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,…

The present paper--from a vantage in Bulgaria, and focusing in significant part on this country as an iconic example of the "post-socialist freefall' and its dystopia on European capitalism's neocolonial "new periphery"--is a revised version of an earlier chapter in "Immiseration Capitalism and Education: Austerity,…

In the United States (US), an increase in standardization, quantification, competition, and large-scale comparison--cornerstones of neoliberal accountability--have been accompanied by devices of transparency, through which various forms of school data are made available to the public. Such public reporting, we are told by politicians and education…

The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical and conceptual link between Ella Baker's Freedom School model and Paulo Freire's demand for critical education and emancipatory learning. Ella Baker, situated in the daunting environment of the Civil Rights Movement, saw education as a tool for social mobility for Mississippi residents…

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…

In today's world characterized by increasingly effective neoliberal policies, not only the sphere of public services is being constricted but also the concept of "public service" --which traditionally has been pointing at a responsible state providing public services based on social principles and methods-- is being transformed. In…

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…

Based on a case study in Swedish municipal basic adult education this article addresses current policies for providing individualized and flexible learning, which have been reinforced in recent adult education reforms. Concepts from the organization theory of "action nets" have been used. Institutionalized procedures and a number of…

This article evaluates the curriculum reform implemented in Turkey in 2004 by the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The curriculum reform targeted primary school education and reorganized the curriculum for several primary school courses. The AKP declared that renewed curricula would replace the former behaviorist approach, which had been…

Both secondary and postsecondary public education may offer one the last spaces for true democratic dialogue untainted by the market (Giroux, 2011). Public education however is under attack by "reformers" who seek to privatize it and transform it into a market good (Klein, 2007). Due to this, public education needs leaders who will fight…

In this article, I employ Jacques Rancière's conception of an explicative order to explore how the World Bank contributes to the global project of educational neocolonialism. I argue that the Bank operates as a Master Explicator who taps into students' "inability" to learn by themselves. It explicates concepts such as…

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 study draws on forty-six interviews conducted with staff from think tanks, education advocacy organizations, and university based education policy centers to discuss five prominent frames--the Public Education in Crisis frame, the Human Capital frame, the Unions are the Problem frame, the Advocates not Researchers frame, and the Irrelevant…

This paper is a reading of the "Free Primary Education" (FPE) policy in Kenya through the lenses of critical theory/pedagogy. The study critiques the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government for adoption of the Freirian banking model to design and implement the policy. The paper argues that such a model has ended up…