The last 25 years have seen a dramatic shift in tuition fee policy in England. This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis to understand the motivations behind policy setting, comparing the pivotal reviews undertaken by Dearing, Browne and Augar. It concludes that four themes may have influenced tuition fee policy making: national politics and…

The concept of learning has obtained great popularity in many fields. In common cause with neo-liberal ideology, learning has led to a learnification process that turns social pathologies into individual deficits. Various ways out of this situation have been sought; chief among them is the recruitment of unlearning as a promising negation of…

This article explores the increased concern with students' well-being in higher education as a mode of governance that goes hand in hand with new mechanisms of exclusion. Focussing on a new student survey in Denmark that measures students' well-being, we show how the well-being agenda is entangled with a new 'taxonomy of attitudes and emotions'…

This paper suggests that scholarship on the affective life of neoliberalism in academia needs to exercise more caution when it invokes the notions of "neoliberal subjects" and "neoliberal affects." It is argued that this scholarship needs to expand its conceptual and theoretical vocabulary to recognize the multiplicities of new…

In 'Literature and Life', Deleuze remarks that all literature manifests as delirium, and, as such, the destiny of literature is to play itself out between two poles that create and reflect life back to itself: what the human desires, and the constant changes life imposes onto us. Taking Deleuze's statement as a point of departure concerning the…

Decreasing government funding and increased corporate influence have combined to create transformation in higher education. Considering the shifting nature of higher education funding and the pressures that have come with this change, the purpose of this paper is threefold: First, an overview of the paradigm of higher education is provided,…

To address the dramatic economic contraction brought on by the global pandemic, governments at all levels have taken on tremendous debt in order to provide economic stability and prevent a more dramatic collapse. It is likely that, as the initial phase of the pandemic passes, familiar neoliberal austerity claims about the necessity to trim…

Over the last couple of decades, the neoliberal educational agenda has affected educational practices and schooling purposes worldwide. As a result, all of the features of education have been profoundly affected by such a shift. While there has been work done on what neoliberal mindset is and how and why it affects all levels of educational…

Throughout recorded history, slogans have been an important part of our public life. From political rhetoric and propaganda, to social movements and awareness-raising campaigns, their usage has overcome historical periods, cultural barriers, ethnic affiliation, political systems, party allegiance or personal taste. Arguably more than any other…

Slogans in education have been the subject of critical analysis -- at least in the context of philosophy of education -- for more than half a century. Some of these slogans are no longer relevant or frequently used, while their analyses and explanations are still an appropriate theoretical basis for understanding new educational slogans. One of…

Instead of seeking the slick aesthetics of consumer-friendly creative stories, this paper ventures to the sublime of the incomprehensible and invites us to look into the abyss of education's possibilities. Drawing inspiration from Jeff Vandermeer's 2017 novel, "Borne," and filmmaker David Cronenberg's aesthetic, this paper aims to tell a…

The article re-imagines the current developments of Swedish education into a possible future. Historically, education was organized and funded by the state; however, reforms towards privatization in the 1990s implemented school choice, private schools and a tax-financed voucher system with the option of turning profits on education. A new judicial…

Neoliberal reforms have transformed the early childhood education (ECE) landscape worldwide. The purpose of ECE, what counts as early education and care, and "in" ECE has been dangerously narrowed to the production of human capital and rationalised by the myth that investing in young children (human capital) will guarantee a better…

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, governments all around are producing new policy provisions to mitigate the learning gap. Based on the new policy provision, universities switched to online education because social distancing was necessary to stop community transmission of the virus (Crawford et al., 2020). This study aims to explore how…

This special issue contributes to the vibrant debates concerning the 'responses and intensifying inequalities in the Global South' underway with regard to COVID-19 and the subsequent crises of higher education. With neoliberal globalization in a deeper crisis by the pandemic, transforming higher education and teaching configurations in ways that…