This paper reflects on some consequences in academic practices in higher education, of the neo-liberal project for the remaking of social order. In conventional critiques of neo-liberalism, it is understood as a project for the suppression of university autonomy, academic criticism and free creativity. But these critiques (which perhaps confuse the neoliberal project with the political conservatism often joined to it) do not go to the root. Neo-liberal practices constitute more than the suppression of persons or opportunities. The neo-liberal positioning of human subjects not only offers benefits to those subjects privileged by it; successful entrepreneurs, senior managers in universities and so on; it provides all human subjects with forms of positive action. Much of the popular appeal of neo-liberalism lies in its potent message about freedom. The argument in this paper is not that neo-liberalism suppresses academic freedoms, but that it channels and limits academic freedoms. We are not robbed of agency per se, but we are robbed of certain forms of agency vital to us.
The autonomous global system of science, grounded in collegial networks of scientists, publishing, and cross-border papers, is expanding rapidly and spreading to a growing number of countries. Strong national science systems have emerged outside Euro-America. Yet the multipolarization of economic capacity and scientific output plays out within a continuing Euro-American science world regulated by an inside/outside binary. Global science remains primarily Anglo-American in language, leading institutions, disciplinary and publishing regimes, agendas, and topics. Non-English and endogenous knowledges are excluded. The article critiques the world-systems theory interpretation of relations of power in science. The determinist center-periphery model fails to grasp the growth and pluralization of global science and its relation with national science systems. It normalizes the Eurocentrism it opposes, radically underestimating agency outside the "center" countries. The article argues for a more ontologically open theorization of global power in science, in terms of cultural hegemony, and for an ecology-of-knowledges approach.
OBE 1978, PhD Lon., Hon D Lit (Ed) Lon., Hon D Litt (Ed) Syd., MA Illin., MA M Ed Melb., FASSA, FACE Foundation Editor of the Australian Journal of Education (1957-1972) William Fraser (Bill) Connell made a profound contribution to research and scholarship in relation to education in Australia, to teacher education and its organisation, and to policy and public understandings of education. He conceived education as a field of practice that was at the same time a field of knowledge, arguing consistently that both should be augmented as much as possible, the one informing the other. Bill Connell enjoyed a long and highly productive career, which continued after he stepped down from full-time work at the University of Sydney at the age of 60 in 1976, `retiring' to Mornington, a beach town located just off the south-eastern edge of Melbourne, to produce major work in the history of education and in comparative and international education. He influenced generations of students and was greatly respected by his colleagues here and abroad. Bill Connell was born on 28 June 1916 in Lockhart, New South Wales. He was raised in Melbourne, attending Glenferrie State School, Mont Albert Central School and Melbourne Grammar School before completing a BA and BEd at the University of Melbourne, where his lifelong interests in the history of education, and comparative and international education, had their roots. During World War II he served in the Navy while enrolled in an MEd at Melbourne, where he won the Cohen Prize. In 1946 he graduated with a PhD from the University of London. The thesis was published as The educational thought and influence of Matthew Arnold. From 1948 to 1951 he worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he completed a second MA. This was a seminal period: Bill developed strong and affectionate ties at Urbana-Champaign, returning as a Visiting Professor and encouraging many Australian colleagues and graduate students to make the same journey. The University of Illinois established a Connell scholarship to facilitate international movement. He was appointed as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney in 1951, becoming a Reader in 1954 and a Professor in 1955 before turning 40. At that time he had only one other academic colleague in education. The Faculty of Education at the University of Sydney was created in the next two decades. The growth of education at Sydney and other `sandstone' universities was particularly important. It ensured that the emerging field of education was not confined to the teachers' colleges and the colleges of advanced education, which were formally excluded from the university research culture. While at Sydney University, Bill was active on many fronts. He conducted two major surveys of adolescents in Sydney, he chaired the Australian UNESCO Education Committee (1964-1973) and the National Committee on Social Science Teaching (1970-1977), and organised a major international conference on education in the social sciences for UNESCO. He contributed markedly to international relations in and through education, being active in the United States and the United Kingdom as well as Australia, and conducting visits to China and the USSR during the period of the Cold War. He took part in study tours to China in 1972 and 1974, just as relationships between Australia and China were beginning to open up. At different times he was a Visiting Professor at Illinois, Columbia, the University of California Los Angeles, London and Wolfson College at Cambridge. He served as President of the Australian Association for Research in Education in 1973: in 1978 he was made an honorary Life Member of the Association. He was a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia. On his formal retirement, Bill Connell became an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney, and a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. …
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In education in Vietnam, the weakest sectors at present are higher education, vocational education and training and university research. Yet in the age of the global knowledge economy, these sectors should play the central role in human capacity building, providing...
Since the 1960s, there has been a major expansion in the number of people holding post-school educational credentials, and the proportion of the full-time workforce with those credentials. The penalties of not holding credentials, in terms of the incidence and duration of unemployment, are increasingly severe. At the same time, there has been a long-term decline in the income associated with degree and trade qualifications, relative to all incomes. Thus rising needs for education coincide with declining returns from education, and this is one of the sources of claims about declining standards. Human capital theory does not understand these trends well, and the notions of credentialism, and of education as a positional good, are a better basis of explanation.
In the period immediately preceding the 2007 Australian election, much attention was accorded to the impact of the nation's labour laws on vulnerable employees. This debate centred on specific groups including women, youth, migrants and workers on individual employment contracts. International students, by contrast, were ignored in the debate. This omission reflects the fact that though three million students study outside their home country, this community has not previously made an appearance in the labour studies literature. In this paper, we address this omission by depicting the work experience of 200 international students studying in Australian higher education institutions. We argue that a much greater proportion of international students participate in the labour market than earlier research has indicated and that in many cases they are compelled to accept very poor conditions of employment. Furthermore, we suggest that as major sponsors of international student visas, universities should inform and protect students' labour rights and that given the dire situation of many they must become a recognised part of the vulnerable‐worker debate.
This article synthesises the social and economic dynamics of both non-market and market production in national education systems, drawing primarily on Marx's analysis of the commodity and Hirsch on positional competition. Market production has six principal aspects: a defined field of production, protocols governing entry/exit, the production of scarce and individualised commodities, monetary exchange and price-based coordination, competition between consumers, and market subjectivities/behaviours. In national systems the dominant form of education continues to be a status competition led by elite institutions that in key respects do not behave like capitalist firms. Elite universities and schools do not expand to meet demand, but remain exclusive, maximising the value of the student places they provide. Their lodestone is not revenues, but social status and power. Revenues are means to the fulfilment of status objectives. Fully commercial education is mostly conducted in lower status institutions that are subject to the price cutting of quality in a ‘race to the bottom’. Nevertheless, fully commercial forms of education are gaining ground in national education systems, and still more at the global level in the cross-border education of foreign students and trade in intellectual property. The article examines the various kinds of educational commodity.
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