Neoliberalism and the value of higher education

In this chapter I reflect on the influence of neoliberalism on the meanings and recognition of value in respect of higher education. The term neoliberalism is somewhat vague and conceptually overburdened and it is worth stating that I am defining it here as ‘a project for institutional change grounded in particular ideas about the social” and not simply as “an expression of the zeitgeist of global capitalism or as a conspiracy of ruling elites’ (Flew 2014, p. 64). I am doing so precisely because my chosen definition explicitly links neo-liberalism to the institutional (higher education) and the social (the broader context in which the practice of higher education is located).