Commercial Realities and Ethical Discomfort: international branch campuses and the market in higher education
FORUM - ISSN 0963-8253
Volume 61 Number 3 (2019)
Commercial Realities and Ethical Discomfort: international branch campuses and the market in higher education
TOM COLLINS pages 327-338
DOI: 10.15730/forum.2019.61.3.327
Abstract
This article explores the evolution of higher education in the context of a growing - if largely silent - consensus at governmental level to the effect that the State can no longer afford to fund higher education. Higher education institutions are, therefore, expected to explore new funding avenues as costs are increasingly shifted onto the student and the international student market is plumbed for additional revenue. The article proposes that where commercial considerations come to drive the academic programming and ideological positioning of the university, they can present the most fundamental challenges to the underpinning philosophical precepts of higher education. The existential imperative of the university around academic freedom, freedom of expression and of speaking truth to power in the interrogation of orthodoxy can be jeopardised, particularly in the case of international branch campuses. Ultimately, the authenticity and integrity of the institution and its sense of agency and self-worth become exposed.
To cite this article
TOM COLLINS (2019) Commercial Realities and Ethical Discomfort: international branch campuses and the market in higher education, FORUM, 61(3), 327-338. https://doi.org/10.15730/forum.2019.61.3.327