of neoliberalism and its effects on higher education and America, by the author of American Nightmare. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education reveals how neoliberal policies, practices, and modes of material and symbolic violence have radically reshaped the mission and practice of higher education, short-changing a generation of young people. Giroux exposes the corporate forces at play and charts a clear-minded and inspired course of action out of the shadows of market-driven education policy. Championing the youth around the globe who have dared to resist the bartering of their future, he calls upon public intellectuals—as well as all people concerned about the future of democracy—to speak out and defend the university as a site of critical learning and democratic promise. “Giroux has focused his keen intellect on the hostile corporate takeover of higher education in North America . . . .He is relentless in his defense of a society that requires its citizenry to place its cultural, political, and economic institutions in context so they can be interrogated and held truly accountable. We are fortunate to have such a prolific writer and deep thinker to challenge us all.”―Karen Lewis, President, Chicago Teachers Union “No one has been better than . . . Giroux at analyzing the many ways in which neoliberalism . . . has damaged the American economy and undermined its democratic processes.”―Bob Herbert, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos “Giroux . . . dares us to reevaluate the significance of public pedagogy as integral to any viable notion of democratic participation and social responsibility. Anybody who is remotely interested in the plight of future generations must read this book.”―Dr. Brad Evans, Director, Histories of Violence website

Neoliberalism, Higher Education and Research
Neoliberalism, Higher Education and Research

Author: Peter Roberts

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-02-11

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9087906307

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The book rejects the politics of power as inimical to the very becoming of the human and posits the politics of strength as a new possibility that breaks with the plantation system of organized violence and vampiric wealth production.

Knowledge for Sale
Knowledge for Sale

Author: Lawrence Busch

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-09-19

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0262549263

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this. A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or less immediate market value. Every other kind of learning is downgraded, its budget cut. In Knowledge for Sale, Lawrence Busch challenges this market-driven approach. The rationale for the current thinking, Busch explains, comes from neoliberal economics, which calls for reorganizing society around the needs of the market. The market-influenced changes to higher education include shifting the cost of education from the state to the individual, turning education from a public good to a private good subject to consumer demand; redefining higher education as a search for the highest-paying job; and turning scholarly research into a competition based on metrics including number of citations and value of grants. Students, administrators, and scholars have begun to think of themselves as economic actors rather than seekers of knowledge. Arguing for active resistance to this takeover, Busch urges us to burst the neoliberal bubble, to imagine a future not dictated by the market, a future in which there is a more educated citizenry and in which the old dichotomies—market and state, nature and culture, and equality and liberty—break down. In this future, universities value learning and not training, scholarship grapples with society's most pressing problems rather than quick fixes for corporate interests, and democracy is enriched by its educated and engaged citizens.

Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University
Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University

Author: Joyce E. Canaan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-05

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1135910162

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume brings together a set of largely ethnographic articles written from a critical perspective that consider how current transitions in post-secondary education are impacting on higher education (HE) institutions.

Understanding Neoliberal Rule in Higher Education
Understanding Neoliberal Rule in Higher Education

Author: Mark Abendroth

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2015-06-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1681231271

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The word fundamentalism usually conjures up images of religions and their most zealous followers. Much less often the word appears in connection with political economy. The phrase “free market” gives the connotation that capitalism is freedom. Neoliberalism is the rise of global free-market fundamentalism. It reaches into nearly every aspect of our daily lives as it seeks to dominate and eliminate the last vestiges of public domains through wanton privatization and deregulation. It degrades all that is public. The good news is that a global community of resistance continues to struggle against neoliberal oppression. Formal and informal education entities contribute to these struggles, offering visions and strategies for creating a better future. The purpose of this volume is twofold. Several contributors will highlight how the neoliberal agenda is impacting educational policy formation, teaching and learning, and relationships between institutions of higher education and communities. Other contributors will highlight how the global community has gradually become conscious of the ideological doctrine and how it is responsible for human suffering and misery. The volume is needed because the growing body of educational research linked to exploring the impact of neoliberalism on education and society fails to provide conceptual or historical understanding of this ideology. It is also an important scholarly intervention because it provides insights as to why educators, scholars, and other global citizens have challenged the intrusion of market forces over life inside universities and colleges. Teaching faculty, research faculty, and anyone who yearns to understand what is behind the debilitating trend of commercial forces subverting humanizing educational projects would benefit from this volume. Activists, educators, youth, and scholars who seek strategies and visions for building democratic higher education and a more democratic society would consider this volume essential reading.

