COVID-19, markets and the crisis of the higher education regulatory state: the case of Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the impact of COVID-19 on the Australian higher education system. It analyses how the contradictions of Australian higher education, driven by expanding participation in the higher education system within the context of contained public funding, have been politically managed through regulatory regimes that link the public university with the neoliberal capitalist economy. Such modes of state intervention have been dependent on financialized instruments such as income contingent loans, the education–migration nexus, and precarious work. These regulatory instruments, embedded within a project of market citizenship, have both managed and expanded the marketization of higher education while also expanding participation. It is this regulatory model of market citizenship that is now facing a crisis of crisis management.