What do you think?
Rate this book
The OECD, Globalisation and Education Policy
The increasing significance of the OECD in the development of national education policies has received much attention in recent years. Although it is recognised that certain international agencies such as the OECD as key "globalizing agencies", have acquired the capacity to "persuade" nation states towards certain policy priorities, little attention has been paid to making clear how these processes of persuasion may work. This volume investigates such processes, drawing on a study of the relationship between the OECD and educational policy directions in Australia. It investigates the link between three elements of education policy, the nation state, the OECD and globalization. These links are explored through case studies in higher education and vocational education and training policy developments, drawing on the Australian experience. The book also generates questions about educational purposes and decision making in the contemporary contexts which have wider applicability.
212 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2001
18 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 6, 2024
I was enjoying this book, and learning things along the way – but then I got towards the end and suddenly I had one of those experiences you so rarely get with books. They said something – it was actually a quote from someone else – that made my ears prick up. Then I started thinking through the implications of it, and as I was doing that they did much the same thing – so that my thinking and questioning was being answered as I read on. It was almost like being in a conversation with the authors, and I have to say, it was a very nice feeling. I immediately sent my quick summary of it to a couple of colleagues at work. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
The OECD is presented as being an unusual organisation that is caught and pulled in a number of contradictory ways. First of all, it was set up after the Second World War, as the label on the box says, to encourage economic cooperation and development in free market economies. This was at the start of the Cold War, and so the competition was on between free market and planned economies and the OECD had firmly nailed its colours to the free market mast. But it had never been prescriptive in the policies it proposed. Rather, it presented itself as a forum where ideas could be exchanged and some sort of consensus could be reached, with no obligation of nation states to implement this consensus. Nevertheless, it was framed within what could be described as a neoliberal understanding of how the world works or how it would work better. There was debate and disagreement, but in the end the people writing the reports, even while acknowledging this debate as contentious, got to write the reports and to frame them.
Education didn’t begin as an important area for the OECD. They initially believed that there was too much diversity of needs in various nations and so this was not an area the OECD could reasonably add much value. But then things changed and education was increasingly seen as being a key factor in human capital development. And since human capital development had implications that crossed national boundaries, the need to make comparisons between what did and didn’t work became a focus. The OECD began holding forums and producing reports that compared how nations, and particular in relation to their higher education policies, responded to this growing common need. Higher education was also moving from being something confined to the elite towards becoming a mass requirement – in a move similar to how high school education had shifted to being nearly universal at the start of the twentieth century. The economic changes necessitating this shift were also due to changes in the need for workers – with a greatly diminished need for semi-skilled workers – and so youth unemployment was also rising across OECD nations, making keeping young people in education also seen as a way of keeping them off the streets – again, in much the same way as universal secondary education had, and universal primary education had a century before. This warehousing of the young while upskilling them to become more productive to the economy more generally has been something of a theme in how society has responded to the ongoing shifts in the needs of the economy.
The OECD then began the work of finding standards and measures that could show what works in the policy sphere for higher education – broadly defined as basically anything post-secondary school, including vocational education – and to measure how different nation state policy settings impacted the development of their human capital. This shift from elite to mass tertiary education was reflected in a shift of the role of universities away from ‘the contemplative life’ towards a focus upon education as being vocationally relevant. This is what Obama would refer to as ‘learning equals earning’. This was also occurring at a time when nation states were, due to globalisation, experiencing a fall in the amount of money they could raise from taxes. This meant that funding universities, which were greatly expanding, needed to be supported at a time of diminishing resources with which to fund them. In many developed countries, this shortfall was funded by seeking to attract international students, generally from developing nations. We are living through one of the world’s largest temporary mass migration events – which young people leaving their homelands to study for three years or so in rich nations and by so doing propping up the education systems in those rich nations. This is contributing to a two tier system of universities – with international students more likely to want to get their degree from a highly ranked university for the prestige value this offers, while increasingly underfunded and newer universities struggle with serving the rest. A kind of education version of the Pareto 80:20 principle.
But setting a range of measures and standards, the OECD, even while denying this was their objective, also helped to create effective league tables of universities and nations in regards to education. Comparisons were inevitable, as where winners and losers – but if neoliberalism is about anything, it is about competition. And the measures also stripped away differences between nation states, and the need for their education systems to address these differences, while creating cross-national benchmarks that national policies ignored at their own peril. While the OECD presented itself as a kind of policy discussion group, the underlying framing of free market economics and of education being essentially about human capital development did its work. Difference was overtaken with sameness – something also accelerated by the presence of international students who needed curricula that would make sense in their home environment, rather than coming to Australia to learn how to be an Australian. Nation states and their education policies were caught in a kind of pincer movement, caught between the ‘hard data’ of measures and standards and the needs of international students who were footing the bill for universally applicable learning opportunities which were in turn often created by the existence of these very standards and measures. The OECD then acted as both a policy forum, but also as a policy actor. It sought to present itself as objective and data driven, but it got to choose the data and to frame it, and to decide what counts and what does not. The shift was towards globalisation, just as the knowledge economy was taking off and trans-national flows of people, money, investments and policies were becoming inevitable, all spurred on by mass travel and internet communication technologies. As Bauman says somewhere, for most of civilisation (and the hint is in the name) the most developed where those who did not move – so nomads were the definition of uncivilised. Today the elite move between cities that increasingly resemble one another – and the most restricted in movement are refugees.
