Neoliberal Reforms in Higher Education: Trends, Manifestations and Implications

Abstract

This chapter analyses the spread of neoliberal reforms in higher education, with a primary focus on an empirically specific locale in Zambia, a Sub-Saharan African economy. We argue that neoliberal discourses, introduced into mainstream national policy on higher education in Zambia from the early 1990s have profound effects on the character of higher education in general. The reforms have occasioned significant levels of regulation or control over the actors within higher education by using words that frame and constrain, behaviour leading to the emergence of kinds of individuals who are then rendered governable (Bansel & Davies, 2010). The reforms include cutting public expenditures for social services, which include reducing government support to education and healthcare, as well as a trend toward greater participation by private actors in public life, and in higher education provision and finance (Giroux HA, Harvard Educ Rev 72:425–463, 2002; Harvey 2005; Olssen M, Peters MA, J Educ Policy 20:313–345, 2005; Zajda J, Rust V, Globalisation and comparative education. Springer, Dordrecht, 2021). Ultimately, there has been an institutionalisation of entrepreneurial and managerial modes of organising higher educational institutions, stimulated and advanced by promoting business-like relations between the institutions and industry, commerce, and government.