Neoliberalism, Academic Capitalism and Higher Education: Exploring the Challenges of One University in Rural Haiti
- The authors argue that RHU has languished because its founder's grassroots-centered vision tracked neoliberal assumptions and conditions about institutional sustainability.
- They state that private schools, mostly run by international and local NGOs, educate 85% of Haiti's elementary and secondary school-aged population that attends school.
- They state that in January 2010 NGOs supplied more than 70% of available health care in Haiti.
- They conclude that privatization on neoliberal ideology or on claims of grassroots responsibility has a high risk of failing amid high poverty and weak state institutions.
- They conclude that universities alone cannot create the conditions for flourishing and that effective governance and strong economies are needed.
The authors analyze Rural Haitian University (RHU, a pseudonym) and its founder, a Haitian social entrepreneur who sought to use higher education to encourage community development in a remote agricultural region. They argue that RHU languished because its founder's grassroots vision tracked neoliberal assumptions and conditions about institutional sustainability, which pushed him to emphasize autonomy and survival. The article reviews the Haitian context, World Bank policy on higher education since a 2000 task force, and the dynamics of academic capitalism, and draws on interviews with pseudonymized participants.
It concludes that a strategy assuming self-sustaining and autonomous higher education institutions is unlikely to succeed in very poor nations with weak state institutions, and that effective governance and strong economies are needed for universities to play their part.
How to cite
International Journal of Educational Development, 2017, Neoliberalism, Academic Capitalism and Higher Education: Exploring the Challenges of One University in Rural Haiti, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2017.08.009
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- International Journal of Educational Development