Sloane Mak's List: Research on Higher Ed

• a national initiative to muscle in on the global education market, estimated to be worth S$3.7 trillion (US$2.2 trillion)
• capitalizing on Singapore's proximity to expanding Asian economies
• seize the opportunities that had arisen out of newly thriving Asian economies, particularly that of India and China.
• Singapore's English language competencies and strong international reputation for quality education would draw in the crowds,
• hope that global talent will remain in the country as employees or entrepreneurs
• the growing pool of talent in Singapore will help draw more world-class multinational corporations to undertake high value activities such as research and development in the country.
• The University of Nevada, Las Vegas and New York University’s Tisch School of Arts are now in Singapore,

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• The risk is that we couldn’t deliver the same quality education that we do here, and that it would mean diluting our faculty strength at home
• much of the faculty is hired locally, on a short-term basis.
• Will the programs reflect American values and culture, or the host country’s?
• What happens if relations between the United States and the host country deteriorate?
• A lot of these educators are trying to present themselves as benevolent and altruistic, when in reality, their programs are aimed at making money,”

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• Conventionally, higher education is regarded as a public good, benefiting not only the individuals but also the whole society  by producing a wide variety of externalities or social benefits. Of late, however, the chronic shortage of public funds for  higher education, the widespread introduction of neo-liberal economic policies and globalization in every country and in every  sector, and the heralding of the international law on trade in services by the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement  on Trade and Services—all tend to challenge the long-cherished, well-established view of many that higher education is a public  good, and to propose and legitimize the sale and purchase of higher education, as if it is a normal commodity meant for trade.  The very shift in perception on the nature of higher education from a public good to a private good—a commodity that can be  traded—will have serious implications. The paper describes the nature of the shift from viewing higher education as a public  good to a private, tradable commodity and its dangerous implications.

• Johns Hopkins closed its Singapore biomedical facility in July 2006 in acrimony, and English University Warwick voted not to set up a Singaporean campus in October 2005.
• UNSW’s pullout is probably the ‘unkindest cut of them all’ to Singapore’s effort to be an education hub: it was trumpeted with pride as our saving grace back when Warwick turned us down.
• goal of 150,000 international students by 2015.
• Let’s start sensibly reassessing our educational hub aspirations. We should be wary lest the fuel that fires the engines of our economic growth turns out to be our student’s wallets.

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• • can't we meet the demand?

