There is more to the marketisation of English HE than neoliberalism

England’s tuition fee cap may finally be about to rise with inflation (to £9,535), but there is no resolution in sight of the financial crisis that has been brought about, in part, by the cap’s freeze at £9,250 during seven years of very high inflation. And questions continue to loom large about whether the high-fees funding model has delivered better outcomes for students, the state and universities.

In 2012, the cap was tripled to £9,000 a year for undergraduates, largely removing public funding for university teaching. This was done not only to reduce the financial burden on the taxpayer or to make higher education more accessible to students. Equally important was the perceived need to encourage competition between universities (which also helped to drive the subsequent removal of the cap on undergraduate student numbers). A quasi-market in higher education would improve quality and efficiency, benefiting all.

Currently, we can observe many forms of marketisation throughout the sector, from corporate management governance to the increased importance of rankings and the intensification of marketing and branding between institutions. But while the ways in which higher education has become marketised and commodified are well documented, the question of why markets and competition have been introduced so forcefully is much harder to answer.

A popular response points to neoliberalism, a political doctrine that promotes the use of free markets and market competition in all sectors. As such, reversing marketisation has been framed as a fight against a large, all-encompassing force that has successfully transformed society in recent decades. But quite apart from the problem that the concept of neoliberalism is used in a wide variety of ways (and is often left undefined), there are limits to how useful it is for understanding where we find ourselves today and how we got there.

First, instead of assuming a neoliberal drive, it might be more accurate to highlight the dominance of a broader economic-instrumental view of higher education as a crucial condition under which marketisation occurs. In recent decades, policymakers have turned to higher education to help drive economic growth through so-called human capital formation, while also positioning it as an engine of social mobility.

These economic-instrumental purposes have grown and overshadowed other non-economic purposes focused on improving society, boosting civic participation or aiding personal development. The advance of neoliberal tendencies should be understood within this broader shift.

Second, the role of the state has been vital in marketisation. Simultaneously, an expansion of state intervention can be observed in a wide range of areas far beyond the support of market competition, which does not suggest that a neoliberal state is at work. In recent years, UK governments have taken away autonomy from universities and have intervened in areas where they did not venture previously. Conservative governments, in particular, frequently intervened (or threatened to intervene) in higher education, aiding political goals concerning free speech, migration, mental health, consumer protection and even antisemitism.

The extension of state activity in all these areas is not congruent with neoliberal ideology. Neoliberals demonstrate a distinct distrust of governmental power. They are willing to use state power to further the reach and intensity of markets, but would naturally shy away from any intervention that does not do this.

Third, higher education policy is often created in rather haphazard ways, using a range of rationales, of which a neoliberalism is only one among many. Pragmatic public finance concerns, for instance, have been an important policy objective, and no doubt part of the reason that tuition fees – funded by income-contingent public loans – have been frozen for so long. As a result of the resulting compromises, policies that made marketisation possible are far from pure neoliberal vehicles.

Even if introducing market competition is a key policy goal, its implementation may lead to a range of outcomes. The tripling of undergraduate tuition fees and the removal of the cap on student numbers have increased the competition between universities, but they have not led to a free market in education.

So while the concept of neoliberalism undoubtedly has value in understanding how the social world around us has changed, it should not be used as a blanket concept when it comes to the marketisation of higher education. We need to be much more precise about what we mean by neoliberalism and where the influence of neoliberal policies, ideologies or discourse can be observed.

The advantage of this theoretical repositioning is that it may make more apparent what may or may not be changeable in higher education practice and policy, including how our universities are run. And those who oppose marketisation need not despair. We can still argue for a sector built on sustainability, fairness and social justice without assuming that those goals will always be trumped by a neoliberal mania to create a system that knows no rationale other than competition.

Gerbrand Tholen is a reader in sociology in the department of sociology and criminology at City St George’s, University of London. His new book is The Role of Neoliberalism in the Marketisation of Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan).