Turning the focus from my last blog that concluded on the existing and supported inequalities in British school systems manifesting in school exclusions, let’s look at the changing face of higher education that the more privileged students may experience. Global marketisation, competition and state de-regulation, for example.
In the school settings, the 1988 education reform act brought parentocracy, marketisation, and competition (Brown, 2013). I for one valued so-called ‘choice’ in the emerging parentocracy, jumping through hoops to select the better schools, where children competed for places thus reserved for high achievers. In doing so, I tried to ignore the fact that as I chased the ‘better’ schools which had the ‘better students’, as did teachers in their search for employment, all we were doing was abandoning our local struggling schools to continue to struggle as we sapped them of talent and strength. I did put my faith in the local schools, only because the better schools eluded me; the local schools’ lack of resources were evident as they stretched to cope with high needs’ student population.
With a raised cap on tuition fees (UK Parliament, 2012), 2012 saw rising university tuition fees to combat shrinking state funding and regulation, and free university at point of entry from the 80’s had long disappeared; competition for entry meant students needed both the grades and the funding for places. Doors that had opened for increased participation post World War II began to close. Only those with a strong stomach for debt could now approach a deal with higher education. But a trend towards a new neoliberal meritocracy begins, with a spreading belief that ‘anyone, regardless of race, gender and clss, can make it […] a competitive individualism’ (Martini and Robinson, 2022).
In both foresight and with hindsight, educationalist Professor Michael Peters (2003) wrote that ‘In the last decade educationalists have witnessed the effects of the Hayekian revolution in the economics of knowledge and information, we have experienced the attack on ‘big government’ and reductions of state provision, funding and Regulation’.
Peters’ (2003) dated article argued an interpretation of education policy that regarded ‘knowledge capitalism and the knowledge economy as a comparative context for formulating education policy’ (p. 363). The article is published in Policy Futures in Education, so I guess the future is here based on its 2003 publication and present circumstances. Though not a higher education sector policy example, take the 2010 arrival of school academies, ‘Freedoms’ of academies include […] not having to adhere to the national schoolteachers’ pay and conditions’ (London School of Economics (LSE), 2018). UK neo-liberalist Coalition government brought education policies that increasingly reflected a focus on being cost effective. Academies were given freer governance, same funds as mainstream but not as audited as transparently (LSE, 2018), and were able to foster competition for places through freedom to raise entry levels, creaming more able students and leaving higher needs well behind for other schools which the government states (GOV.UK, 2023), working with same, equitable, budget.
In the knowledge economy, policies are formulated that reflect principles of capitalism, such as marketisation and competition. As I understand, universities operating in a market driven economy function based on principles of profit, competition, catering to the consumers. Consumers choose their university choice based on what information they have – although the only way they will be able to measure if they got their money’s worth, will be hindsight across their lifetimes (Brown, 2019). In knowledge capitalism, autonomy of the university now bends to ensure profits for the business of the knowledge economy to remain viable; ironically, not entirely without some state support. Although the trend towards marketisation brings some benefits, easing universities’ monopolies on policy, following on from 2012, tuition fees provided the substantial income for universities (Brown, 2013, p.7). The outcome of this trend is the ‘consumer’ is faced with high tuitions that also require some support from the state. It should be seen that the state is a stakeholder supporting the universities’ autonomy, or does its interests lie with simply supporting (with little consideration (Brown, 2013)) more financially successful university enterprises?
Marketisation processes in UK higher education partly aimed at bringing cost effective practices to optimise resources (Brown, 2013) and lessening the universities’ monopoly. Though I believe universities need to answer to their consumers (it’s a capitalistic framing, so we use ‘consumers’ rather than ‘students’) and be accountable for their quality assurance and subject to scrutiny concerning nepotism etc, in entirely adhering to the laws of knowledge capitalism, the universities lose their distinct and diverse voices. And it’s important to have more than one voice in the room. For example, collaboration amongst the state, local communities and the universities ideally foster healthier representations of knowledge productions.
Peters predicted in his 2003 article that,
‘In the age of knowledge capitalism the next great struggle after the ‘culture wars’ of the 1990s will be the ‘education wars’, a struggle not only over the meaning and value of knowledge both internationally and locally, but also over the public means of knowledge production’.
Here Peters anticipated a trend towards universal global knowledge and the fading power and participation of local public knowledge production; and interestingly, the loss of domestic forms of education to the all-consuming global international education that trades on rapidly evolving information technology that everyone competes to keep up with.
In this way, the neo-liberalistic practices dilute rather than enhance local production of knowledge in domestic settings, feeding into international competition of knowledge and information. The value of locally produced knowledge has a ring of Freirean principles of community participation in that it strives to identify what is true, what is really going on in people’s specific environments and lives, people’s epistemic perceptions of their social realities. For example, the living realities of disabled people are not universal across the global north and south, or indeed, country to country, just as women’s experiences of gendered social realities are too, vastly different, culturally…. politically… legally….