Which brings me to the idea that stopped me reading. It is the difference between internationalisation and globalisation – something I’d never thought about as having any differences before. Internationalisation is something that happens between cultures – and so many nation states now encourage their education systems to include curricula that will develop intercultural understanding. This is seen as a soft skill that will enable their citizens to respond to the challenges of cross-cultural interactions. This is explained in Fred Dervin’s excellent book Interculturality in Education, particular in terms of the paradoxes that intercultural understanding involves. The main one is summed up in the name itself. If you focus too much on the word ‘intercultural’ then you are likely to also focus on the differences between cultures. This is why the internet is full of the kinds of missteps you are likely to commit in foreign nations – you know, the top ten things to not do while in Rome, like asking for coffee with milk after breakfast. This focus on cultural difference does as much to solidify cultural distinctions, rather than to help overcome them. Ah, those crazy Italians… Whereas focusing on the understanding part of the term means seeking to find commonalities. This is way, as research has consistently shown, the best ways to overcome racism is to get people from different cultures to work towards common aims and objectives. This does not deny intercultural differences, but shows that they are not insurmountable.
Internationalisation is essentially this. It seeks unity in diversity. Understanding within the context of intercultural interactions often based on mutual misunderstandings. Globalisation is quite different. It could be seen as the latest phase of colonisation. There is one truth and one best way to achieve things and this truth can be measured and mandated. Globalisation seeks sameness as the solution to different cultures. And this sameness is based on efficiency. But this efficiency has been predetermined by what is culturally acceptable to the most powerful, with the less powerful needing to adjust their cultural differences that stand in the way of this efficiency to meet the demands of globalism. As the authors point out, this can be overstated in its ability to reframe the world in the image of market efficiency, but that it would also be a mistake to underestimate its power towards homogenisation.
The stated aim of neoliberalism is meant to be increased competition, and so you might expect that it would seek to increase diversity. However, like so many other things in life, actions are likely to face reactions and intended aims often bring about their opposite outcomes. There are pockets of resistance, and these are also facilitated by the growth of the internet. International students, as some of my research has shown, can often spend as much time in direct contact with friends and families and news from home as they do in their host nations. Connectivity can work to disconnect you from your current, local environment. Paradoxes and contradictions abound. This book is getting a little old now, but it provides a wealth of information on the history of the development of the OECD’s way of framing education, particularly higher education. It is still well worth the read.
The OECD is presented as being an unusual organisation that is caught and pulled in a number of contradictory ways. First of all, it was set up after the Second World War, as the label on the box says, to encourage economic cooperation and development in free market economies. This was at the start of the Cold War, and so the competition was on between free market and planned economies and the OECD had firmly nailed its colours to the free market mast. But it had never been prescriptive in the policies it proposed. Rather, it presented itself as a forum where ideas could be exchanged and some sort of consensus could be reached, with no obligation of nation states to implement this consensus. Nevertheless, it was framed within what could be described as a neoliberal understanding of how the world works or how it would work better. There was debate and disagreement, but in the end the people writing the reports, even while acknowledging this debate as contentious, got to write the reports and to frame them.
Education didn’t begin as an important area for the OECD. They initially believed that there was too much diversity of needs in various nations and so this was not an area the OECD could reasonably add much value. But then things changed and education was increasingly seen as being a key factor in human capital development. And since human capital development had implications that crossed national boundaries, the need to make comparisons between what did and didn’t work became a focus. The OECD began holding forums and producing reports that compared how nations, and particular in relation to their higher education policies, responded to this growing common need. Higher education was also moving from being something confined to the elite towards becoming a mass requirement – in a move similar to how high school education had shifted to being nearly universal at the start of the twentieth century. The economic changes necessitating this shift were also due to changes in the need for workers – with a greatly diminished need for semi-skilled workers – and so youth unemployment was also rising across OECD nations, making keeping young people in education also seen as a way of keeping them off the streets – again, in much the same way as universal secondary education had, and universal primary education had a century before. This warehousing of the young while upskilling them to become more productive to the economy more generally has been something of a theme in how society has responded to the ongoing shifts in the needs of the economy.
