Neoliberal Approach in Higher Education: Case of Pakistan

Introduction

Many organizations of all sectors (e.g. business, service, education) are moving towards a digital management in recent times. This has, especially for education institutions, led to emerging challenges to provide solutions and threats to take risk. The education system has already changed since 2020 due to global impact of COVID-19 pandemic. This forces universities to digitally transform. Because the demand and the necessity of students for digital education transformation have accelerated exponentially day by day. Mangers of education institutions must, therefore, adapt to digitalism and response to the demand and the necessity of students. Furthermore, they need to create new strategies that is related with the policy and philosophy of their institutions to success it.

Neoliberalism is a political-economic philosophy which emerged as ideology with the passage of time. As the name reflects liberalism provide the solid back to neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the advance stage of liberalism. Both the philosophies has imparted great impact on the economies of the countries. Neoliberalism emphasizes free market and trade approach. The individual rights and individual freedom is not the focus of neoliberal approach. Neoliberalism is addressed by the researchers in the field of sociology, education policy and philosophies. The intellectual minds and researchers have observed neoliberalism through different lenses. In education the merger of economic ideas or let’s say thinking education as a leading business has brought about different arguments and theories on intellectual forums. Literature equip us with all the arguments and theories which are in favor of neoliberal approach in education and similarly we have literature which proves it to be the vice versa. Thinking about schools with an economic point of view is the impact of neoliberalism (Rizvi, 2007). Market approach in higher education is not very new in the country yet it is not being addressed or accepted as neoliberal approach. Literature provided the pros and cons of neoliberal approach in higher education

Neoliberalism is always linked with the political rationality in one way or another. Developing nations consider neoliberal approach most desirable to pull their unstable economic cart a bit smoothly. Foucault (1991), represents neoliberalism as an art of government or form of political reason. Oleksenko et al.,(2018) puts it as “A political rationality is not simply an ideology but a worked out discourse containing theories and ideas that emerge in response to concrete problems within a determinate historical period”. Political rationalities are basic ideas which are practices through political technologies according to Savage (2017). Neoliberalism is linked to globalization, free trade economy to bridge local and international economy. Antiglobalization moment arouse verses globalization. It is a social movement that emerged against neoliberal globalization. The free market and trade is opposed in this movement saying that it is threat to national identity and national economy. Antiglobalization says that the national economy should be controlled nationally and any immigration should be restricted to warranty national identity.

Performance, market and management are three major components of neoliberal technologies. The three of them are inter related and inter dependent upon each other. The market links educational institutions both ways internally and externally. Higher educational institutes are pressurized by involving more competition through market approach to increase performance the quality of the performance matter least. Education and health cannot be played upon like any other market as its social impact are deep. Relating market relation into public sector is like “bankruptcy into education” as an intellectual guru Margaret Thatcher said about neoliberal reforms (Ball, 1990). Like many other fields in education right from the early childhood education to the university level now educational institutes are working as a business organizations. Schools and universities are following the same patterns and cultures as possessed by the business organizations. Digging into the literature capitalism is related to neoliberalism openly due to its market approach. Neoliberal approach used competition as the dominating characteristic of human being. Neoliberalism brought the hope of economic stability in the name of political reforms. Higher education of the developing countries always need financial support for research and development. The research funds in Pakistan have never been enough as required. To cater the need of research, neoliberal approach is adapted by higher education. In this chapter authors have focused upon the neoliberal approach in higher education in Pakistan.