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The purpose of this paper is to examine the question of parents’ rights to make choices regarding the education and upbringing of their children.

Article 26(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: ‘Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children’. However, authors including Joel Feinberg also argue children have a right to an ‘open future’, implying parents and the state have obligations to ensure certain elements are present in a child’s care and education. Commodifying education and early childhood care where it occurs in many developed societies, ostensibly provides parents with greater choice regarding the education and upbringing of their children. However, following the work of Brenda Almond, I argue that parents do have some rights to make choices about the care and education of their children. But just having the freedom to choose from alternative schooling or caring options may be insufficient to provide a choice in any significant sense, if one is only choosing between service providers all offering essentially the same service.

It would seem then, that responsible leadership and ethical decision-making by the state and by service providers requires them to engage in consultation with parents and facilitate their participation in determining the nature and content of educational and developmental programmes for children.

Leaders in these roles will also need to have a strong sense of the competing demands on content coming from this array of ethical requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and critically assess the potential value and effectiveness of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for public administration education.

The research in this conceptual paper offered a critical examination of MOOCs using the work of Baudrillard, Debord, and others to re-frame and reconsider our understanding of this emerging educational strategy.

Baudrillard’s simulacrum and Debord’s spectacle concepts can inform the discussion and understanding of MOOCs in higher education.

This is an emerging area that needs further study and development.

MOOCs might contribute to the blurring of lines between educational products that are needed and products for which a need is manufactured by corporate interests.

MOOCs might contribute to the commodification of knowledge in higher education.

This is the first conceptual paper exploring MOOCs and their issues using Baudrillard and Debord.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how, and the extent to which, massive open online courses (MOOCs) might be used in the accreditation of students’ prior learning, in programme delivery at international branch campuses, and for lecturers’ professional development (PD) in transnational higher education.

The data were obtained from two international branch campuses in the United Arab Emirates. The research adopted a qualitative methodology that involved 20 lecturers participating in semi-structured interviews and ten lecturers participating in a focus group. A rigorous process of content analysis was used to analyse and interpret the data.

Lecturers in transnational higher education perceived that MOOCs were not suitable for accredited prior learning but that they might be useful as a supplementary resource for student learning and for personal PD. There was a strong belief that as international branch campuses offered a commodified product, MOOCs were unlikely to be adopted as a replacement for traditional programme delivery methods, as students strongly prefer face-to-face teaching and support.

The research has identified a number of recommendations for higher education institutions operating in transnational settings, which might improve both institutional and individual performance. Institutions that intend to use MOOCs in programme delivery should consider how their students and staff would react to such a move, and how this might impact upon institutional image and reputation.

Surprisingly, there has been little academic research published on the use of MOOCs in higher education, and to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study conducted in a transnational education setting. The uniqueness of the environment in which international branch campuses operate, as well as their different objectives and student profiles, provide the rationale for this research.

In Marx, a commodity is a thing brought to the market for sale at a profit where it satisfies a want rather than a need and embodies labour power and is purchased by the consumer as if it were a fetish. The term commodification did not come into usage until late in the 1970s but is now thrown around with some frequency, sometimes casually with imprecise meaning, sometimes more pointedly. Frequently it is used to indicate the shift of social activity previously conducted outside the market or commercial world generally, into the world of trade, money or exchange. Typical are these resolutions emanating from the headquarters of the ESIB, The National Unions of Students in Europe. The ESIB resolves to:Promote on an international level increased consciousness as to the current and possible future negative implications of commodification.Analyse in further detail the implications and consequences of commodification of education as well as the manner in which ESIB may positively contribute towards ensuring that education remains a public good.Encourage student unions and decision makers in higher education to involve themselves in the discussion relating to the commodification of education.³

