Global Education Policy: reform and profit

Abstract

Increasingly, on a global scale, education policy is being done in new ways, in new spaces by new actors, and many of these new spaces are private. Here some examples of these changing arts of government - the politics of ‘not governing too much’ - that are intrinsic to competition state, are explored. The concomitant processes of the financialisation of education and particularly the role of equity investment are also addressed. That is, the activity of global corporations and private equity companies funding and investing in the provision of schooling and other educational services, both in competition with state services, or on contract to and funded by the state, to provide alternative forms of public education. The paper concludes by arguing for the need for researchers to change their focus and methods to attend to these new forms of provision and government.

Keywords

• Investment
• network governance
• commodification