Higher education in a globalising world

Community engagement and lifelong learning

Peter Mayo

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781526160591
  9781526140920
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526140944
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book focuses on current policy discourse in Higher Education, with special reference to Europe. It discusses globalisation, Lifelong Learning, the EU's Higher Education discourse, this discourse's regional ramifications and alternative practices in Higher Education from both the minority and majority worlds with their different learning traditions and epistemologies. It argues that these alternative practices could well provide the germs for the shape of a public good oriented Higher Education for the future. It theoretically expounds on important elements to consider when engaging Higher Education and communities, discussing the nature of the term 'community' itself. Special reference is accorded to the difference that lies at the core of these ever-changing communities. It then provides an analysis of an 'on the ground project' in University community engagement, before suggesting signposts for further action at the level of policy and provision.
This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, Quality education

1

Introduction: globalisation and the HE market

Higher education (HE) is believed to play a pivotal part in the process of globalisation and, as a consequence, it is being transformed, mainly within the context of a supranational union (the European Union, henceforth EU), which set itself the ambitious and unlikely target of becoming the most powerful and competitive ‘knowledge economy’ in the world by the year 2010 (EC, 2000). By higher education I mean all those institutions and organised forms of learning that occur at tertiary level, that is to say those institutions whose provision extends beyond secondary education and high school. These include universities, academies and vocational colleges that award degrees, diplomas and provide certification of professional attainment. Globalisation is conceived of as an all-embracing concept, incorporating both its economic and cultural dimensions which are often inextricably intertwined, since, as Manuel Castells states:

We live in a global economy… in which all processes work as a unit on real time throughout the planet; that is, an economy in which capital flows, labor markets, markets, the production process, management, information and technology operate simultaneously at the world level. (Castells, 1999, p. 54)

Nevertheless, as indicated in a study, published by the OECD Directorate for Education:

Globalisation is not a single or universal phenomenon. It is nuanced according to locality (local area, nation, world region), language(s) of use, and academic cultures; and it plays out very differently according to the type of institution. (Marginson and van der Wende, 2007, p. 5)

Furthermore as Roger Dale (1999) indicates, while ‘globalisation does represent a new set of rules, there is no reason to expect all countries to interpret those rules in identical ways, or expect them all to play to the rules in identical ways’ (p. 65).

Hegemonic globalisation

There are different kinds of globalisation. According to Carlos Alberto Torres (2005; Rhoads and Torres, 2005a, pp. 8–9) there are: (1) hegemonic globalisation; (2) globalisation from below; (3) globalisation of exchange of people and ideas, and influence on culture;¹ (4) globalisation of the war on terror;² and (5) globalisation of human rights.³ The most relevant forms of globalisation for discussions around HE are the first two and I will give them ample treatment in this volume. I would argue that the other three forms of globalisation are also relevant. The globalisation of exchange of people and ideas is obviously connected with HE, in terms of change in demographics and ethnic composition of staff and students and also international student mobility. This will hopefully have an effect on the nature of knowledge and learning taking place over a period of time. In my view, Torres’ fourth type of globalisation, globalisation of the war on terror, is also relevant, especially if, following Giroux (2007), we need to take into consideration the existence, in a number of powerful countries, such as the USA, of the academic-industrial-military complex. The word ‘academic’ is said to have been included in Dwight Eisenhower’s draft before his enunciation of the industrial-military complex.⁴ Then there is the globalisation of human rights that becomes relevant for HE in the sense that students and other people have been gathering on streets and in squares over the years, demanding that access to HE be recognised as a human right. They have been arguing that HE should not be governed by the ideology of the market. We have seen this in recent years in Chile and Greece, in particular, and it has also featured in the student protests in England, especially London, with regard to the hikes in university fees, and in Quebec (Giroux, 2014b).

While stressing links between the last three types of globalisation and HE, as mentioned by Rhoads and Torres (2005a), I will explain in greater detail the two major forms of globalisation that will be at the heart of my discussion in the book. I shall start with hegemonic globalisation predicated, for the most part, on the ideology of neoliberalism.

The well-known Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, when interviewed by Roger Dale and Susan Robertson, discussed hegemonic globalisation stating that: ‘Neoliberalism is the political form of globalization resulting from a US type of capitalism, a type that bases competitiveness on technological innovation coupled with low levels of social protection’ (in Dale and Robertson, 2004, p. 151). He goes on to state that

the aggressive imposition of this model by the international financial institutions worldwide not only forces abrupt changes in the role of the state and in the rules of the game between the exploiter and the exploited… but also changes the rules of the game among the other kinds of developed capitalism. (de Sousa Santos, in Dale and Robertson, 2004, p. 151)

Neoliberalism sought its trial run in the ‘First September 11th’ – the CIA and multinational backed military coup in Chile on 11 September 1973. This bloody coup against the nationalising socialist experiment of the government led by Salvador Allende paved the way for the policies and blueprints developed by the ‘Chicago Boys’ who had learnt the neoliberal free market economic model from Milton Freidman and his associates, including Arnold Harberger. It is by now common knowledge that neoliberalism became a global ideology through Thatcherism (the term coined by Stuart Hall) and Reaganomics. It entailed privatisation, deindustrialisation in the UK, an economy financially driven from the ‘City’ (hence introducing finance-driven reforms), and ‘rolling back the frontiers’ of the state. It entailed turning public goods into objects of consumption and structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) introduced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) for ‘developing’ countries, often serving to cut down on social programmes, free health and educational provision – sapping the social life and support out of communities. It comprises the WTO’s polices that would also affect educational ‘services’, the blurring of public and private, and public financing of private needs. The focus is, among other features, on market competitivity, accountability, standardisation and quality assurance, ‘trickling down’ of wealth, responsibilisation, individualism and cost recovery measures. In the words of Greek sociologist, Panagiotis Sotiris:

