Commodification Of Higher Education Research Articles

Commodification Of Education In Transactional Leadership [A Literature Review Study

Higher education is increasingly seen as a commodity that can be bought and sold in the global market. This phenomenon emerges along with the development of a culture of capitalism that penetrates into the academic realm. This research examines the role of transactional leadership in the commodification of higher education in Indonesia. Using a case study approach of literature review from various journals, this research investigates how transactional leadership practices contribute to the transformation of education into an economically fungible product. The research findings reveal that transactional leadership encourages the creation of a management system that is oriented towards financial gain. Students are viewed as consumers, while education becomes a service that must be sold competitively. Transactional leaders tend to adopt business strategies such as aggressive marketing, diversification of study programs, and exploitation of human resources to maximize institutional income. Furthermore, this study analyzes the impact of education commodification on learning quality, academic integrity, and the welfare of the academic community. The results show that commodification can sacrifice essential aspects of education, such as intellectual development, character building, and the pursuit of scientific truth, in order to pursue financial goals. This study concludes that transactional leadership has the potential to change the face of higher education into a pure business activity, with significant consequences for the quality and purpose of education itself. The findings make an important contribution to the discussion on the direction of higher education in Indonesia and the role of leadership in determining the values embraced by educational institutions.

Decoding South African lecturers’ frustrations with neoliberal governance approaches

Corporate norms and values, characterised by an enterprise ethos, became the new parameters that defined the academic environment. Academics are increasingly becoming concerned about the commodification of higher education and its impact on academic quality and the standards of quality graduates. The voices of South African academics and their experiences within the neoliberal university governance remain underexplored in the current literature. This study aimed to enhance understanding and contribute to knowledge by exploring lecturers’ experiences within a corporatised academic work environment. This study took place across public and private higher education institutions in South Africa. A cross-sectional, qualitative, interpretative phenomenological research design was employed. Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of 20 lecturers. The data analysis followed the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings of the study identified three key areas that triggered feelings of frustration with management: (1) participants experienced a lack of management’s understanding of governing academic work environments, (2) an erosion of their collegial culture, and (3) a lack of transparent communication.Contribution: A key contribution of this study, which set it apart from other studies, was lecturers’ perceptions that their professional identity, collegiality, autonomy, and academic freedom were in crisis.

Commodification of Higher Education: Investigating the Application of Pragma Stylistic Framework on the Discourses of Pakistani University Prospectuses

Commodification of Higher Education: Investigating the Application of Pragma Stylistic Framework on the Discourses of Pakistani University Prospectuses

Slow Science and Slow Education in a Digitalized University: an Anthropopractic Approach

Introduction. The slow movement in universities is a reaction to the economic-centricity and commodification of higher education and science, the standardization and quantifiability of research and educational activities, the expansion of digital technologies` use in the generation and assimilation of knowledge, the imposition of the cult of speed on the academic and student communities. Rapid knowledge practices are becoming a trend in the context of digitalization of higher education. At the same time, the slow movement in Russian universities remains marginal and poorly institutionalized. The article analyzes the philosophical concepts that underlie the slow movement in universities and substantiates the importance of an anthropopractical approach to the study of slow science and slow education.Methodology and sources. The technocratic approach to the digitalization of higher education contributes to the spread of high-speed science and learning practices based on the reduction of knowledge to information, the growth of knowledge – to extension and cumulation, the cognitive motivation – to competition, greed and ambition. Turning to an anthropopractic approach allows us to overcome this reductionism. Slow science and slow education as anthropological practices are based on the desire of subjects of cognition for dialogue, reflection, improvisation and creative self-realization, self-organization and autodesign, intellectual enjoyment, sustainable, ecological coexistence. Digital technologies are only driving tools for this practice.Results and discussion. Slow practices in education and science are considered in this article, firstly, as an antithesis to the practices of posthumanism and futuro design, overcoming imperfect human nature and movement towards a posthuman with the help of nano-, bio-, information, cognitive and social technologies. Secondly, slow science and slow education as anthropological practices are opposed to managerial practices that form educational environments hostile to a person, the characteristic features of which are competition and hierarchy in the system “effective – ineffective”, “winners – losers”, “successful – catching up – lagging behind”. Conclusion. The authors see the optimal scenario for the transfer of slow practices to the sphere of higher education in Russia in achieving a balance between pragmatism, a shortterm policy and effectivenes, and a reflective position that ensures an anthropological orientation and sustainable development of modern universities.

