Commodification of Education In United Kingdom

Author:   Marlia Shukry

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Abstract—

Globalisation and the rise of a neoliberal political, economic and cultural agenda has a powerful impact on education. Education now becomes a commodity that is marketised. This paper explores the impact of commoditization of education and impact of treating students as consumers.In order to narrow down the topic, this paper focuses on higher education offered in the Universities. The paper starts with understanding the concept of commoditization and factors that lead to the Commodification of education. Then the impact of commoditization on students, parents, knowledge and learning is discussed. The paper analyses the views of the commodification of education and how current market based parameters impact the education, educators and educational institutions. The paper further highlights other aspects related to commodification that support the fact that commodification of the education should be discouraged. The paper put forth an argument that treating education as a commodity does not consider the intellectually challenging aspect of education. Instead, it converts knowledge into an aspect that can be quantified and is used only for employment creation. Further, the paper proposes that considering students as consumers give priority to short term pleasure rather than long term enduring values. Therefore commodification of the education should be discouraged.