Competitiveness, diversification and the international higher education cash flow: the EU's higher education discourse amidst the challenges of globalisation

Abstract

This paper focuses on the EU discourse on Higher Education and analyses this discourse within the context of globalisation. Importance is attached to the issues of lifelong learning, competitiveness, diversification, entrepreneurship, access, knowledge society, modernisation, quality assurance, innovation and creativity, governance and business–HE partnerships. The paper also provides a critical analysis of this discourse focusing on certain issues involved in policy borrowing and transfer, the corporatisation of HE, international competition with the USA and Asia and the implications of all these aspects of the dominant EU HE policy discourse for HE and the public sphere. The paper seeks to tease out the tension that exists in the discourse between neo‐liberal tenets and the idea of a Social Europe. References throughout the paper will be made to the situation concerning HE in a variety of contexts in Europe.

Keywords:

• business
• neoliberalism
• social Europe
• globalisation
• competitiveness
• diversification

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to my colleague, Professor Mary Darmanin, for a number of ideas developed in this paper, which emerges from a joint presentation we prepared together (see Darmanin and Mayo 2008). Professor Darmanin encouraged me to embark on this topic and made available to me several documents and some relevant literature on which I draw in this paper. Her contribution has been immense. Any remaining shortcomings are my responsibility. I am also indebted to Professors Alessio Surian from the University of Padova, Anna Maria Piussi from the University of Verona and Helen Phtiaka from the University of Cyprus for the provision of some relevant information and literature. I also benefited from the insights of the two reviewers for the International Studies in Sociology of Education and of the participants at the 2008 International Sociology of Education Conference in London.

Notes

1. I am indebted to Alessio Surian (2006) for exposing me to this phrase by Roger Dale.

2. As far as the EU's Lisbon Agenda goes, emphasis is placed on Maths and Science for immediately productive purposes (Science for industry and not for traditional occupations such as Architecture, Pharmacy and Medicine – Vella, 2005, 145).

3. See the European Parliament and Council Recommendation on Quality Assurance in Higher Education in the Official Journal L64 of 4.3.2006. There have also been consultations in the context of the European Qualifications Framework (CEC 2006a, 10).

4. I am indebted to Professor Anna Maria Piussi of the University of Verona, for providing me with useful documentation for this point. Cantiere srl – Ufficio Stampa Università IULM.

5. See Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera. Finanziamenti alla Chiesa cattolica in Italia. Cantiere srl – Ufficio Stampa Università IULM.

6. According to Baldacchino (2008), people from a selection of small jurisdictions in Europe, many forming part of or being EU member states, did not seem to have honed their entrepreneurial skills through their educational systems.

7. Neither has there been any talk of matching research output with military concerns as in the USA. Dwight Eisenhower referred to the situation in the USA when coining the phrase ‘military‐industrial’ complex. It has been reported that he used the phrase in what was a modified famous speech of his. In the draft, he is believed to have referred to the ‘military‐academic‐industrial complex’ an expression that was later also used by Senator William Fullbright (Giroux, 2007, 14–15).