‘I am done with that now.’ Sense of alienations in Finnish academia

ABSTRACT Commercialization and commodification of higher education has been subjected to wide critique in academic literature. The relative privilege of academic professions seems to be on the decline, as universities are subjected to increasing competitive pressures – pressures which these institutions pass on to academics. Academics experience a loss of control over their own working conditions, with high intrinsic motivation and goals being imprinted by extrinsic ones. Looking at these recent developments through the lens of alienation theory, it is possible to argue that academics feel a deep sense of disempowerment, which is counterproductive not only for academic work, but also traditional academic identities. This theoretical approach is discussed in the context of a Finnish university merger – the Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and the University of Tampere (UTA) merging into Tampere University (2019) – which shows experiences of being extraneously controlled, leading to experiences of disengagement and alienation. The causes of alienation are typically placed on the level of higher education policy and higher education institutions, but are not uniform, which is why the plural form – alienations – is considered more apt.

Middle-Class “Chavs” From Working-Class Areas? Habitus, the Attainment Gap, and the Commodification of Higher Education Among Communication Students in England

The purpose of the article is to compare and contrast higher education and research among public relations and journalism students of middle-class and working-class origin. The paper applied Bourdieu’s theory of habitus to analyze prejudices against the working class, explores whether working-class students express an anti-education view, and whether the appreciation of education (and research in particular) is a predominantly middle-class attitude. Focus groups and an online questionnaire were used to obtain views of students at a university in Northern England. Triple coding (open, axial, selective) was used and the data was then analyzed and presented using thematic analysis. Findings show that early socialization about education as well as students’ type of neighborhoods (habitus) influence studies’ views of higher education and research in particular. While the findings show some similarity with views in the literature of the middle-class being more inclined to value education, these findings show that this is true only for those who grow up in middle class areas whereas middle-class students who grew up in working-class areas show working-class attitudes toward education. Equally, working-class students who grew up in middle-class areas show what is usually perceived as a middle-class view of education. Both groups of students show a tendency toward embracing a consumerist view of higher education.

Análise das Relações entre os Setores Público e Privado na Educação Superior no Âmbito do Fies

The Student Financing Fund (Fies), created in 1999, has already funded over three million students. The purpose of this article is to analyze how Fies contributed to the expansion of private higher education in Brazil. – A mixed – quantitative and qualitative – research method is employed, with an emphasis on the sequential explanatory strategy model, and, in the theoretical-contextual perspective, the text represents Fies in the framework of neoliberal ideas for State action in education, in which the privatization and commodification of higher education are leveraged. Data on public expenditures on the Program and its service are examined, covering numbers of contracts, students, institutions, and territorial distribution. The 1999-2020 gap registers a significant increase in access to higher education and Fies, which started timidly, expanded significantly between 2011 and 2015. Currently, Fies reveals itself as a policy that is clearly shrinking and with an uncertain future.

The price of knowledge and the wisdom of innocence: A difficult journey through the employability discourse in higher education

Through the examination of knowledge artefacts, utilising an analytical metaphorical representation, the authors present an exploration of higher education. In this way, the exploration is depicted as a schizophrenic, dichotomic journey through the difficult discourse of knowledge, wisdom, and employability in higher education institutions. The article explores how the place and value of knowledge appear fractured in the higher education curriculum. Applying Root Cause Analysis, it is argued that the marketisation, commercialisation and commodification of higher education, with the resulting emphasis on economic value through the employability of graduates, has created unintended consequences in the sector. To insert employability initiatives, something has to give in the module structure so that everything can be fitted in. That ‘something’ is the sacrifice of wisdom within the deeper knowledge of a subject. The authors argue that the depth of knowledge has unintentionally been negatively affected by embedding employability. While some students position themselves strategically to use their education for their individual gain, others want to learn more deeply, and become anxious that they do not have the time to reflect on what they have learned. It is recommended that a deeper reflexive conversation must take place between all stakeholders in higher education if it is to have a future in economic terms.