Learning Under Neoliberalism
Learning Under Neoliberalism

Author: Susan B. Hyatt

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2015-03-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1782385967

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As part of the neoliberal trends toward public-private partnerships, universities all over the world have forged more intimate relationships with corporate interests and more closely resemble for-profit corporations in both structure and practice. These transformations, accompanied by new forms of governance, produce new subject-positions among faculty and students and enable new approaches to teaching, curricula, research, and everyday practices. The contributors to this volume use ethnographic methods to investigate the multi-faceted impacts of neoliberal restructuring, while reporting on their own pedagogical responses, at universities in the United States, Europe, and New Zealand.

The Social Production of Knowledge in a Neoliberal Age
The Social Production of Knowledge in a Neoliberal Age

Author: Justin Cruickshank

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-04-04

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 1538161419

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Higher education exposes a key paradox of neoliberalism. The project of neoliberalism was said to be that of rolling back the state to liberate individuals, by replacing government bureaucracy with the free market. Rather than have the market serve individuals however, individuals were to serve the market. The marketisation ‘reforms’ in higher education, which sought to reshape knowledge production, with students investing in human capital and academics producing ‘transferable’ research, to make higher education of use to the economy, has resulted in extensive government bureaucracy and oppressive managerialist bureaucracy which is inefficient and expensive. Neoliberalism has always had authoritarian aspects and these are now coming to bear on universities. The state does not want critical and informed graduate citizens, but a hollowed out public sphere defined by consumption, willing servitude to the market and deference to state power. Attempts to reshape universities with bureaucracy are now accompanied by a culture war, attacking the production of critical knowledge. The authors in this book explore these issues and the possibilities for resistance and progressive change.

Neoliberalism and Education
Neoliberalism and Education

Author: Kalwant Bhopal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-02

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1317294939

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Neoliberalism and Education: Rearticulating Social Justice and Inclusion offers a critical reflection on the establishment of neoliberalism as the new global orthodoxy in the field of education, and considers what this means for social justice and inclusion. It brings together writers from a number of countries, who explore notions of inclusion and social justice in educational settings ranging from elementary schools to higher education. Contributors examine policy, practice, and pedagogical considerations covering different dimensions of (in)equality, including disability, race, gender, and class. They raise questions about what social justice and inclusion mean in educational systems that are dominated by competition, benchmarking, and target-driven accountability, and about the new forms of imperialism and colonisation that both drive, and are a product of, market-driven reforms. While exposing the entrenchment, under current neoliberal systems of educational provision, of longstanding patterns of (racialised, classed, and gendered) privilege and disadvantage, the contributions presented in this book also consider the possibilities for hope and resistance, drawing attention to established and successful attempts at democratic education or community organisation across a number of countries. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology of Education.

Life for the Academic in the Neoliberal University
Life for the Academic in the Neoliberal University

Author: Alpesh Maisuria

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 1000732568

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Life for the Academic in the Neoliberal University investigates the impact of neoliberalism on academics in today’s universities. Considering the experiences of early career researchers as well as more experienced academics, it outlines the changing nature of working life in the university precipitated by the reality of de-professionalisation, worsening conditions of employment, and general precarious existence. The book traces the dramatic shift in the role and function of universities and academics over the last forty years. It considers how capitalist neoliberalism drives universities to operate like businesses in a cut-throat financialised education market place. Uniquely the book then provides a possible alternative in the form of the National Education Service (NES) and what this alternative system could look like. Thought-provoking and relevant, this book will be of use to postgraduate students as well as new, emerging, and established academics interested in the current state of higher education, academic life, and possibilities for the future.