1 New Managerialism: The Impact on Education

With the rise of the neo-liberalism as a system of valuesi, there is an increasing attempt to off-load the cost of education, health care and public services generally, on to the individual. Allied to this, there is a growing movement to privatise those areas of public services that could be run for profit, including higher education. New managerialism represents the organisational arm of neoliberalism. It is the mode of governance designed to realize the neoliberal project through the institutionalising of market principles in the governance of organizations. While Taylorism and ‘scientific management have been employed extensively to for-profit businesses for many decades, what makes new managerialism ‘new ’ is the deployment of managerialist principles in both public sector bodies (Lynch, Grummell and Devine, 2012), and, increasingly, in non-governmental organisations (McCrea, 2014). In the public sector, it involves the prioritization of private (for-profit) sector values of efficiency and productivity in the regulation of public bodies, on the assumption that the former is superior to the latter. It gives primacy to product and output over process and input, and it endorses strong market-type accountability in public sector spending. The attainment of financial and other targets is a priority, and success in meeting targets is measured through public audits of the quality of service delivery. The development of quasi-markets for services is also a key goal; this operates as a further form of control through competition and public surveillance (Clarke, Gewirtz an