The trend towards seeing education as a commodity and part of a global industry has transformed the field of education. We argue that these transformations are reducing the autonomy of the field of education as it has incorporated business rhetoric, logic and practice. We examine this through an analysis of discursive formations manifested in two…

Under the tendency of the marketisation of tertiary education, universities/colleges and governments across the world have increasingly regarded international education as an education services export sector. Vietnam has always been regarded as a country of importing rather than exporting international education. Nevertheless, more and more…

Ecosystemic cooperation among the state, municipalities, and commercial actors is evident in the public education of Finland. The edu-ecosystems can include firm interdependences, value creation, co-specialisation, and co-evolution with an aim to sell products and services to the global market as well as to open up markets in a particular country.…

Education business and the actors involved in it have gained increasing global attention. However, little is known about the commercial actors participating in mainly publicly maintained comprehensive schooling in Finland and how the roles of teachers and schools are seen in this edu-business. In this article, we analyze 'edu-business…

For the last two decades, Finnish universities have faced the implementation of new systems of control and undergone dramatic changes that have worsened academic working conditions -- such as corporatisation and budget cuts. This article explores Finnish academics' experiences of university reforms with a special focus on the consequences it has…

In Finland, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is traditionally publicly provided. However, private ECEC provision has increased during the past decade, largely as a result of financial support from the public sector. Drawing on qualitative interviews with municipal decision-makers, this article identifies three frames within which publicly…

This article explores the positioning of dual qualifications (DQs) in the Finnish education policy and the education system since the late 1980s. The analysis is carried out in the context of academic-vocational divide. At the end of the 1980s, Finland questioned the functionality of the strict academic-vocational divide in post-compulsory…

Commercialization and commodification of higher education has been subjected to wide critique in academic literature. The relative privilege of academic professions seems to be on the decline, as universities are subjected to increasing competitive pressures -- pressures which these institutions pass on to academics. Academics experience a loss of…

This article aims to investigate whether national differences in the institutionalization of the binary divide between universities and Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) lead to different outcomes in performing Academics' Societal Engagement (ASE). Two institutional theory-based core differences of European binary higher education (HE)…

In market-oriented higher education (HE) systems, fee-paying students are positioned as customers, and studying is juxtaposed with service use. In this study, we investigate how students position themselves in relation to the student-as-customer discourse in Finnish HE, in which only students coming from outside the EU and EEA areas are charged…

International degree programmes (IDPs) act as focal instruments for the internationalization of higher education in many non-English--speaking countries serving a variety of national objectives, with the commercial objective becoming increasingly common. This study analyses how IDPs have developed in one Nordic country, Finland, from a marginal…

As one of the key elements of the Nordic welfare model, education systems are based on the idea of providing equal educational opportunities, regardless of gender, social class and geographic origin. Since the 1990s, Nordic welfare states have undergone a gradual but wide-ranging transformation towards a more market-based mode of public service…

In this article, we research and revisit our own experiences of gender equality work to determine the societal and discursive power relations that have shaped gender equality. We conducted our study in Finland, a 'Nordic model of gender equality', but we argue that these results have worldwide relevance, especially since Nordic models of gender…

Purpose: This study focuses on courses that prepare applicants for universities' highly competitive entrance examinations in Finland. The analysis clarifies the market-making practices and the construction of this field. Design/Approach/Methods: To understand these processes, we use Caliskan and Callon's five framings for studying marketization as…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of studies on antecedents of the corporate reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) from the perspectives of employees. Design/methodology/approach: The approach is an examination of previous literature on antecedents of corporate reputation in HEIs, published between…