Presidential address The Ideological and Economic Repositioning of Universities

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Pitman, Allan
Copyright Year	2007
Abstract	A reconceptualization of the human capital value of education as a private good, linked to a market oriented commodification of university knowledge, underpins a repositioning of universities as entrepreneurial enterprises. The implications for universities and the professoriate are explored, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which the institutions and work within them are being redefined. Canadian and Australian experiences are drawn upon. Resume Une nouvelle conceptualisation de la valeur du capital humain en enseignement comme un bien prive, relie au savoir universitaire comme des marchandises destinees au marche, etaie une repositionnement des universites comme des entreprises commerciales. L'auteur explore les implications pour les universites et le corps professoral, avec une emphase particuliere sur les facons dont les institutions et leurs travaux se redefinissent. L'auteur se sert des experiences canadiennes et australiennes. I. The present context I wish to locate my remarks in the context of two major developments in the global picture of education. One is the economic relocation of higher education and the transformation of knowledge into an economically grounded export commodity. The other is the UNESCO-led push for Education For All. Knowledge as an export commodity Most of us work in universities, either as faculty or students. We need to recognize the ways in which our teaching and research environments are changing at a very fundamental level. The 1980s and 1990s saw, in the West, the start of a repositioning of higher education, underpinned by a reinterpretation of the human capital argument. In the 1960s, there was a massive expansion in access to higher education particularly to university education based on the arguments of the American economist, Schultz (1961, 1979). The logic went that, parallel with the gross domestic product of a country, based upon production and output of goods and services, there existed an economic component based upon the developed capacities of the population. As a consequence of this, it was in the interests of the State to put resources into the development of this dimension of the national Education canadienne et internationale Vol. 36 n 3 decembre 2007 1 economy: policy outcomes of this approach included both the expansion of tertiary education and the drastic reduction or abolition of fees for access to such educational development. Thus, parties of both the left and right pursued policies of access to higher education based upon this platform, overlaid with other policies such as those based upon class or racial equity. The emergence of neoliberal agendas, and governments based upon that philosophic position, were accompanied by a reinterpretation of the idea of human capital. In particular, the location of the capital accumulation stemming from the increase in knowledge was shifted from the realm of the State and population as a whole to that of the individual, with the national accumulation being the aggregation of the gains of the individual citizens. It would be a mistake to see this as a reversible process in the short or medium term, or to identify it purely with political parties of the right. In Australia, it was the Whitlam Labor government that introduced free university education. In the 1990s it was the Keating Labor government that reintroduced fees. There is an important extension of the logic associated with this redefinition: the industrialization of the system for its delivery and the positioning of education as an export commodity, which we are seeing being exploited by governments in a variety of ways. In Ontario, partially deregulated university fees in various faculties are related to the potential earnings projected for their graduates. In Australia, admission patterns have shifted from being based upon academic criteria alone to the present situation in which 35 per cent of places are available to full-fee paying students. An even more potent application is the recognition of knowledge as a tradable commodity. This is an issue both for reflection and for research by us with a commitment to the issues of comparative and international education. The increased role of student fees in operating budgets. Across the board, student tuition fees have climbed, in both Australia and in Canada. The rationale offered is a revised view of human capital, with the transfer of benefit from the economy as a whole (the 1960s model) to the individual. This has direct implications for funding models for universities, with the introduction of the argument that the student who benefits should bear the cost. One offshoot of the educational capital argument is the attempt to quantify the return on investment by students in universities on an individual basis (Gallagher, 2005, p. 15). The common good, it is argued from this position, only flows in areas such as international competitiveness through the aggregation of the benefits gained by the individuals. In harness with the rise in student tuition fees, the levels of funding of universities flowing from government have undergone radical adjustments over the past decades. Under the Australian Howard Liberal government, there has been no real increase in expenditure on higher education 2 Canadian and International Education Vol. 36 no 3 – December 2007 for some 15 years. The situation in Canada, through Conservative and Liberal governments, is comparable. Data from Canada provide insight into how reductions in government contributions have been compensated in large part through an increased reliance on student tuition fees. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (2005) reports that tuition as a percentage of University operating revenue in the province of Ontario has gone from 16 per cent in 1983 through 20% (1993) to 37% in 2003. For Canada as a whole, the trend is clear, with the percentage of government funding dropping from 82 per cent of operating budget in 1983 to 59 per cent in 2003. Over the same period, the contribution from student tuition has risen from 13 per cent to 29 per cent.
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Volume Number	36
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Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
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Resource Type	Article