A formação da subjetividade empresarial e a implementação da cultura performativa na educação

O presente artigo tem por objetivo compreender como a formação da subjetividade de cunho empresarial – produtivista e concorrencial - tem potencializado a construção de uma cultura de permormatividade competitiva no âmbito da educação superior e impactado sobre as condições de trabalho e o modelo/projeto de vida dos trabalhadores docentes. A captura da subjetividade pela racionalidade toyotista/neoliberal, responsável pela formação de um novo sujeito (autogovernável/gestor de si), enseja a elevação da performance individual, de modo a reduzir os custos reais de produção, e o desenvolvimento de uma nova governança do Estado, centrada na privatização e mercadorização das empresas e dos serviços públicos. Assim, o projeto de reterritorialização capitalista vigorou o processo de mercantilização da educação superior, mediante a expansão do setor privado/mercantil e a crescente subordinação das instituições públicas às regras do mercado. A implementação de políticas de cunho mercantilistas e economicistas têm estimulado a generalização da concorrência e o aumento da performance produtiva das instituições de educação superior (públicas e privadas). O medo/instabilidade e a responsabilização, decorrentes das políticas de avaliação quantitativa e de flexibilização das relações e condições de trabalho, compreende a formação (subjetiva) de um novo profissional da educação, mais eficiente, competitivo e subserviente as condições de trabalho precarizadas. Trata-se de um estudo exploratório, quanto aos objetivos, e bibliográfico, de cunho hermenêutico-analítico, quanto aos procedimentos.

Travelling concepts: the story of the commodification of higher education in Iran

This paper deals with the biography of commodification in higher education and tries to demonstrate the journey of this concept within it. The journey of this concept will then be traced from global northern to global southern countries and in particular Iran. Next the studies dealing with this concept will be addressed. Our purpose here is to discuss how the commodification of higher education finds a new identity when it travels to periphery countries especially authoritarian states which are based on Islamic teachings. Finally, at the end of this journey, four understandings of the commodification of the higher education concept in Iran will be discussed. These are the commodification of higher education as 1) privatisation 2) marketisation 3) fetishisation of scientific works and academic regulations and finally 4) commodification as a deviation from Islamization in higher education. All in all, the commodification should not be merely understood economically, but it should also be considered in the context of political and ideological values. It seems that commodification should be regarded as a part of the ideological authoritarian state apparatus. So, these forms of commodification do not necessarily mean prioritising the economic value of higher education but demonstrate the emphasis on political, ideological and social values in the ideological state of Iran.

Value for money and the commodification of higher education: front-line narratives

ABSTRACT This paper provides a critical interrogation of government-led reform of higher education (HE) in England. Its focus is marketisation, and in particular, the concepts of ‘value for money’ (VFM), teaching excellence, and students as educational consumers. Hitherto, research on VFM in HE has been largely quantitative in nature and primarily focussed on student perceptions. This qualitative research study contributes to existing knowledge, by comparing the perceptions of students and university lecturers in the social sciences. Undertaken at a Northern university between 2017 and 2019, it highlights key concerns around changing student expectations, managerialism and the potential instrumentalisation of learning and teaching. The issues explored here lend themselves to a broader based study across different types of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and different cognate areas.

Learner or Consumer? Market-Led Higher Education, Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality

This paper addresses issues associated with leadership in Higher Education (HE), by drawing on research and debate in relation to the role of education in reproducing social inequalities, and on expertise developed through academic leadership roles in British art schools. It seeks to stimulate discussion about the commodification of HE, which is often perceived as a threat to its accessibility, and therefore to its positive impact in enhancing social mobility, and will argue that it is only a threat if we cling to a culturally conservative belief in value-free learning, which serves only to reproduce the values of the white middle-class intelligentsia. By addressing the question of how to respond to the changing profile of all HE students, in terms of the diverse social and cultural capital which they bring with them, (which shapes what and how they want to learn), this paper will challenge some of the prevailing views about student engagement, from the perspective of an academic whose leadership role includes responsibility for developing learning and teaching strategies to ensure student progression, achievement, and graduate outcomes, and for enhancing the quality of the student experience.