And finally, Peters (2003) predicted a withdrawal of governments’ provision of public education (struggling budgets of further education; reducing funding for special needs schools) ‘…as they begin in earnest to privatize the means of knowledge production and experiment with new ways of designing and promoting a permeable interface between knowledge businesses and public education at all levels’ (Peters, 2003). The recent HE apprenticeships are a good example of this fading boundary.
The merging of knowledge businesses and public education, again, dilutes the voices in the room, as capitalistic curriculum choices reign (eg). Universities provide a ‘service’ and many consumers have to question the value of the recently inflated costs for this service, to enter into the transaction, the transactional education. This clearly introduces a knowledge economy as suggested by Peters (2003) and others. I, for example, work for Disability Services under the umbrella of Student Services. ‘Services’. We provide a ‘service’. The government funds the disability student allowance to pay for my services within the organisation and this money does not cover all expenses so the university funds the outstanding. So, the government funding and student financial loan paid back at interest still needs university subsidy to run the disability services. The students have paid for a service, received government funding for that service, and tutors are contracted to deliver to the standards set out by the Disabled Students’ Allowance Quality Assurance Group (DSA-QAG). But this group disbanded in 2020, as it was deemed too expensive to regulate the service, an example of deregulation mentioned above.
Last month, the government announced it will now channel all higher education specific learning differences assessment through only 2 companies: StudyTech and Capita (SFE, 2019). It is anticipated that student needs’ assessments (for an ADHD student, for example) will take about a fraction of the previous time by assessors to identify a student’s specific needs, and still draw down the same government funding from the disabled students allowance for the assessments. This streamlining of using only two companies is deemed more cost efficient and works in line with neo-liberalist practice of marketisation (However, some universities are working towards returning to in-house practice to set and regulate standards of assessment and support in line professional affiliation benchmarks, and less driven by profiteering.)
In following Peters’ publication career to plot the developments in UK (and global) higher education, I discovered a recent coinage: knowledge socialism.
‘…whatever the encroachment of knowledge capitalism on the universities and higher education more generally, the free and frank exchange of ideas based on the model of peer-review stills serves as a sound model of sociality and in this sense knowledge capitalism is parasitic on knowledge socialism for, as Marx, Wittgenstein and Bourdieu acknowledge, knowledge and the value of knowledge are rooted in social relations’
And, as far as I can tell from Peters (2021), knowledge socialism is based on creativity, open exchanges of knowledge, and a type of peer production; although the UK higher education context faces the usual financial challenges (Peters, 2021).
Knowledge socialism seems to bring the perspective back full circle to 1968 with Freire writing the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), of which some principles underpin Action Research, the value and importance of seeking to build educational practices aimed at social justice and what could be an underpinning aim of higher education in our future.
References
Brown, R. and Carasso, H. (2013) Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education. Routledge: London
GOV.UK (2023) Academies Revenue Funding Allocation.
Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/academies-funding-allocations (accessed 16.12.2023)
Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Available at: https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf
Legislation.gov.uk (2023) Education Reform Act 1988 c.40. Academisation of state education has reduced freedom and autonomy for schools. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/40/contents (accessed 15.12.2023)
LSE (2018). Academisation of state education has reduced freedom and autonomy for schools Available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2018/06-June-2018/Academisation-of-state-education-has-reduced-freedom-and-autonomy-for-schools
Martini, M. and Robertson S.L. (2022). UK higher education, neoliberal meritocracy, and the culture of the new capitalism: A computational-linguistics analysis. In Sociology Compass. Available at: https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/soc4.13020 (accessed 14.01.2024)
Peters, M. (2003) Education Policy in the Age of Knowledge Capitalism. Policy Futures in Education. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246015455_Education_Policy_in_the_Age_of_Knowledge_Capitalism (accessed 5.11.2023)
Michael A. Peters (2021) Knowledge socialism: the rise of peer production – collegiality, collaboration, and collective intelligence, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53:1, 1-9, DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2019.1654375 (accessed 5.11.2021)
Peters, M. (2021) Knowledge socialism: the rise of peer production – collegiality, collaboration, and collective intelligence, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53:1, 1-9, DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2019.1654375
SFE (2019) STUDENT SUPPORT INFORMATION NOTE (SSIN): Arrangements for students funded under the Education (Student Support) Regulations DISABLED STUDENTS’ ALLOWANCES (DSAs) Available at:
https://www.practitioners.slc.co.uk/media/1760/dsa-qag-closure-information-ssin-08-19.pdf (accessed 7.11.2023)
UK Parliament (2012) Changes to higher education funding and student support from 2012/13. Available at: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05753/ (accessed 15.12.2023)