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3 - Economic rationalism in education

from PART II - ECONOMIC THEORIES ABOUT EDUCATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

Simon Marginson
Simon Marginson
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Summary

The influence of economic policy on education has long been felt at the system organising level – in the number of students, the size of the education budget, the number and types of institutions. In recent years government economic policies have begun to shape more closely the ‘internal’ processes of teaching, learning, research and management. Later chapters explore policies on educational outcomes, resource management, educational markets, and reform in higher education and competency-based training. This chapter reviews the content of those economic policies. ‘Economic rationalism’ has installed a free market economic agenda at the heart of public education policy, with deep consequences for both the academic and the democratic project.

ECONOMIC RATIONALISM

PUBLIC POLICY AS ECONOMICS

The rise and rise of free market neo-classical economics in public policy is described by Michael Pusey in Economic rationalism in Canberra (1991). In Pusey's words, the commonwealth public service once saw the role of public policy as ‘nation building’. Economic development was seen as an active partnership between government and industry. Economic goals were pursued within a broader social policy framework. The co-ordinating departments of Treasury, Finance, and Prime Minister and Cabinet are now led by a new generation of bureaucrats, mostly trained in neo-classical economics, with a more limited view of the public sector and the public good. This change has broad support (albeit to different degrees) from the Labor Party and the Liberal and National Parties, and is endorsed by most of the media and business.

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Education and Public Policy in Australia , pp. 55 - 80
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

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