Yes, I think it has been for the last 40 years aimed at making education reflect commercial values rather than civic values. This has been done in large part through policies directed at removing professional autonomy and directing educational policy from the centre through national curricula in the UK, by increasing central control over professionals by downgrading professional values and choices and replacing these with centrally imposed performance management metrics which assume the consumer model rather than the public service model which evolved from the late 19th century. This logic has come to dominate all public services from health and municipal government to teaching and town planning.
Yes, I think it has been for the last 40 years aimed at making education reflect commercial values rather than civic values. This has been done in large part through policies directed at removing professional autonomy and directing educational policy from the centre through national curricula in the UK, by increasing central control over professionals by downgrading professional values and choices and replacing these with centrally imposed performance management metrics which assume the consumer model rather than the public service model which evolved from the late 19th century. This logic has come to dominate all public services from health and municipal government to teaching and town planning.
Yes, I think it has been for the last 40 years aimed at making education reflect commercial values rather than civic values. This has been done in large part through policies directed at removing professional autonomy and directing educational policy from the centre through national curricula in the UK, by increasing central control over professionals by downgrading professional values and choices and replacing these with centrally imposed performance management metrics which assume the consumer model rather than the public service model which evolved from the late 19th century. This logic has come to dominate all public services from health and municipal government to teaching and town planning.
I agree. I think that today Universities are managed like commercial companies rather than places where academic freedom needs to be more important than economic profitability. Too much resources flow towards disciplines that promise returns and other disciplines are starved of funds which might be important to undertsand society, but with little direct returns. This also reflects on academics, whose performance are often measured on class size rather than pedagogical performance. Even quality of research is compromised. I know of cases, where fieldwork for a PhD in a social science disipline needed to be cut down to four weeks because of limited funding. Much data can be collected in four weeks, but please don't ask me of the quality of this data, and also not of ethical issues that arise, when a researcher is forced to march in a village equipped with a questionnaire, extracts information for the objects of research and then disappears. This cannot be the way research can be conducted, but more and more it becomes the only possibility.....
I agree Eberhard. Sorry my answer has been put in so many times but my computer is playing up! lack of funding!!!!
Yes! What policy has not been impregnated with the values of neoliberalism. Some might argue that such policies are “value free“ but that would be neoliberalism a nutshell.
While I agree with the statement as posed I think it is limited and limiting. Not everything happening in higher education can be put down to neoliberalism, an elusive concept at the best of times. The new information economy has placed pressure on higher education. The new managerialism has been building for some time and is more complex that 'neoliberalism'.
My main problem is that we need to explain what our alternative to the status quo is. If not it will be assumed we simply like the old elitist model where the professor was god. That is not viable option and it is certainly not progressive.
Perhaps those in higher education concerned with the state it is could try talking to wider layers in society outside, like political parties, trade unions, social movements and even employers (yes!) to see if we can gain some agreement on what is wrong and how to fix it?
I agree with Michael. What is wrong is the system itself.
I agree. It is a trend at the international level. In a country like Chile, since 1980, the entire educational system has been regulated by the market. In higher education, competition for students, deregulation and the absence of the State to instill democratic and social values have been a constant. That is why, we are a case of study. Best Regards.
Yes, absolutely. In the United States even public schools are marketed like a brand and compete with other schools for notoriety and profit. Many schools imbibed with neoliberal competitiveness fail to make a profit without making massive tuition hikes. All this does is intensify the rat race to get in and out of college all in the name of a heavily advertised 4-year experience that includes among other things, an education. But what neoliberal-influenced colleges and universities cause for most students is tremendous debt. Neoliberalism teaches that a market society has winners and losers and that it is necessary to allow for ‘losers’ to fall by the wayside in the name of the greater good of efficiency.
What kind of values are set here? If a public college or university’s actions and values do not reflect the stated values of the community then it has failed. Things have become so twisted in the United States that century-old state mottos based on progress and community are now being rewritten in the name of supporting industry – circumventing the traditional role and expectation of a public university.