Talking across the Chasm: Opening up Higher Education against the Policy Backdrop of the Knowledge Economy

The focus of this chapter is on the implications of the discourse of marketisation in higher education (HE) for academics who practise (or wish to practise) open education in English universities. Academics in favour of open education often face barriers to implementing openness in practice as a direct result of national policy, which emphasises competition and exclusivity in contrast to the collaboration and inclusivity at the heart of the open education agenda. One recent policy development, in particular, is likely to increase these barriers: the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). To explore these differences, this chapter presents a comparative critical discourse analysis of the UK government’s White Paper for the TEF, and a Science for Policy report by the European Commission on opening up education