The World Bank uses a combination of financial and non-financial aid to influence educational reform in aid-recipient countries. Drawing on an interpretive policy analysis methodology and using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power as a 'thinking tool', this article aims to shed light on the Bank's non-financial pathways of policy influence…

This article explores the marketization of English higher education with particular reference to the introduction of undergraduate student tuition fees. It argues that the breakdown of the political consensus that underwrote the public funding of undergraduate student funding was the consequence of ideological and economic changes that, following…

The period since the election in May 2010 has seen a number of very far-reaching reforms enacted in the higher education system in the UK, and especially England. These have been driven in large measure by the economic situation, but also by the aim to introduce a more market-based approach into the sector. At the same time, the higher education…

This article examines current debates surrounding British higher education funding from a political economy perspective, drawing on "positive" and "institutionalist" political economy. Adopting the lens of political economy enables a critical assessment of the use of terms drawn from economics by many higher education…