This paper comments on Darcia Narvaez's Kohlberg Memorial Lecture (EJ1111256), published in this issue, with respect to her contrasting ethics and economics, or morality and market. My basic claim is that ethics and economics, properly understood, are just two sides of the same coin. One main point is that all morality solves cooperation problems…

This commentary explores the so-called global "crisis" in education and the corresponding pressures and moves to "reform" education, and in particular, public education. The myths underpinning and driving these developments are examined. Supposed problems with (public) education and proposed solutions are explored. The…

In the author's fifteen years as a subscriber to "TETYC," he has yet to read an article as alarming as Keith Kroll's "The End of the Community College English Profession." His argument that neoliberalism--a political ideology and set of economic policies that look to the free market and privatization for answers to questions great and small--is…

The author argues that a Higher Education Bill will be lacking in the future, as promised in the 2011 White Paper on HE; and hence the regulatory framework for English HE will, for the immediate future at least, have to evolve within the law as it is rather than via new legal powers. The essential issue is how to extract the benefits of market…

Last October Lord Browne of Madingley published the long-awaited report of his "Independent Review into Higher Education Funding and Student Finance" (Independent Review 2010). Browne and his colleagues recommended the removal of the "cap" on the tuition fees chargeable for first degrees by taxpayer-funded universities in…

In July 2010 in Beijing, Lei Wang interviewed Professor Dayuan Jiang, Research Fellow at the Ministry of Education's Central Institute for Vocational and Technical Education about how China has drawn from foreign vocational education models and China's own innovation process. Jiang pointed out that Germany's educational philosophy and talent…

Considerable policy and academic attention has been focused on the topic of food deserts. We consider this topic from an economic perspective. First, we consider how the components of a standard economic analysis apply to the study of food deserts. Second, using this economic lens, we revisit the empirical literature on food deserts to assess the…

This paper considers the questions that Badiou's theory poses to the culture of economic managerialism within education. His argument that radical change is possible, for people and the situations they inhabit, provides a stark challenge to the stifling nature of much current educational debate. In "Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism",…

The circular flow of income diagram is a simplified representation of the functioning of a free-market economic system. It illustrates how businesses interact with the other economic participants within the key macroeconomic markets that coordinate the flow of income through the national economy. Therefore, it can provide students of business with…

Coalition education policy threatens to transform the school system in England. A combination of public spending cuts, and the drive to making all schools Academies, represents a key moment in the restructuring of the education service along neo-liberal lines. This article argues that there is nothing distinctively "new" about Coalition…

This article comments on several features of the rate of return (ROR) to educational investment in China: first, the ROR to educational investment has increased with the expansion of educational provision since the 1980s. Second, the greater the educational provision, the greater the ROR. Third, the ROR in urban areas is more than that in rural…

The world financial meltdown is causing a reassessment of the strong market ideology that dominated policy making since the days of Reagan and Thatcher. For universities, the issue is not whether to pay attention to market forces--most schools have no choice given that their economic viability depends on some combination of enrollments, sponsored…

This "crucible moment" in which democratic capitalism finds itself does not call for more government mandates to dictate progressive activism in higher education. Rather, this crucible moment calls higher education on its own initiative to focus on the moral foundation that both democracy and capitalism require. The foundation of democratic…

Discontent with failed, top-down reform and the immediate prospect of political change have created a rare opportunity to reinvent education policy and to think afresh about how teachers and children should be encouraged to develop their full potential. "The Pendulum Swings" explores alternative, genuinely transformative conceptions of…

Learning is a lifelong process. It is therefore worthwhile looking at instances where learning takes place outside educational institutions and see how educational principles can be applied there. In a market economy companies have to quest for profit to ensure their long-term survival. In the end, their educational goals have to serve themselves.…