Competition, innovation and diversity in higher education: dominant discourses, paradoxes and resistance

Abstract

This article explores the powerful yet contradictory role of neoliberalism, its competitive mechanisms and emotional logics. Theoretically, it reviews the shifting state-higher education-market nexus through the lens of a critical cultural political economy paradigm. Conceptually, it closely examines Davies’ work on the ‘logic of competition’ (2014) and Naidoo’s idea of ‘competition fetish’ (2011, 2015, 2018) to expose the material and discursive dispositifs through which nation-states, institutions and individual actors mobilize universities to position themselves in the global knowledge economy. The discussion is informed and supported by empirical evidence drawn from a doctoral project (2013–2014). The article aims to contribute to the extant critique of (higher) education by introducing the paradox of ‘polarized convergence’ as an instance of differentiation without diversity in the contemporary English university. Such paradox urges the re-visitation and broadening of the idea and practice of the entrepreneurial university to reinvigorate the link between competition, innovation and diversity.