Privatization of education has become a prevalent global trend, representing a significant shift from viewing education as a public good to considering it as a private commodity. This transformation is closely tied to the modernization of the state under the principles of neoliberalism. A comprehensive analysis, as presented in this book using…

Kappan's editor talks with Queensland University researcher Anna Hogan about the rapid growth of commercial activity in Australia's schools and in school systems around the world. Private businesses have always sold textbooks, classroom tools, and other goods and services to public schools, and many teachers are happy to purchase and use them,…

Throughout the 20th century, community-owned and operated public schooling was viewed in the United States as an essential mechanism for advancing the country's democratic ideals, institutions, and economic interests. But the first decades of the 21st century have witnessed a historic shift away from this commitment to public schools, as federal…

This is the first book to systematically chart and comparatively assess the trend towards private higher education in South East Asia. Caught between conflicting imperatives of spiralling demand, and limited resources, the balance between public and private higher education systems in South East, South, and East Asia has shifted markedly. The…

This paper explores the rising presence of transnational corporations (TNCs) in education and their mobilisation of global corporate social discourses to legitimise their private authority in education. The rising presence of TNCs is explored in the paper in two parts. First, through a taxonomy of global corporate social engagement (GCSE)…

Analyses of private higher education should consider the increasingly important for-profit sector in many countries. Yet information on the for-profit sector has been quite limited. Even in the United States, where for-profit higher education is well-established, only recently have researchers turned their attention to studying its scope and…

One of the salient concerns in contemporary higher education internationally is access, which is rapidly expanding. Another salient trend is the rapid expansion of private higher education. These two salient tendencies have not been treated in scholarship as heavily intertwined. Much of the reason is that many people associate "private"…

Calls for the continued privatization of public schools and the application of business solutions to school management problems are nothing new. Successful small-scale experiments at privatization will continue to have an incremental effect on educational reform. Even failed experiments offer opportunities about how to manage public education.…

In the United States, the relationship between state governments and public colleges and universities is being redefined with new notions of autonomy and accountability, and with funding policies that are highly market-driven (often referred to as "privatisation") as the centrepieces. Situations and institutional strategies unthinkable…

In this three-part paper, Richard Quantz proclaims that it was the spirit of the free school movement that originally attracted him to the social foundations of education and to the philosophy of education. He wonders what has happened to the progressive movement--the one that embraced Ivan Illich's call to "deschool society" and called…

Explores how extensions to the General Agreements on Trade in Services (GATS) designed to increase market access of private service providers to industries now in the public sector could affect public higher education. Asserts that these agreements have an alarming potential to limit the role of government in the delivery of public services such…