Training engineers for innovation: Pedagogical initiatives for new challenges

AbstractThe injunction to innovate which has permeated our societies in the last few decades has had a significant impact on engineers and their training. The idea of progress has since taken a back seat to the quest for innovation which saves time, space and reduces aims to short term performance objectives. However, marked by the technologism and productivism of the 20th century, the idea of innovation has also absorbed the new principles of sustainability and responsibility which have imposed themselves upon engineering research and activities in a henceforth internationalised world. It is within this context that engineer training institutions have sought to counter the injunctions to innovation and the stresses and strains that they produce. Based on three studies carried out in Europe and in several developing countries in North Africa and South East Asia, this article examines the curricula the institutions have implemented in order to observe current trends in innovation training initiatives in relation to locally‐perceived expectations and requirements. We have observed that technologism and productivism, which are still very present in the principles which guide European engineer training, are in competition with the principles of low‐cost engineering which satisfies user requirements and respects environmental constraints. As for the pedagogical initiatives, the phenomena of standardisation and commodification of higher education have led to the development of active learning (projects, problem‐based learning, fablabs, etc.). However, studies demonstrate that pedagogical orientation depends on how innovation is conceptualised and varies according to the scale of the educational institutions. A closer examination of the concepts of innovation reveals the epistemological issues concerning the way the engineering problems have been constructed.

Contract Cheating And Academic Integrity In Higher Education:, What Can Universities, Governments And Quality Assurance Agencies Do To Understand, Prevent And Respond To The Challenge?

There is a global challenge to higher education posed by “contract cheating”. “Contract cheating” occurs when a student contracts a third party to create an assignment for them, and then the student submits it as their own work. This particularly insidious form of cheating has been exacerbated by the commodification of higher education and the increasingly popular “sharing economy”. Contract cheating not only threatens the academic integrity of the individual student’s grades and their degree; it also raises suspicion about all the degrees awarded by an institution. Globally, universities have been struggling to combat contract cheating. This paper defines and describes the problem and then summarizes the findings of recent research and offers solutions. New Zealand was one of the first countries to criminalize contract cheating. A legal approach is a solution which every country needs to consider because it directly targets the commercial entities creating the product. A pedagogical approach requires universities to be proactive and there are many things which universities can do to reduce and manage the problem. A quality assurance approach can involve national quality assurance agencies working with government departments and tertiary education providers to conduct research and provide guidance to all universities. This paper draws on recent research produced by the accreditation agencies, individual researchers, and university organizations. It refers to research in selected countries—especially New Zealand, Australia and the UK—to counteract contract cheating. The solutions will be of interest to all universities, quality assurance agencies and governments because contract cheating is a global problem which challenges the academic integrity of every higher education institution.

Problematic and Damaged Image of a University among Iranian Students: The Lived Experience of Iranian Students at Universities

The current paper tried to explore the lived experience of Iranian students at universities in recent years after commercialization and commodification of higher education followed by limitations on the public and governmental resources of the universities. Thus, a university student is reduced to a customer position. The aim of this research is to study the lived experience of students in an old comprehensive university in the capital of Iran. Since the goal of the researchers was to go near the students themselves to reveal the lived and perceived experiences of them with the interpretive paradigm as a methodology. The hermeneutic phenomenological research method was chosen with deep exploratory interviews as a data gathering tool. Deep exploratory interviews were fulfilled with a purposive sample of 25 university students on the data saturation basis. 250 main propositions were found from these interviews. The most important propositions extracted with the thematic analysis method showed that just 30 percent of experiences were positive but 70 percent of them were negative.

The Capabilities Approach: A Future Alternative to Neoliberal Higher Education in the MENA Region

This conceptual paper is a future study aiming to shed light on the current state of higher education in the MENA region. The neoliberal agenda for higher education in the region presents a form of education that is commodified, corporatized and focused on STEM rather than on humanities. The paper further speculates on the state of higher education in the near future under the same ideology. As an alternative, the study proposes the implementation of Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach. This approach is capable of re-balancing the tipped scale in the commodification of higher education and will serve in developing well-rounded individuals. The Capabilities Approach can reform higher education through critical thinking, liberal education, and attention to diversity.

