Privatisation of Education

7 Key excerpts on "Privatisation of Education"

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  Enhancing Capabilities

  The Role of Social Institutions

  • Hans-Uwe Otto, Holger Ziegler, Hans-Uwe Otto, Holger Ziegler(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Verlag Barbara Budrich

    (Publisher)

  This is the displacement of use values by exchange values. While policy accounts of education matched to the needs of employment and the economy – a human capital approach – argues that this benefits society as a whole by creating a strong economy as well as individual wealth, it is difficult to see this in practice. Furthermore, there is a conceptual shift from education as an intrinsically valuable shared resource which the state owes to its citizens to a consumer product for which the individual must take first responsibility, as it is this individual who reaps the rewards of being educated. This conceptual shift changes fundamentally what it means for a society to educate its citi-zens. Conclusion Privatisation of Education leads not only to changes in the way education is delivered, but also sets a new language for education policy, and new roles, positions and identities for teachers, students, and parents. Privatisation in education changes the way in which education is organised, managed and provided; how the curriculum is decided and taught; how students’ perfor-mance is assessed; and how students, teachers, schools and communities are judged. Privatisation tendencies also change how teachers are prepared; the 148 Guntars Catlaks nature of and access to on-going professional development; the terms and conditions of teachers’ contracts and pay; the nature of teachers’ day-to-day activities and the way they experience their working lives. Privatisation also challenges the capacities of Education Unions to bargain collectively on behalf of their members and more generally participate in education policy. Most importantly, it changes education as a whole – from the public service which serves community through the democratic process to the private good which serves consumer through the market. Such changes are obviously also a major challenge for the public educational task of enhancing capabilities which is by definition “ Not for Profit ” (Nussbaum 2010).

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  Schooling in Western Europe

  The New Order and its Adversaries

  • K. Jones, C. Cunchillos, R. Hatcher, N. Hirtt, R. Innes, S. Johsua, J. Klausenitzer(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  4 Privatisation: From the Margins to the Centre Among the regulatory forces discussed in the previous chapter, one – privatisation – stands out, because it has a double function. Privatisation is in part, and importantly, about the introduction to the governance of education of new interests and perspectives. But it needs also be dis- cussed directly in economic terms – for education is one of the sectors newly identified by capital as an important source of value. We have suggested already that the extent and shape of privatisation are matters of important and unresolved debate. In this chapter, we attempt to sketch privatisation’s forms and trajectories. Once again, these are more visible in England than elsewhere; and while we do not believe that England represents a future to which other countries are, as it were, naturally and heliotropically turning, England certainly provides both a repertoire of policy change and a demonstration of how the intensifi- cation of private-sector activity depends upon legal, political and cultural changes that the government has done much to initiate and that are the outcomes of sharp contestation. A new market for capital In no country has the expansion of education under state control led to the abolition of private education. Even at the high point of post- war reform, private sector institutions remained significant in several ways – as elite bastions, as continuing forms of religious influence, as signifiers of political freedom and in some cases as relatively cheap alter- natives to state provision. These forms of private provision have been in several respects important to the continuing reproduction of social inequalities – the English public schools and religious education in Spain are cases in point. Alongside them, private extra-institutional 65

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  Democracy, Development and Decentralisation in India

  Continuing Debates

  • Chandan Sengupta, Stuart Corbridge(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge India

    (Publisher)

  2 The rising trend in the growth of the total number of institutions in the face of dwindling allocation of public resources captures the rising importance of the private sector in the provision of higher education — particularly for professional market-oriented courses. The following section highlights issues around privatisation in further detail.

  Privatisation of Higher Educational Institutions: An Overview

  Privatisation can be broadly viewed as means by way of which the burden of financing higher education can be passed onto non-governmental entities. The privatisation of tertiary education in India has been advocated on the basis that, as a result of dwindling resources, the strain on public resources has seriously undermined the efficiency of the higher education system with regards to quality, accessibility and also infrastructure. Not only are resources limited but much of what is available is committed to salary costs for teachers (particularly after the Fifth Pay Commission revision of salaries for university and college teachers) and other such recurring expenses.

