Abstract
Neoliberalism is a form of interventionism that seeks to pursue elite – corporate – interests. This means constructing a market rationality and constructing markets to better meet what the state takes to be elite interests. In the first phase of neoliberal interventionism in English higher education maintenance grants were replaced with loans, the National Student Survey was introduced to measure ‘satisfaction’, and the inadvertent creation of a £9000 fee-norm all helped to construct a market rationality in students. The second phase, which concerns the proposed reconstruction of the higher education market, started in November 2015 with the publication of the ‘Fulfilling our Potential’ Green Paper. This proposes to make it less bureaucratically cumbersome for ‘for-profits’ to enter the market. In terms of audit culture, a Teaching Excellence Framework is proposed, which would include representatives from employers and professional groups, along with academic experts on teaching, and students, on the assessment panels. Further, universities need to be ‘open to involving employers and learned societies representing professions in curriculum design [and developing] a positive work ethic, so [graduates] can contribute more effectively to our efforts to boost the productivity of UK economy’ (BIS, 2015(a): 11). The Green Paper also holds that ‘at least 20% of graduates are not working in high skilled employment three and a half years after graduation and most employers of STEM graduates are concerned about shortages of high quality applicants’ (BIS 2015(a): 10–11). This contributes to prior messages from the Conservatives that non-STEM subjects are less useful for employment.
Highlights
A large critical literature has developed on the increased marketization of higher education
It could not necessarily be improved upon through the intervention of regulators or law makers’ (Davies, 2014: 50). The justification for this view being that corporate self-interest was ‘more efficient in the aggregate’ (Davies, 2014: 50). What this meant was that the possibility of future competition and the ability to make profits were sufficient for an efficient economy, with anti-corporate regulation damaging this by preventing the efficient accumulation of profit by successful market actors
The actual advantage may decline as the number of people holding degrees increases, and it depends on the availability of graduate level jobs
Summary
A large critical literature has developed on the increased marketization of higher education. Large actors are seen to be large because they are successful, but any inefficient actor is expected to go bankrupt Audit culture, it is argued, in the form of the UK’s National Student Survey (NSS), the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and the now-proposed Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), plays an important role in neoliberal interventionism in English higher education. The second phase starts with the publication in November 2015 of the most recent Green Paper (consultation document) on English higher education (BIS, 2015(a)) This sets out to reconstruct the market of higher education in England to better fit what the Conservative government takes to be elite interests. The partial implementation of the Browne Report (2010), by the coalition Government, inadvertently leading to a fee-norm of £9000, is an example of both types of contingency
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