One should never forget that Neoliberalism is not just an economic policy. It is also the attempt towards production of a particular subjectivity centred upon economic self-interest and competition, in sharp opposition to other, more critical forms of subjectivity, such as that of the active citizen or the conscious worker. (Sotiris, 2014, p. 319)

This is the type of globalisation that several social and political actors in the present time, irrespective of their feelings towards it, have to come to terms with. It is the sort of situation that brings politicians who were elected into positions of power on a socialist ticket into contradictory situations, at least in the eyes of those who shared their politics at one stage. Typical of these perceptions is the following excerpt from a published interview with Sergio Baierle of Cidade and a key figure in the Participatory Budget movement in Brazil. It concerns the then Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) and his first term in office as president of Brazil.⁵ Asked about policies regarding democratisation in education, Baierle responds:

So far there is nothing to be lauded within this context… The reform of public universities is also under discussion, which in essence is not different from the essence of traditional World Bank proposals and other international agencies. The fact that a space has been granted to discuss proposals does not alter the limits within which the government has operated. (Baierle, in Borg and Mayo, 2007, pp. 147–148)

Globalisation from below

Then there is ‘globalisation from below’ or ‘counter-hegemonic globalisation’, the latter term used by de Sousa Santos which I, however, try to avoid as it sets up hegemony as a sort of binary when it is said to contain within its own interstices the means of its changing nature – probably the reason why Gramsci never used this term. Forces within hegemony interrelate in a dialectical manner. Globalisation from below ‘consists of resistance against hegemonic globalization organised (through local/global linkages) by movements, initiatives and NGOs, on behalf of classes, social groups and regions victimised by the unequal exchanges produced on a global scale by neoliberal globalization’ (de Sousa Santos in Dale and Robertson, 2004, p. 150). They include social movements from the South and North playing a major role in a variety of fields, notably migrant support, fair trade, women’s issues, LGBTQ issues, sustainable development, the fight against poverty, land reform, organic farming, anti-war and nuclear disarmament, anti-racism, participatory budgets and so forth. Many of these are based in the West. There are those, however, which Dip Kapoor (2009) refers to as ‘subaltern southern social movements’, whose issues and positions might be in contradiction to those of Western movements.⁶ This book will not dwell on their involvement, if any with university lifelong learning (LLL), save for those in Brazil or Palestine, but will shed light on their issues and the cultures involved as people continue to migrate from these areas to countries such as the one in which I live and work, helping their cultures to migrate with them. We can speak of portability of cultures and knowledge traditions in this context. This has implications for universities located in the West when engaging with communities that are increasingly becoming multiethnic.

‘Globalisation from below’ comprises different movements, previously identified with a rather fragmentary identity politics highlighting specific issues, coming together ‘on a scale previously unknown’ (Rikowski, 2002, p. 16) to target global capitalism. They met in the different venues where the World Social Forums take place and coalesced into struggles targeting the Breton Woods institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO), thus invoking ‘an anti-capitalism of real substance and significant scale’ (Rikowski, 2002, p. 16). They come together around the idea of capitalism as a structuring force, shaping many of the issues involved.

This type of globalisation is characterised by international networking involving the use of technology for progressive ends. We saw this in the various uprisings around 2011 and 2014 including mobilisations to take to the squares and streets in Greece, Spain, various Arab countries and also places such as Zuccotti Park in New York City or Gezi Park in Istanbul. It often entails the bringing together of people for struggles to change the current state of affairs that have all the marks of the neoliberal hegemonic global system, for instance, as in Istanbul, protecting public space from its takeover by private interests, the interests of a construction magnate well-connected to government – a new kind of enclosure of the commons. It means a country-wide and a continent-wide series of connections to organise against hegemonic capitalism on a global front, seeking therefore to alter the current relations of hegemony.

This book

In this book, I take a critical look at higher education within the context of globalisation as it impinges on several parts of Europe. This chapter is meant as a general introduction to the text, indicating issues faced by HE institutions, especially universities, within the context of different forms of globalisation: hegemonic globalisation and globalisation from below – the two exist not in binary opposition but in a dialectical relationship. Importance is attached to lifelong higher education, specifically via university continuing education (UCE) provision, in the context of the state and its different functions at present. The values that guide my conception of higher education and universities will be exposed as they will govern the critique of much of the present discourse around the area.

The discursive contexts (see Fairclough and Wodak, 2008) in which European higher education policies are formulated, such as the Lisbon Objectives (CEC, 2000) and the Bologna Process (Confederation of EU Rectors’ Conferences and Association of European Universities, 2000),⁷ provide both constraints and opportunities for actors, institutions, markets and states in this particular sector. For this reason, this book has an international resonance and will contain material regarding both the EU and Euro-Mediterranean zones, as well as references to insights from the Global South.

Globalisation and higher education

Hegemonic globalisation is having a strong impact on higher education as documented in a whole body of literature (see Jessop et al., 2008; Ennew and Greenaway, 2008; Torres, 2009; King et al., 2011; Bhaskaran Nair and Panikka, 2011; Kupfer, 2011; Killick, 2015; Dobbins and Knill, 2014; Zajda and Rust, 2016b; Barrett, 2017; de Sousa ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Praise Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: globalisation and the HE market
• 2 Changing conceptions of lifelong education/learning
• 3 The EU’s HE discourse and the challenges of globalisation1
• 4 Extending the EU’s higher education discourse to the rest of the Mediterranean1
• 5 Mainstream and alternative HE discourses in LLL1
• 6 University/HE LLL and the community
• 7 University community engagement project: engaging the popular imagination and the ‘Holy Week’ culture1
• 8 Whither European universities and other HE institutions and LLL?
• Postscript
• References
• Index