Oleg Komlik — When public good exchanged to private gain: neoliberalism, higher education and social inequality

In open-access paper “From social rights to the market: neoliberalism and the knowledge economy” by John Holmwood (University of Nottingham) looks at changing policies for higher education in the United Kingdom and the emergence of a neoliberal knowledge regime. This subordinates higher education to the market and shifts the burden of paying for degree courses onto students. It seeks to stratify institutions and extend the role of for-profit providers. From a role in the amelioration of social inequality, argues Holmwood, universities are now asked to participate actively in the widening inequalities associated with a neoliberal global market-based knowledge economy At the same time, emphasis shifts from the quality of a system of higher education serving diverse needs, to the placing of individual institutions within a rank order of universities in a global market place for education. 

Focusing on the UK, this article nevertheless precisely portrays those eroding neoliberal trends taking place also in higher education in other countries, where in the name of efficiency public good exchanged to private gain.

Economic Sociology and Political Economy
When public good exchanged to private gain: neoliberalism, higher education and social inequality
Oleg Komlik | founder and editor-in-chief of the ES/PE, Chairman of the Junior Sociologists Network at the International Sociological Association, a PhD Candidate in Economic Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, and a Lecturer in the School of Behavioral Sciences at the College of Management Academic Studies