The crisis of higher education: Theorizing from the global south

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 1. Challenges to Academia/Higher Education

Abstract

Since Bill Readings’s (1996) classic work, scholarly writings on the crisis of higher education abound (see, for example, Calhoun 2006; Brown 2018) . Theorizing from the global north, these writings lament the subordination of higher education to market logics, with many asking if a college degree is even worth the staggering cost of attendance (see, for example, Ohmann and Shor 2024). While these theorizations of the crisis illuminate how neoliberalism is reshaping higher education globally, they do not help us make sense of the fact that unlike the global north where college enrollment is declining, there is a massification of higher education in the global south (Calderón 2018). In countries like India, Brazil, and South Africa, a growing and increasingly diverse student body enters college each year, at a time when neoliberalism is reshaping both higher education and the economy. In these contexts, public universities have turned into terrains where the relationship between inequality and higher education is being negotiated afresh, evident in slogans that have reverberated both on and off university campuses, like “Fees Must Fall” (South Africa), “Education in our Weapon” (Brazil), and “The University is not your Agrahara” (India). These contexts not only illuminate how higher education is increasingly subordinate to market logics, but also, how it is shaped by and is shaping the logics of democracy in the postcolony today. My paper will narrate this story as it is unfolding in India's public universities, both, to highlight undertheorized dimensions of the crisis of higher education globally, and to highlight new dynamics that shape the reproduction of inequality locally, in a milieu where the structure of the “passive revolution” is undergoing a transformation (Chatterjee 2004).

Author

• Kriti Budhiraja, Illinois Wesleyan University