Transforming the Public University: Market Citizenship and Higher Education Regulatory Projects

Abstract

Paper explores the shifts within the mass higher education and its governance over the last three decades. Mass higher education has changed substantially in tandem with the broader changes associated with the social and political compromises over the last few decades. The crisis and transformation of the public university needs to be understood in this context. The paper seeks to analyse the transformation of the public university as it relates to broader state and governance projects. It attempts to focus on the crucial shift from the 80s onwards with the emergence of new notions of market citizenship, bringing with it what has been referred to as ‘structured opportunity markets’ in higher education. These notions of market citizenship are given shape through an emerging higher education regulatory state, now governed by a range of formal and informal instruments including measures to enhance inclusion and participation within the market. It is these regulatory projects that develop and give legitimacy to the higher education market. Consequently the development of the regulatory state and market-making has been deeply intertwined. In conclusion, we argue that the ‘public’ university does not disappear as such, but is reconstituted within these new regulatory arrangements and projects. We illustrate this argument with reference to recent initiatives in the Australian higher education sectors, such as the Bradley Report and the establishment of TESQA.