When people dive into the varied texts of culture, print and non-print, and explore and critique them, they are doing much more than showing various persuasive appeals or advertising gimmicks to sway their audience; they are examining the purposes and values of capitalism, the economic system that produces a consumerocracy. People might even turn…

In the political discourse, the idea that organising continuing education according to the rules of the market would improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of continuing education programmes is gaining significance. In this article, we endeavour to subject some elements of this fundamental option in continuing education policy to an…

Access to higher education is a key challenge of the 21st century state. The link between higher education and personal and socio-economic development has intensified the need for ensuring that greater numbers of citizens have expanded access to and have been provided with quality higher education. The article seeks to explore how initiatives for…

This paper looks at the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) as an important part of the international trade law system and explores if and how it affects the steering capacity of a nation state regarding higher education. It offers a new conceptual framework to look on the impact of GATS on higher education within its increasingly…

This paper explores the rising presence of transnational corporations (TNCs) in education and their mobilisation of global corporate social discourses to legitimise their private authority in education. The rising presence of TNCs is explored in the paper in two parts. First, through a taxonomy of global corporate social engagement (GCSE)…

This book addresses a problem in higher learning, which is newly recognized in the academic spotlight: the overcommercialization of higher education. The book asks that you, the reader, think about the following: Did you go to a Coke or Pepsi school? Do your children attend a Nike or Adidas school? Is the college in your town a Dell or Gateway…

Although information technology is increasingly used to deliver distance and conventional courses, there have been few studies of the effect of technology-enhanced education on the organization and purposes of academics' instructional work. I explore this issue in undergraduate and masters level education through the vehicle of case analyses of…

This article outlines how the commercialization of structures and management in education risks accelerating the intensification of corporate marketing in schools. It is argued that marketing promotes materialistic values which are harmful to children and US and UK examples are offered to demonstrate how companies seek to use schools as…

This paper provides a critical analysis of the EU's "Memorandum on lifelong learning" in light of the evolution of the concepts of lifelong education and lifelong learning from the late sixties onward. It also analyses this document in light of the forces of globalisation that impinge on educational policy-making in Europe as well as the…

Export education in New Zealand has grown rapidly since 1990, earning significant foreign exchange and underwriting the finance of domestic education. As principal owner of education institutions, the national state is the primary investor. Previous governments treated the "industry" as both windfall and cash-cow as they advanced the…

Education in both England and the United States has undergone a profound change over the last two decades as part of neo-liberal and neoconservative political reforms. The reforms have been characterized by efforts to standardize the curriculum, to implement standardized tests in order to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable, to…

This article uses Nikolas Rose's theory of governmentality to examine ways in which intellectual property is imbricated in a broad spectrum of globalised and globalising discourses. Using the 2004 Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement as a case in point, it shows how discourses of culture, trade, foreign policy, and security intersect and…

Higher education is undergoing radical shifts that are part of the larger wave of changes taking place in the society. The transformation affects all sectors of higher education, especially distance learning and how it relates to the University's regular offerings. In this article, the author begins with clarifying the terms commonly associated…