This paper considers the role and function of Left academics within "elite" (i.e. Russell Group) universities within the UK. Deploying Marxist theory and critical realism, it analyses the "dialectical contradictions" experienced in such a role and reflects upon productive strategies for resisting the hegemony of neo-liberalism…

Beginning with a reading of Kant's "The Conflict of the Faculties" and then moving towards a tentative possible theorization of the University as a hegemonic apparatus this paper aims at discussing university movements in terms of (counter) hegemony. Recent struggles against austerity, neoliberalism and the erosion of democracy,…

A fundamental goal of the university must be to advance a democracy based on the socialist principles of freedom and critique. A Marxist revolutionary critical pedagogy for democracy is advanced that includes a call for the inclusion of faculty of color who may bring diverse epistemes toward doing research that promotes dissent. The author…

In this essay Malott traces his journey to critical pedagogy focusing on a significant element of his family's ethnic and class background and its connection to his own educational experiences from public schooling to university. Drawing on Marx's historical discussions at the end of Volume 1 of "Capital" Malott traces his own…

The transformation of the historical functions and goals of the European university is producing the transition from mass university to what has been called "corporate university". With this goal, I will examine how the new functions of the university are aimed at providing services and precarious workers to the labor structure of…

This paper analyzes the routes of the evaluation of higher education in Brazil, from 1995 until 2010. In 1995, during Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration, higher education began a process of expansion through private enterprise. At that time, evaluation had a key role. The focus was the evaluation of courses conducted by the Ministry…

Neo-liberal policies have been affecting in waves all public services in Turkey since 1980s. The most affected institutions in this process were education in general and the higher education institutions in particular. This article consists of two dimensions. In the first dimension, the process, in which the neo-liberal policies started with a…

Critical pedagogies are marginalized in the present common sense about teacher education. This also applies to the global South due to the co-option of conservative thought and neoliberal marketization as part of the present world capitalist system. This development creates unexpected alliances between the local and the global. However,…

Since 2012, corporations, politicians, journalists and educators have asserted that MOOCs--massive open online courses--are radically changing North American and global education, and for the better. This article offers a counterpoint to the techno-deterministic and optimistic buzz surrounding for-profit MOOCs by contextualizing and analyzing…

This article argues that, in Greek higher education policies of the 2000s, "equality of educational opportunities" is not given as much importance as in the 1980s and the 1990s, when higher education had been massively expanded. In the 2000s, the issue of equity is giving way to that of efficiency/quality, in accordance with a neoliberal…

Across higher education in the United Kingdom, the procurement and deployment of educational technology increasingly impacts the practices of academic labour, in terms of administration, teaching and research. Moreover the relationships between academic labour and educational technology are increasingly framed inside the practices of neoliberal,…

At first glance, creativity in the classroom and global capitalism have little in common, yet scratch beneath the surface of "creativity" and we find a discourse of economic and cultural freedom that was used as a bulwark against communism during the Cold War, and more recently to reconcile individuals to neoliberalism in the post-Cold…

Extensive institutional changes and restructuring are taking place in higher education within the context of the new managerialism's ideological principles and administrative practices aimed at the fulfilment of the goals of the neoliberal political dominance. These changes involve the massification of universities, along with the reduction…

Higher education is one of the last democratic institutions in society and it is currently under attack by advocates of neo-liberalism. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how this "battle" can be framed as a battle over the direction of the Enlightenment. Critical Theory and neoliberalism both emerged from academia in response to…

With this article, we challenge the successful implementation of critical perspectives in an increasingly neoliberal and neoconservative educational climate. Although many teacher education programs challenge teachers to be critical and to empower students, current top-down accountability practices and policy mandates do not allow teachers the…