The Higher Education Policy Institute has published a new Debate Paper, Neoliberal or not? English higher education (HEPI Debate Paper 34), which includes two contrasting chapters by Professor Roger Brown and Nick Hillman as well as a Foreword by Professor Sir Chris Husbands.
Roger Brown argues that the organisation of English higher education in England has come to resemble a market. He covers the core principles of neoliberalism before identifying the key aspects of a ‘neo-market’ as:
- consumer information;
- privatisation;
- (de)regulation; and
- ‘user pays’.
Professor Brown concludes the consequences of recent higher education reforms include ‘institutional stratification, the commodification of learning and (for some groups) reduced participation, or at least lower levels of participation than might otherwise have been the case.’
