Governing higher education toward neoliberal governmentality: a Foucauldian discourse analysis of global policy agendas

ABSTRACT

Intergovernmental organisations (IOs) have developed global policies that have shaped the practices of higher education for decades. The OECD, WTO, and World Bank have long framed higher education as both a contributor to human capital and a driver of economic growth. Yet, their policy agendas have transformed over time and more recently taken up neoliberal narratives. This paper analyses a corpus of IO texts to demonstrate how these organisations have shifted the governing responsibility for higher education, subordinated higher education to the practice of lifelong learning, and created the conditions for increasing international student mobility. Applying a Foucauldian analysis of discourse and studies in governmentality, this paper broadly explores the complexity of IO governing policies, which have (re)imagined and (re)positioned the purpose of higher education and its role as a technology of government. As global environmental, social, political, and health crises demand globally researched and financed solutions, this exploration of IO policy is a necessary step in the work of reimaging the future practices of higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• governmentality
• governance
• knowledge economy
• lifelong learning

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my doctoral advisor Dr. Blane Harvey, Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University, for his continued guidance and support. I would also like to acknowledge the support of my doctoral committee members Dr. Kayla Johnson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation at the University of Kentucky, and Dr. Anila Asghar, Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While the OCED’s 2019 ‘Education at a Glance’ report focuses on tertiary education, its 2020 ‘Education at a Glance’ report focuses on vocational education and training (VET) (OECD 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ryan P. Deuel

Ryan P. Deuel is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His forthcoming dissertation examines international education through the framework of governmentality at three levels of analysis: at the macro-level of global policymaking, at the meso-level of national policy influencers, and at the micro-level of international student subjectivity.