  Moreover, as mentioned earlier, the reduction of government subsidies for ‘higher education’ has also been supported on theoretical grounds, with arguments such as that the subsidisation of education, particularly of higher education, could have regressive effects (Khadria 2003; Tilak 2004a, 2004b). Generally, education is subsidised through indirect taxes, which are largely paid by relatively poorer families while relatively rich individuals mainly utilise higher educational services. Higher education equips the students with higher productivity and hence, with higher lifetime earnings. In other words, higher education generates private human capital and does not enhance social capital. Consequently, subsidisation is not economically meaningful. Such arguments feed into the debate of recent years, placing greater onus on higher education institutions to generate finance for their expenses. As observed by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) in 2005 in confirmation of structural adjustment policies, privatisation of the Indian higher education sector has broadly assumed two forms:

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  Changing Higher Education in India

  • Saumen Chattopadhyay, Simon Marginson, N. V. Varghese, Saumen Chattopadhyay, Simon Marginson, N. V. Varghese(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  The argument in favour of dominant role of public investment in higher education was more appealing when state-led growth was the preferred strategy of development than during a period of market-led globalization. During the globalization stage, the private universities have been proliferating across globe, particularly in developing countries. Half a century ago, there were very few countries with private universities; at present, there are very few countries without them. Further, private institutions of higher education are growing faster thereby increasing their share in institutions and improving their share in student enrolments.

  3. Privatization and the Private Sector in Higher Education

  The state played an important role in the development strategy in the post-Second World War period. This model worked well during the reconstruction phase in Europe and during the postcolonial period in the developing countries. The public universities and state funding became the dominant feature of higher education development in most countries. The state-dominated model of higher education development was questioned in the 1980s by the changing ideological orientation and neoliberal thinking. The argument was for a reduced public investment in education in general, and a diversion of public investment from higher to primary education in developing countries in particular (World Bank 1986 ; Banya and Elu 2001 ). The emerging neoliberal reform measures manifested mostly through two phenomena: privatization of public institutions and promotion of private higher education institutions (Varghese 2004 ).

  Privatization implies applying market principles in the functioning of public institutions of higher education. The ownership and management of the institutions remain with the public authorities while the operating principles centre around market ideology. Privatization is very often facilitated through transferring the governance to universities (autonomy) and many of them becoming public enterprises venturing into cost recovery, income generating, and for-profit activities (Kezar, Chambers and Burkhardt 2005 ). In the process, many public universities became managerial in their approach and entrepreneurial in their operations (Varghese 2013 ).

  The higher education developments in Europe, notably in UK, and Australia are good examples of privatization of public institutions. Australia follows a policy of ‘public privatization’ wherein cost-recovery measures are introduced in public universities. The fee levels in UK are not only high but also comparable with that in the private institutions. The UK also follows a differential fee structure whereby non-EU students pay higher tuition than the EU students. The United States have one of the highest tuition fees among OECD countries and is the most expensive system with annual fees exceeding USD 8,000 a year in public universities and more than USD 20,000 in private institutions (OECD 2017

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  Globalisation And Tertiary Education In The Asia-pacific: The Changing Nature Of A Dynamic Market

  The Changing Nature of a Dynamic Market

  • Siew Yiin Yap, William G Tierney, Christopher Findlay(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • World Scientific

    (Publisher)

