Beyond the Rhetoric of "Quality" and "Relevance": Evaluating the Tertiary Education Strategy 2007-12

Abstract

This article provides an overview and critique of the Tertiary Education Strategy 2007-12 (Ministry of Education, 2006). The author sets the Strategy in the context of earlier policy developments in the tertiary education sector. It is argued that while some important changes have been made in the post-1999 “Third Way” years, a number of continuities from the more nakedly neoliberal era of the 1990s are evident. Economic concerns remain dominant in policy thinking, the commodification of knowledge has intensified, new forms of competition have emerged, and the language of reform has not changed as much as might have been expected. The author concludes that there is a certain narrowness of vision in the new Strategy, and that what is needed is deeper reflection on fundamental epistemological and ethical questions.