Editors' Introduction Neoliberalism in Higher Education: Practices, Policies, and Issues

ABSTRACT

While the working and middle classes have faced the challenges brought about by job layoffs resulting from corporate mergers and the lack of an economic support system to provide a survivable quality of life, the top one percent has enjoyed the benefits of increasing monetary gains from tax cuts and stock market investments. Reduced state funding and the infusion of marketplace principles and practices have resulted in the treatment of students as a revenue stream for raising tuition, which, in turn, increases student dependence on loans benefiting primarily Wall Street private lenders. [...]higher education has become the victim of a hostile takeover by neoliberal principles that utilize higher education as a laboratory for economic practices and redesign work roles to monetize the value of higher education. [...]they argue that for the last fifty years, neoliberalism has penetrated the academy and intercollegiate athletics and has been speeding toward a separation of the university and athletics by prioritizing business and profit interests as well as private and corporate sponsorships, and by increasing reliance on governance by the NCAA rather than universities (including academic standards and compliance).