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Two trillion
dollars or one-twentieth of global gross domestic product: this is what the world
spends on education according to the most measured assessments. The private sector,
which accounts for roughly a fifth of the amount, is determined to capture a larger
share of this giant market (p.18). Riding on
a neo-liberal wave, vaunting greater efficiency, innovation and knowledge of the
job market, the corporate world is gaining unprecedented influence in running education
and shaping its goals (pp.
19-22).
In the United States, there is a groundswell of support for privatization and companies
are starting to run public schools (pp.28-30). In Brazil,
the Objetivo chain attracts close to 500,000 students, mostly from privileged backgrounds,
while in India, private schools are winning marks for catering to the poor (pp.
23-26).
Higher education is at the vanguard of the commercial drive, with online learning
spurring multiple alliances to attract students able to pay for a prestigious offshore
degree (pp.
26-27,
31-32).
But there are already lessons to be learnt from excessive trust in market principles.
The less advantaged are seldom the winners, as New Zealand’s bold experiment goes
to show (pp.
33-34),
quality is often dangerously compromised while national identities run the risk of
erosion (pp.35-36). Today’s supreme
economic focus needs to be urgently balanced by a more holistic approach, and in
this, the state’s role is pivotal (pp.
17
and 37).
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