Experience of Change: Using Critical Phenomenology to Examine the Transformation of Higher Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Reexamining the Role of Higher Education in a Global Society

Abstract

Over the last forty years, a dramatic shift has occurred in higher education institutions all over the world. Many policymakers have sought to change higher education from a social good into a market good. The purpose of this study was to invigorate the revolutionary potential of educational research, specifically by using educational research as a means to expose the threat brought on by the transformation of education into a market good. A critical phenomenological approach was employed to understand the experiences of some faculty members at a particular institution who are directly experiencing the change. From their experiences we uncovered a “ruptured mission” that seems to be pulling higher education in two opposite directions.

Author

• Angelo Joseph Letizia, The College of William & Mary