Conclusion

Abstract

Public universities, especially those in the Global South, are at a critical juncture. While massification brings in students from disadvantaged social backgrounds to sites of higher education, globalization and domination of markets effect major changes in these institutions such that their public character is under threat. Shrinking state funding, emerging market for higher education, and new perceptions about students being consumers of higher education have recast the social mission of the university. What is more, the state and its policy discourse for reforms stand in support of markets and privatization. There is an overhang of prior policies in postcolonial higher education – persisting structural features of dualism, utilitarianism ensure the reproduction of a meritocratic elite that does not serve the public interest. Critique by teachers unravels the discursive nature of reform policies – these replace academic autonomy for freedoms for the market and enhance bureaucratic control and partisan interference. Deliberations by students seek to reclaim the public nature of higher education and advance substantive notions of the public university, premised on the ideas of social citizenship. In the Global South, public universities need to address entrenched social inequalities and be a part of the agenda of decolonization.