The OECD then began the work of finding standards and measures that could show what works in the policy sphere for higher education – broadly defined as basically anything post-secondary school, including vocational education – and to measure how different nation state policy settings impacted the development of their human capital. This shift from elite to mass tertiary education was reflected in a shift of the role of universities away from ‘the contemplative life’ towards a focus upon education as being vocationally relevant. This is what Obama would refer to as ‘learning equals earning’. This was also occurring at a time when nation states were, due to globalisation, experiencing a fall in the amount of money they could raise from taxes. This meant that funding universities, which were greatly expanding, needed to be supported at a time of diminishing resources with which to fund them. In many developed countries, this shortfall was funded by seeking to attract international students, generally from developing nations. We are living through one of the world’s largest temporary mass migration events – which young people leaving their homelands to study for three years or so in rich nations and by so doing propping up the education systems in those rich nations. This is contributing to a two tier system of universities – with international students more likely to want to get their degree from a highly ranked university for the prestige value this offers, while increasingly underfunded and newer universities struggle with serving the rest. A kind of education version of the Pareto 80:20 principle.
But setting a range of measures and standards, the OECD, even while denying this was their objective, also helped to create effective league tables of universities and nations in regards to education. Comparisons were inevitable, as where winners and losers – but if neoliberalism is about anything, it is about competition. And the measures also stripped away differences between nation states, and the need for their education systems to address these differences, while creating cross-national benchmarks that national policies ignored at their own peril. While the OECD presented itself as a kind of policy discussion group, the underlying framing of free market economics and of education being essentially about human capital development did its work. Difference was overtaken with sameness – something also accelerated by the presence of international students who needed curricula that would make sense in their home environment, rather than coming to Australia to learn how to be an Australian. Nation states and their education policies were caught in a kind of pincer movement, caught between the ‘hard data’ of measures and standards and the needs of international students who were footing the bill for universally applicable learning opportunities which were in turn often created by the existence of these very standards and measures. The OECD then acted as both a policy forum, but also as a policy actor. It sought to present itself as objective and data driven, but it got to choose the data and to frame it, and to decide what counts and what does not. The shift was towards globalisation, just as the knowledge economy was taking off and trans-national flows of people, money, investments and policies were becoming inevitable, all spurred on by mass travel and internet communication technologies. As Bauman says somewhere, for most of civilisation (and the hint is in the name) the most developed where those who did not move – so nomads were the definition of uncivilised. Today the elite move between cities that increasingly resemble one another – and the most restricted in movement are refugees.
Which brings me to the idea that stopped me reading. It is the difference between internationalisation and globalisation – something I’d never thought about as having any differences before. Internationalisation is something that happens between cultures – and so many nation states now encourage their education systems to include curricula that will develop intercultural understanding. This is seen as a soft skill that will enable their citizens to respond to the challenges of cross-cultural interactions. This is explained in Fred Dervin’s excellent book Interculturality in Education, particular in terms of the paradoxes that intercultural understanding involves. The main one is summed up in the name itself. If you focus too much on the word ‘intercultural’ then you are likely to also focus on the differences between cultures. This is why the internet is full of the kinds of missteps you are likely to commit in foreign nations – you know, the top ten things to not do while in Rome, like asking for coffee with milk after breakfast. This focus on cultural difference does as much to solidify cultural distinctions, rather than to help overcome them. Ah, those crazy Italians… Whereas focusing on the understanding part of the term means seeking to find commonalities. This is way, as research has consistently shown, the best ways to overcome racism is to get people from different cultures to work towards common aims and objectives. This does not deny intercultural differences, but shows that they are not insurmountable.
Internationalisation is essentially this. It seeks unity in diversity. Understanding within the context of intercultural interactions often based on mutual misunderstandings. Globalisation is quite different. It could be seen as the latest phase of colonisation. There is one truth and one best way to achieve things and this truth can be measured and mandated. Globalisation seeks sameness as the solution to different cultures. And this sameness is based on efficiency. But this efficiency has been predetermined by what is culturally acceptable to the most powerful, with the less powerful needing to adjust their cultural differences that stand in the way of this efficiency to meet the demands of globalism. As the authors point out, this can be overstated in its ability to reframe the world in the image of market efficiency, but that it would also be a mistake to underestimate its power towards homogenisation.
The stated aim of neoliberalism is meant to be increased competition, and so you might expect that it would seek to increase diversity. However, like so many other things in life, actions are likely to face reactions and intended aims often bring about their opposite outcomes. There are pockets of resistance, and these are also facilitated by the growth of the internet. International students, as some of my research has shown, can often spend as much time in direct contact with friends and families and news from home as they do in their host nations. Connectivity can work to disconnect you from your current, local environment. Paradoxes and contradictions abound. This book is getting a little old now, but it provides a wealth of information on the history of the development of the OECD’s way of framing education, particularly higher education. It is still well worth the read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review