Last Orders on Neoliberalism in Universities (Neoliberalism Part 5)

By Alex Usher. To sum up the week’s arguments:

1. Neoliberalism is about markets.  There are actually very few genuine markets in higher education and where there are they can be quite beneficial especially with respect to access.
2. Neoliberalism is about competition.  There is competition in higher education, especially status competition but it mostly predates actual neoliberalism.
3. Some people claim neoliberalism is about managerialism and performance metrics but this is a genuinely terrible and ahistorical argument.

However, I think there are two additional arguments around competition and markets which I may have skated over a little too easily and which I should address before ending this series. More...