  The meaning of a private institution is also remarkably diverse. Various for-profit and non-profit forms of private colleges and universities are rapidly increasing to meet the demand for tertiary education. Higher edu-cation is a growth industry and thus the either–or dichotomy between public and private has faded. Correspondingly, the motives and behaviours of public and private higher education actors (e.g., policymakers, officials) are becoming ever more variable and complex. In this chapter, I analyse these changes and place them within larger transformations that are taking place primarily because of globalisation. There are multiple issues tangentially related to this topic, such as the privatisation of public universities or the creation of rogue institutions that are unaccredited and exist simply to make a profit and bilk the customer, but one text can cover only so much. Accordingly, I have two discrete purposes. The first is the transformations that are occurring, particularly in the different funding and governing strategies that finance and maintain private higher education, with Malaysia used as a case study. The second is what these trends mean for the well-being of higher education and what the implications are for the larger society with regard to pri-vate and public benefit in a system that has become more private and competitive. 164 W. G. Tierney 2 GLOBALISATION AND THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS PRIVATISATION No one can convincingly argue that public institutions have become more private solely because of globalisation. Such an assertion gives globalisation a definitional strength that attributes to it virtually all change that occurs. Nevertheless, the two terms are interrelated and the rise of privatisation has occurred during the development and expansion of globalisation. Globalisation here pertains to broad economic, technological, and scientific trends that deal with people, goods, and capital moving beyond defined, stable state borders.

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  Higher Education Privatization in Kuwait

  A Study in the Processes of Policy Production

  • Ahoud Al-Asfour, Marek Kwiek(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Group

    (Publisher)

  In the same vein, Degefa (2011) argues that private institutions may exacerbate class or other divisions in society as well. He refers to the geographical bias of for-profit institutions noted by a World Bank study, since they always focus on localities where the pur- chasing power of citizens is above average. This study noted that private education turns out to be ‘socially and economically divisive’ (Tilak, 1991, p. 236). Tilak (2009a) also argues that, ‘while equitable expansion of higher education may be difficult in the public sector, it is impossible in the private sector’ (p. 73). Accordingly, ‘knowledge capitalism’ will be the natural out- come of these persistent inequalities in privatizing higher education. Tilak (2008) argues that: Treating higher education as a marketable [commodity] may severely affect knowl- edge production and will lead to knowledge capitalism. … [which] makes higher education beyond the reach of large numbers of youth belonging to middle and lower socioeconomic strata. (p. 461) Even more, it will keep many economically poor countries away from good quality higher education. In the world economy competition will presumably improve the quality of a product. However, in higher education, opponents argue that this type of market competition will negatively affect academic quality. Higher education Arguments Against Privatization 55 privatization is often associated with freedom of choice, created by way of its mechanism, the voucher system. A significant concern here is about the criteria used to make the choice between the institutions and courses available to the students, and between programs offered by the institutions. When higher education undergoes privatization, the choice relies heavily on market considerations. Rizvi (2006) argues that this ‘affects curriculum and pedagogy, as well as research in ways more dramatic than is often realized’ (pp. 78–79).

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  Schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa

  Policy, Practice and Patterns

  • Clive Harber(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Some support for more democratic processes in schools in South Africa was however noted in the study by Mncube and Harber (2010) where some of the educators interviewed argued that learners should become more involved in deci- sion-making, especially regarding such matters as the disciplinary code of conduct. PRIVATE EDUCATION So far in this book and in this chapter on educational organisation and management, we have not made a distinction between whether school- ing is primarily provided and managed by the state or paid for privately by parents and managed privately. While there are problems of defini- tion, a private school is one where the sole source of revenue is from non-state, private sources, usually fees paid by parents, and where the state plays no part in the management and governance of the school. A low-fee private school is one where the fees are substantially lower than those paid at elite private schools. Srivastava (2013: 15) has defined this as charging a monthly tuition fee that does not exceed about one day’s earnings of a daily wage labourer at primary level and 2 days at second- ary level. The private sector is also very diverse, with some schools being set up for profit and others not for profit by NGOs or voluntary groups because of a religious motivation or because a geographical area or group of people is not well served by state education. The issue of private education is also an arena of ideological debate, first between those who think the solution to poor quality in educa- tion lies with improving state education and that increased private pro- vision will only increase inequality and those who think that a thriving private sector is in itself a good thing because it improves access, pro- vides choice for parents and competition with state schools leading to the improvement of both.

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