Društvene i Humanističke Studije (Nov 2018)
How Did Commercialization Of Higher Education Start?
Abstract
Commercialization of higher education is consequence of the overall commercialization of life, which will be analyzed in this article from a historical and sociopedagogic perspective. This paper discusses the emergence and development of consumerism, not as an economic theory, but an imposed lifestyle and social ideology. Consumerism is the product of capitalist system which designs consumer behavior through manipulative media. Consumption became massive in the late 18th century and now in 21stcentury it has grown into unnecessary or non-functional items possession ideology. The aim of this paper is to give the pedagogical problematics frame in consumerism analyses and to encourage the profession through current questions to conduct further research. In order to comply with demands of such defined cause, relevant literature concerning various social sciences and recent research (from abroad) have been consulted on the topic of consumerism. The silence of the academic community is one of the important reasons for the rapid expansion of consumerism at all levels. In this paper we appeal for a greater involvement of scientists in researching this topic, especially in social sciences and humanities. Therefore, we hope that this article will inspire a broader academic debate from different perspectives and scientific areas over the current problem of commercialization of the life which results in the commercialization of higher education. This paper treats consumerism and commercialization of the life as a highly important pedagogical issue which has a great influence on children and young people nowadays so we think it should become the subject of theoretical and practical analysis of educationalsystem.
