Editorial

The neoliberal turn in higher education: Pitfalls, challenges, possibilities in the global South

Mlamuli N. Hlatshwayo, Tshepo M. Moloi

Copyright: © 2024. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This special issue addresses the need to theorise the growing commodification, commercialisation and profiteering of the global higher education system. We argue that real and material transformation of the higher education sector cannot occur without some engagement with the neoliberal turn(s) in institutions of higher learning. This neoliberal turn has largely been characterised by the rise in managerialism, crippling forms of performance management, narrow conceptions of quality assurance and benchmarking, as well as the surveillance and auditing cultures designed to track, monitor, count, reward and sanction the ‘productivity’ and ‘efficiency’ targets in higher education (Darder, 2012; Del Cerro Santamaría 2020; Mintz 2021). More troubling for us is that human beings in a neoliberal ecology remain invisible (and misrecognised). It has become a human resource entity dedicated to consumerism, individualism, and the fulfillment of the self often in dire contradiction to the utilitarian public good of the community (Hlatshwayo, 2024).

This special issue includes 10 articles authored by a diverse range of scholars, including early-career academics, postdoctoral researchers, and established scholars based at research-intensive universities. The broad themes covered range across a focus on neoliberalism and anti-black racism in the academy; the challenges of thinking from the centrality or positionality of the global South; the stranglehold that neoliberalism seems to have on higher education strategic planning, funding, academic freedom and teaching and learning; the limitations of epistemic freedom in a market driven economy and neoliberalism and its effects on the complex lifeworld(s) of early career academics.

Maistry argues that the South African higher education system is suffering from a toxic and contested milieu of neoliberalism, colonialism and anti-black racism. In a similar theme, Heleta and Dilraj suggest that decolonisation has increasingly become a smokescreen in South African higher education. They contend that little has materially changed in South African universities regarding the need for intellectual decolonisation. Ndlovu and Woldegiorgis use decolonial theory to try and make sense of how academics negotiate their lives in a neoliberal university. Conceptualising neoliberalism as a modern-day slavery in higher education, Steynberg, Grundling and Venter explore the intersectional relationship between governance, funding and academic freedom to reveal how neoliberal ideologies have contributed to the deteriorating working conditions for staff members. Van Vuuren shines a spotlight on South African lecturers’ frustrations with neoliberal governance and management practices. Adopting an autoethnographic approach to explore their own experiences of the ‘carrying on’ culture as two black clinical psychologists in a South African university, Shabalala and Mapaling offer an interesting perspective on the challenges of neoliberalism for early career academics.

Maluleka proposes what he calls ‘decolonial love’ as a pedagogic alternative to the capitalist, competitive and neoliberal agenda in South Africa. Munyaradzi uses critical discourse analysis to explicate the deeply entrenched coloniality in South Africa’s language policies and universities. Drawing on the Zimbabwean higher education system as a case study, Tsverukayi and Poshai examine the impact of neoliberal approaches on the access to inclusive education in the country. McKenna takes on the multibillion-dollar university rankings industry and argues that they are largely unscientific, neocolonial and promote unethical behaviour.

We wish to thank the managing editors for their enduring support in compiling and finalising this special issue. We also wish to send our special appreciations to all the authors for their carefully thought-out and well-formulated submissions. It has been a privilege to read and to engage with their work.

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