Introduction

Since the 1980s, schools and universities have been reconfigured in the interests of a broader neoliberal project that is driven by economic reform, the privatisation of public services, the marketisation and commodification of public goods and the acquisitive demands of consumers (Nixon, 2011; Giroux, 2014). These market-driven educational reforms that have permeated public higher education have repositioned students as consumers; degrees and diplomas are commonly referred to as products; curriculum has been commodified and standardised to ensure that outcomes are delivered; websites such as ‘My University’ seek comment on product and provision; and research is subject to audit for quality and impact (Deem et al, 2007; Hazelkorn, 2011). Accordingly, discourses of commercialisation, privatisation and regulation are used to justify and defend market-driven policies and practices that promote individualism, competition and consumption. The neoconservative values at work here emphasise the transmission of relevant skills and appropriate knowledge to meet the demands of the global economy. Consequently, what is valued is what can be translated into individual financial benefit. Success and worth are aligned with market logics and further used to drive the educational reform agenda.

It is not so much what has been adopted – educational reform driven by economic rationale – but what has been lost: public education as a public good. Accordingly, there has been an incremental, yet persistent, shift from the notion of the public institution with a mandate to contribute to the public good, to the corporate institution reoriented towards the demands of commerce, regulation and the market (Giroux, 2002, 2014). The relentless processes of modernisation have led to the corporatisation of universities (Aronowitz, 2000). What is rapidly being lost in the adoption of ideological and economic reforms is the idea of the university as an autonomous space for debate and dissent and its role in educating students as engaged citizens (Fitzgerald, 2014). Higher education has become a private good to be consumed by those who possess social, economic and cultural capital and who have the choice as to which degree to take and which university to attend.

Universities have uncritically adopted a corporate culture that values production, distribution, exchange, accountability, strategy, investment and entrepreneurialism. The structures and processes that drive this reform are, in turn, influenced by corporate elites.