The Marketeers and the Marketizing: the American Eagle and the Chinese Dragon
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Editorial
The Marketeers and the Marketizing: the American Eagle and the Chinese Dragon Higher Education Policy (2005) 18, 83–86. doi:10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300082
In this number, Higher Education Policy focuses on the issue posed by the introduction of ‘marketing’ higher education — perhaps the major strategic change that shapes all aspects of contemporary higher education and which has become central to the fundamental way in which the policy of higher education is framed, thought about, proposals drawn up and change urged forward. The topic itself has, naturally, been dealt with exhaustively and will continue to be so, both in this journal and elsewhere. From this perspective, then there is not much that is new under the sun. Rather more unusual is what might be termed the ‘angle of viewing’. Rather than building the theme around a series of analyses from a range of different systems and countries, we have decided to examine this topic from the standpoint of two only. These two systems are the US and the People’s Republic of China. There are excellent reasons for doing so.
The ‘Marketeering’ For the best part of the past decade and a half — and in specific instances, even earlier — the profile, practices and achievements of the former have served as a ‘world referential system’ (Neave, 1998), have influenced governments, anxious to ‘modernize’ their provision of higher education, and shaped the agendas of inter-governmental organizations that seek a convincing pragmatic base to bring the performance of higher education into line with their ideological commitment to neo liberalism, to the demands of the market and with the demand — now held to be universal — for value for money. Though there are signs, here and there — and Latin America provides an excellent example — that alternative models are being sought actively often from Europe — nevertheless, the notion of higher education now being an integral part of a world market in the economy of services, merely serves to underline the influence that the US continues to exercise over the imagination of policymakers, their servants and their consultants. This is not to say that the US has a monopoly. In the marketing of higher education and its provision both within its region and beyond, Australia has been and remains an ambitious
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player and its example has, in turn, influenced others, not least the UK. Nevertheless, though there are certainly contenders on the ‘world market’ for students, the US remains by far and away the most enduring example of higher education driven by market forces (Clark, 1983). It is then quintessential of ‘the marketeers’. Indeed, if we regard the ‘commodification’ of higher education — that is, higher education conceived as a tradable and purchasable good, which is the logical extension of higher education shaped by ‘the market’, then the claim to be the pioneer in this second stage of development falls equally to the US.
The ‘Marketizing’ There is, however, the reverse side of the medal. For though one may have teaching
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