In our world of IT, globalisation and instant communication, education is supposed to be positioning Australia to be part of an international knowledge economy. No longer will we rely on wool, wheat, sheep, sugar and butter; rather we will focus on educating citizens to be smart and innovative and who can contribute intellectually in a significant way on the international stage. 

It is ironic, given endless talk about the knowledge economy and the importance of innovation that few businesses in Australia invest in knowledge creation and our government is increasingly reducing support for higher education.

It is ironic that university educators, supposedly the very people needed to drive innovation and intellectual advancement in themselves and others, are increasingly demoralised and fragmented, operating at a level of distrust and alienation that researchers are calling qualitatively new. This distrust and alienation arises from growing surveillance and control, restructures and forced redundancies while simultaneously experiencing a growingly obvious mistrust of their professionalism and commitment.

At the same time, slick marketing campaigns suggest universities are places filled with smiling students and happy staff (rather like a holiday resort one might think). Raewyn Connell suggests: “For an institution whose deepest rationale is its concern with truth, whose claim on social resources is that it will grapple with the tough issues and do the hard work required for the most advanced forms of knowledge, the neoliberal turn and managerial takeover are building up a cultural disaster.”

Now you might be tempted to say if universities can’t adapt to the neoliberal world, let the disaster happen and perhaps something more adaptive will rise from the ashes. Should we go this route we need to think of the consequences: consequences already foreshadowed with the growing insertion of private education providers into the tertiary market.

We have to decide if the purposes of education are best met in the for-profit world. Are there not major conflicts of interest when the sole rationale for education is to make profits for shareholders?

For example, a multinational private education company is responsible for teacher certification in one US state and uses its own tests to do so. To be qualified to teach, teachers have to demonstrate the knowledge of content and pedagogy as defined by this company and this company only. In the same state, this company sells textbooks to primary schools, and the statewide tests children are required to sit to assess performance (tests similar to Australia’s NAPLAN) are based on the company’s own texts. What this company deems necessary for students to know is what is tested and schools’ performance is based on students’ test scores. Some also recommend teacher salaries should also be based on these students’ test scores.

Education is important and we have to come back to the core question: what is the purpose of education? Is it to ensure that all children learn specific things so they can function in a specific manner as employed citizens?

Is it to ensure that the nation will have high employment rates and citizens will chose to work, pay their bills and function in socially required ways? Is it to ensure that all children can learn and grow to become the best people they can possibly be? Is it to ensure that those who are advantaged get the learning they need to become our future leaders and those who are not learn what is needed to hold down a job?

What is it that we want education to do in our modern world? Right now we talk the dream of education as providing opportunities for all and we live the reality of education reinforcing social inequities. Do we continue down this path or do we change direction?