Privatization's transformative effects on academia: promise versus products

Privatization was initially promoted to improve higher education efficiency, diversity, and quality. One of the most fruitful frameworks from which to analyse this transformative notion is academic capitalism, i.e. market-like strategies of universities - and the supportive efforts of governments - to commodify the knowledge produced by professors via research grants, patents, service contracts, government/industry partnerships, and the recruitment of higher-paying students. The historical emergence of privatization occurs as governments’ disinvestment in higher education and neoliberal notions of how public institutions should be funded were embraced. Public policy around the world aimed at increasing academic capitalistic outputs, ultimately changing university behaviours. Apart from the aspirational goals of its advocates, privatization in higher education is responsible for persistent inequitable outcomes (e.g. costs, access, and gaps between haves/have nots). In this chapter, we describe and analyse the latter result given the promise of the first.