• whether we take a narrower, economic, focus on the removal of barriers  to free trade and the integration of national economies (see for example  Stiglitz 2002),
• the broader view of a growing interdependence of social  processes
• significant shift in  terms of the 'processes, interconnections and exchanges
• motive
• have  conditioned the context in which educators operate
• The forces associated with such globalization
• profoundly altered  people's experience of both formal and informal education
• Schools and colleges
• become sites for branding and the targets of corporate  expansion
• Commodification and the corporate takeover of education
• commercial  concerns look constantly for new markets and areas of activity.
• In the last  quarter of the twentieth century,
• neo-liberal economic policies dominated, there was strong pressure to  'roll-back' state regulation, and to transform non-market and 'social' spheres  such as public health and education services into arenas of commercial activity
• reconfiguration
• priced and sold
• inducing
• collective aims with a service ethic
• ransformation of the workforce
• working to produce profits for  owners of capital
• underwriting of the risks
• by the state.
• standardize 'products' and to find  economies of scale
• The expansion of higher education in Britain and Northern  Ireland during this period, for instance, involved a the restructuring of  courses and programmes so that they could be marketed. This included marketing  new courses such as MBAs, modulization (to achieve economies of scale),
• part-time and distance learning programmes
• student loans and course fees
• helped to change  people's orientation to higher education
• towards  being consumers
• less  a consequence of government policy
• changing perceptions of  the labour market
• The surge in student numbers occurred because it became clear  to large numbers of people that not having a degree disadvantaged them in  the labour market.
• ransformation of the  labour force in UK higher education
• growing orientation to profit  generation
• increased bureaucratization and pressures on universities to reduce  costs
• decline in the quality of teaching and the satisfaction it gives to learners and  teachers
• numbers of students per lecturer
• 1980s and early  1990s
• rise of managerialism
• reframe the problems of education
• delivering the right outcomes
• Schools have to compete for students in order  to sustain and extend their funding.
• market their activities and to develop their own 'brands'.
• here is a  fundamental problem with the way that such business models have been applied to  educational and welfare agencies.
• The result has been a drive towards to the achievement of  specified outcomes
• adoption of  standardized teaching models.
• emphasis is less on community and equity,
• satisfy investors and influential consumers
• rather more on individual  advancement
• In the United States, for example, schooling, higher education and  training have been seen as lucrative markets to be in. Giroux (2000: 85) reports  that the for-profit education market represented around $600 billion in revenue  for corporate interests. Over 1000 state schools have been contracted out to  private companies (Monbiot 2001: 336). In Britain education management, 'looks  like it is about to become big business' (op. cit.). Educational Action  Zones (beginning in 1998) have had significant corporate involvement. The  Lambeth Zone is run by Shell, for example, not the local education authority. In  Southwark, the education service has been contracted out to Haskins, and Kings  Manor School, Guildford became the first state school to have its administration  has been handed to a private company (in  1999). Kenway and Bullen (2001)  have charted similar shifts in the marketization of Australian  schooling.
• a significant number of the  companies moving into this area have been trans-national corporations.
• we need to understand the nature of the forces that have pushed (or  seduced) governments into adopting such policies -
• threatening  the autonomy of national educational systems
• the overriding concern is with  economic growth and international competitiveness
• In the process we have almost forgotten that education ever  had any purpose other than to promote growth. (Wolf 2002: xiii) 
• 'It is not just that  governments can no longer "manage" their national economies',
• 'to  survive in office they must increasingly "manage" national politics in such a  ways as to adapt them to the pressures of trans-national market forces' (Leys  2001: 1). 
• the impact of globalization is less about  the direct way in which specific policy choices are made, as the shaping and  reshaping of social relations within all countries.
• parental choice;
• possible to choose  which schools to apply to
• within state schooling.
• severed the link between locality  and schooling
• security gates and fences that are  part of the perimeter of schooling.
• strengthen the idea  that the school is somehow separate from the community where it is located
• intensified by the regime of testing and centralized curriculum  construction that has been the hallmark of the UK education system since the  early 1980s.
• less room for more local  community-oriented explorations and student projects
• changes in educational  technology
• the sort of learning  concerned is highly individualized and often oriented to employer or consumer  interests.
• It is time to recognize that the true tutors of our children are not  schoolteachers or university professors but filmmakers, advertising executives  and pop culture purveyors. Disney does more than Duke, Spielberg outweighs  Stanford, MTV trumps MIT. (Benjamin R. Barber quoted by Giroux 2000: 15)
• there are many ways  of making money from formal education, 'but the most widespread is the use of  the school as an advertising medium'.
• schools  represent a captive market.
• teaching packs, sponsored videos,  advertisements on school computer screen savers and the like, large companies  are able to bring their brand directly into the classroom
• gain a certain legitimacy
• raising general brand  awareness
• organizing  their students along key demographics
• to target advertising and marketing
• Educationally sound and attractively packaged curriculum  materials fill the hole in the resources budget of schools and offer  technologically sophisticated 'solutions' to the pedagogical problems of  overworked teachers.
• As educational systems become more marketized, colleges,  schools and non-formal education agencies seeks to build relationships based  more on viewing learners as customers rather than participants
• The result
• is a basic inability within many schooling systems and  agencies of informal education to address critically questions around  globalization, branding and consumption.
• a fundamental attack on the notion of public goods, and upon more  liberal ideas of education.
• Learning has increasingly been seen as a commodity  or as an investment rather than as a way of exploring what might make for the  good life or human flourishing.
• Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men,  and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life  forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under  existing market conditions. (Fromm 1957: 67)
• It is a form of education that looks to 'having' rather  than 'being' (Fromm 1976). 
• he world that have at their core an informed  commitment to human flourishing in its fullest sense.
• we need, as  educators, to be able to do what is right rather than what is 'correct'
• within societies and systems conditioned by  globalization and neo-liberalism and in which there are asymmetrical relations  of power?
• The answer, of course, is that cannot.
• Alternative ways of educating that look to well-being  and participation in the common life have been well articulated.

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• the subject must not be influenced by sponsors. There are two ways sponsors can have influence: by not giving money to some subjects and by asking for a particular result.
• Students see themselves as clients, in the context of education as a commodity.
• In Australia, they started more than 10 years ago to concentrate within fields.
• We have a law in the EU where you have to keep some studies and cannot kick them all out, but limiting money will lead in that direction.
• Universities are not just about education and research, they also have a social responsibility. If they want to be the forerunner of civil society, they need to be in civil society, which means having a social role.
• During a time of globalisation, we have a responsibility, coming from a privileged position, to empower the whole world to profit from globalisation.
• Universities should go to the public a little more than they have done in the past. The impetus for this should come from the university – not the people, interested politicians, or industry.

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• Reputation   is one of the most valuable assets a university has
• One area in   which we can quickly do damage to our universities' reputation   is the question of the extent to which we will treat higher education   as a commodity no different from the raw materials and manufactured   goods we export
• In the past decade, Australia   has aggressively marketed its higher education, especially in   Asia, and this industry currently brings in almost $4-billion   (U.S.) a year.
• the   wholesale conversion of education into a commodity has had a dark   side, one that is now being recognized in Australia itself.
• British schools are charging exorbitant fees, in the range   of seven times what domestic students pay, to make up for low   domestic fees and inadequate public support.
• Australian universities have   sacrificed quality in the hunt for revenue
• Australian universities, including the most prestigious,   have lowered their standards so foreign customers do not fail.
• The situation has deteriorated to the point where Australian students   are complaining that their courses have been watered down and   no longer offer the intellectual challenge they expect.
• Typically,   between a quarter and a third of students at Australian universities   are international, and some institutions derive 25 per cent of   their operating revenue from this source
• Australia is   now being confronted with competition from lower cost countries   in Asia, such as Hong Kong and Singapore.
• British universities are starting to fear that   this "multi-pound business" will be damaged by increased   fees for visas and tougher screening procedures being considered   by the Blair government.
• Treating education   as a commodity is much more complex - and dangerous - than it   appears at first glance

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