When the ideal of liberal egalitarianism meets the fact of austerity: reorienting philosophical perspectives on educational policy

Abstract

Liberal egalitarians are rightly interested in the meaning and scope of educational justice. Much of this work involves developing an account of what the fair allocation of educational resources ought to look like under ideal conditions. However, recent developments in competitive global capitalism, including the protracted nature of the global recession, have called the feasibility of such accounts into question. Austerity policies have developed to the extent to which the idea of social goods as public and sharable – and so the very concept of distributive justice – has been called into question. Accordingly, what kind of conceptual resources can liberal theory offer to actual citizens working for educational justice under austerity as a public policy? This article argues for a shift in the emphasis in liberal egalitarian critique that recognizes current developments in education policy reform and provides one illustrative account of what such an analysis could look like.