“How will education end? capitalism, education services and the new frontiers of commodification

• In Event: Piketty’s Relevance for the Study of Education: Reflections on the Political Economy of Education

Abstract

In a powerful engagement with Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, Wolfgang Streek (2014), asks the question: How Will Capitalism End? Streek points to five systemic disorders that he argues now characterises today’s advanced capitalism. In this paper, I engage with these disorders as symptoms which are increasingly found in education as it increasingly becomes a sector for profits to be made or hidden, through the ways in which (i) educational aspirations – especially of the very poor - are exploited; (ii) the education sector is being unbundled, privatised and commodified through national, regional and global trade policies; and (iii) educational philanthropy provides a means for the very wealthy to sidestep democratic processes. In asking the question: How Will Education End? in the light to Piketty and Streek’s arguments and the current transformations taking place in education, I hope to reveal the extent to which its unraveling is tied to the wider disorders facing education in advanced capitalism.

Author

• Susan Robertson, University of Bristol