On Decolonisation and Revolution: A Kristevan Reading on the Hashtags Student Movements and Fallism

ABSTRACTIn 2015, clarion calls for a radical change in South African universities sounded. Protesting students demanded a transformed cultural and physical spatiality of South African universities. Their narrative emphasised colonial structures personified in the symbolism of statutes like Cecil John Rhodes, and is driven ideologically by an ‘apartheid culture’ that does not advance an African philosophical and intellectual project but continues to oppress them. They frame their struggle as Fallism [Fallism was coined as a term to describe the ideological drive of disruption, and seeing the fall of something in mobilizing around the symbolism of oppression and struggle, most notably challenges continued discrimination and exclusion on the basis of race, class, sex and the exclusionary nature of capitalism and the commodification of higher education [wa Bofelo, M. 2017. “Fallism and the Dialectics of spontaneity and organisation”. Accessed November 17, 2017. https://www.joburgpost.co.za/2017/08/04/fallism-dialectics-spontaneity-organisation-disrupting-tradition-reconstruct-tradition/]. It is an ideological vehicle advancing a cultural revolution, not just for free education, but for what they have termed the decolonization of spaces of higher learning and, more fundamentally, the decolonization of the mind.]. Their imaginary highlights a contested and militant debate on the spatiality of transformation, underpinned by a notion of abjection. This article explores the notion of revolt embodied in Fallism through a Kristevan lens. I argue that at the core of the students’ revolt is a sense of abjection fuelling the Fallist struggle for the complete structural decolonisation of universities.

Teaching applied politics: From employability to political imaginary

The growth of applied politics teaching in recent years is often conflated by academics, institutions, and professional associations with the employability agenda increasingly promoted by government. Many academics – politics faculty to the fore – object to the imposition of neo-liberal values on universities, the commodification of higher education, and a focus on employability in their teaching. These developments, coupled with a sense that the teaching of practical politics lacks intellectual rigour, undermine the growth of applied politics courses and programmes. There is, however, no reason why applied politics teaching must embrace neo-liberal norms. Nor is the alternative the introduction, as has happened in a few institutions, of courses teaching the practice of radical activism. Norms and values in applied politics can come from students, producing content and knowledge as they develop skills and approaches to practical politics. Applied politics itself represents a bridge between political science and political life beyond the university and serves the needs of students across the ‘careerist-activist’ spectrum. Far from being intellectually light, a values-focused approach to applied politics has a pedagogical depth beyond that offered in much of the current politics curriculum. It offers a pedagogy not just of information but of formation and transformation.

Commodification, decolonisation and theological education in Africa: Renewed challenges for African theologians

The commodification of higher education is a global phenomenon that many argue has reduced education into a product that serves the interests of global capitalism and perpetuates the hegemony of western knowledge. Decolonisation discourses demand for access and an Africanised curriculum constitutes resistance to commodification. Theological education as part of higher education has not escaped commodification. African theologians pioneered resistance against the hegemony of western theologies. However, there are additional factors driving commodification, such as high demand for training, that outstrip supply because of the phenomenal growth of Christianity and rise in Christian consumerism. African theologians therefore need to continue resisting western hegemony and also pursue critical dialogues with decolonisation movements as well as all stakeholders such as churches, government and civil society as resistance to commodification. The inclusive and communitarian methodology of the Theological Colloquium on Church, Religion and Society in Africa will be critically assessed for its potential as a possible model.

De-studentification: emptying housing and neighbourhoods of student populations

International scholarship on student geographies and urban change continues to advance knowledge of the intense commodification of student lifestyles and student housing. The main aim of this paper is to consider some of the hitherto under-researched wider knock-on effects of more commodified student housing markets. Here we present findings from the first-ever empirical study of de-studentification. Using the case study of Loughborough, we demonstrate how de-studentification is a process of change that has been stimulated by the increased supply of purpose-built student accommodation. We show that de-studentification leads to the depopulation and decline of some classical studentified neighbourhoods. Moreover, these urban transformations have several significant implications for pre-existing conceptualisations of urban change and student geographies. Notably, the impacts of de-studentification pose important questions for the conceptual boundaries of studentification – a prerequisite of de-studentification – and although, to date, dominant conceptualisations of studentification are wedded to upgrading-led representations of urban gentrification, it is shown that de-studentification, conversely, leads to physical downgrading and emptying of neighbourhoods in distinct phases. We therefore argue for a process-led definition of de-studentification, to illustrate how studentified neighbourhoods are gradually ‘emptied’ of student populations and student housing. More broadly, it is asserted that new student geographies are being created by the deepening neoliberalisation and commodification of higher education, which, in turn, will have unintentional consequences for wider social, cultural and economic relations in university towns and cities, such as emergent community cohesion and changing senses of place.