Managerial changes to Australian universities have had considerable impact on employees. In this article, we consider some of these changes and apply a theory known as the democratic deficit to them. This theory was developed from the democratic critique of managerialism, as it has been applied in the public sector in countries with…

This essay is an excerpt from a keynote speech delivered by Benjamin Barber at the 2nd Annual Summer Research Institute on the "Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education." The speech focuses on six conditions that will impact community service-learning and voluntarism efforts in the years ahead: the ideology of neo-liberalism and…

After two centuries of public higher education in the United States, the covenant between public colleges and universities and the public that created and funded them is under strain. In a time of scarce resources and changing policy in many corners of the country and around the globe, privatization has emerged as a possible replacement for the…

The paper locates the past two decades of changes in Polish universities in a comparative European context. It shows a wider transition: from an expanding, privatized and disciplinarily divided university of the 1990s to a publicly funded, increasingly contracting and stratified university of the 2000s (and beyond). The gradual political and…

In this article, the author explores the way that neo-liberalism is becoming more entrenched in the fabric of the education system in England. The article begins by setting out a very brief historical trajectory of neo-liberalism to provide a working definition of a complex and disarticulated socio-political and economic system. In part two, this…

Higher education is an essential element in developing a country's innovative potential, and this has been recognised as such by politicians and those who work in the industry. However, one of the blights of contemporary Russian society, corruption threatens the potential of the next generation. Corruption has permeated all levels of society,…

From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 as a mission for training young clergy to the landmark 1968 Supreme Court decision in "Epperson v. Arkansas," which struck down the state's ban on teaching evolution in schools, religion and education in the United States have been inextricably linked. Still today new fights emerge over the…

The broad intent of any educational reform is premised on the assumption that it is capable of improving educational process and practices, hence, the need for evaluation of the system's process in order to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of resource allocation. Education is capital intensive in terms of human, financial and material…

Since the early 1990s, European higher education has been undergoing drastic changes with regard to the organisation and governance of academic work. The political emphasis on higher education autonomy and accountability went hand in hand with the introduction of market type steering devices and a new discourse regarding the universities'…

Public universities are microcosms of the broader trends at work in the society, and they have been for decades. From the wide range of students they educate to the transformative research they develop to their ameliorative impact on local communities, public universities provide a litmus test for the country's ever shifting demographics, mores,…

No topic in private higher education study has attracted as great attention globally as has growth. This is appropriate as private growth has soared to nearly a third of the world's total higher education enrolment. But while private growth continues to be the dominant trend, important declines in private shares have emerged. These must be…

Because higher education serves both public and private interests, the way it is conceived and financed is contested politically, appearing in different forms in different societies. What is public and private in education is a political--social construct, subject to various political forces, primarily interpreted through the prism of the state.…

For more than two decades, governments around the world, led by the English-speaking polities, have moved higher education systems closer to the forms of textbook economic markets. Reforms include corporatisation, competitive funding, student charges, output formats and performance reporting. But, no country has established a bona fide economic…

Rankings and online comparison sites have both facilitated and shaped the marketisation of higher education in England, the UK as a whole and elsewhere. They have facilitated marketisation by introducing greater competition between and within higher education institutions. Ultimately, they accomplish the transformation of qualities into…

To an American audience, the demonstrations, strikes, and unrest resulting from the changes to higher education in Britain must seem perplexing. Compared with the $37,000 for annual tuition at a private university like Princeton, higher education in England still seems like a bargain. But the changes now under way in Britain threaten the very core…