From neoliberal to supra-neoliberal: Canadian education industry formation

Abstract

In 2014, Canada released its first national International Education Strategy, and in 2019 – its second. This paper argues that emergence of a national document strategizing Canada’s education selling and inevitably regulating international student mobility, with strictly provincial regulation of the sector, would not be possible without bottom-up proactive initiatives originating in the institutional domain. Treating policy as a process involving multiple domains, I critically examine publicly available pre-budget submissions, briefs, and other documents, produced by the invested beneficiaries of the first Strategy, higher education institutions. Universities, united under their networking organization Universities Canada (UC) had become active advocates for a national education strategy that would bring international education into the federal domain, vertically transcending the provincial/territorial level. UCs’ stakeholder advocacy helped to elevate the largely ungoverned international education from individual university neoliberal modes to a national priority, leading to a state of education governance in Canada that can be characterized as a ‘supra-neoliberal’ education industry.