Like pro-bono service of law and other professional practices, micro-credentialing has become the quasi-charity project of the rapidly commodifying higher education (HE) sector. Produced with minimum waste and expense, qualifications through micro-credentialing economises time spent and optimises efforts. As a result, these bite-size educational offerings are becoming abundant and attractive to both learners and providers. While learners learn on the job or in the job market, providers get an opportunity to package knowledge and skills. Among a plethora of courses with potential overlapping and mismatched competencies, however, a clear pathway to target a career through pastures of micro-credentialing is yet to emerge. If not, it may result in another system of skill poverty and thus alienate the essential autonomy of credential seekers. Autonomy or self-tailoring your own package of micro-credentials (MC) without a proper wayfinding system could be overwhelming, sometimes even counterproductive, if competency management is based on a one-size-fits-all model. Via a local case, this chapter reviews current MC available to capacitate a career using Construction Management (CM) as a point of departure. It aims to develop a wayfinding framework or user-friendly menu for those wanting to craft a career via a micro-credentialing ecosystem. Broadly, it investigates navigating various MC offerings equivalent to undergraduate qualifications needed to become a CM professional recognised by accreditation bodies. In the process, it systematically discourses multiple ontologies of micro-credentialing in links, lapses, overlaps, and intersections among competencies to untangle complexities and optimise opportunities. It was hoped that learners could target a career instead of matching a job profile in the micro-credentialing universe.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the lack of staff engagement with a university’s strategy on sustainability could be an enabling lever for organisational change. It examines the attitudes and views of employees of a business faculty at an Australian metropolitan university as it attempts to adopt a holistic approach to sustainability.

The paper opted for a case study using data from an on-line survey, semi-directed interviews with key management personnel and archival material. Responses were analysed using Piderit’s (2000) notion of ambivalence.

The paper provides empirical insights into why staff lacked engagement with the university’s strategy on sustainability. It suggests that staff were ambivalent, displaying dissonance in their personal beliefs on sustainability, the university’s strategy and the extent of their intentions to support the university. Staff were willing to offer ideas on how the university could, in the future, change towards sustainability. These ideas allow the possibility for the university to learn to adjust the scope of the implementation of its sustainability strategy.

The research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to further examine staff attitudes on sustainability in higher education using Piderit’s notion of ambivalence. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions could allow a better understanding of harmony and dissonance in cognition of and intention for university sustainability strategies and initiatives by academic, professional and sessional staff.

The paper includes implications for staff engagement with sustainability in higher education.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how staff engagement with sustainability in higher education can be enabled for organisational learning.

Internationalisation and academic mobility have long been integral parts, although serving different purposes in the higher education industry. Internationalisation has played a crucial role in facilitating academic exchange, knowledge sharing, research partnerships and collaborative innovation. However, the rise of neoliberalism has introduced the market forces of global capitalism that have significantly impacted higher education worldwide – invading the sector with neoliberal market values. This chapter aims to explore the impact of neoliberalism on the internationalisation of higher education in Africa, with a specific focus on trends in international student mobility. The chapter argues that the influence of neoliberalism on international mobility extends beyond market dynamics, encompassing discussions on hegemony within international knowledge systems, where African countries and institutions often find themselves marginalised. The study relies on published materials and publicly available statistical data from both governmental and non-governmental organisations. By examining the interplay between neoliberalism and the process of internationalisation in higher education, this chapter sheds light on the intricate and multifaceted aspects of both concepts, as well as their practical implications for international student mobility. Moreover, the chapter reflects on the implications of neoliberal entanglements for the prospects of internationalisation in African higher education.

Public management is moving towards more control by executives in the name of the people. Executive knowledge is privileged by initiatives such as new public management and collaborative public management that promote the market spectacle. The purpose of this paper is to employ a “radical,” or critical, interpretation based primarily on concepts and social critiques developed by Marx, by Weber and by Debord, to offer a position, polemic, and perspective regarding the nature and effects of public management on the American polis.

The authors develop a social critique of bureaucracy and government towards domination governance of the polis primarily by developing and using the theoretical work of scholars such as Marx, Weber, and Debord for this analysis.

These developments towards more control by executives are corrosive to the last vestiges of representative democracy in the USA.

The question remains as to whether it is too late to reform, or turn back, the onset of the new public managerialism and whether the current condition of public administration is a symptom of the overall market spectacle trend.

Increasingly, groups external to educational systems are offering time, expertise and products, creating an intricate web of educational governance where entities outside of formal education contribute to state-funded education systems. While this involvement and its motivations have been considered in the literature, it has been less common to explore these interactions between school systems and outside organizations as they relate to the transition from the knowledge economy to the intelligent economy. Such research is important to understand the numerous inputs to education, which can then inform future decision-making. This study traces scripts around the commodification of knowledge, which connects education to individual employability or the economy and cyborg dialectic, or the mutual relationship between humans and technology. These scripts intersect to contribute to the perpetuation of data creation and usage as part of the educational intelligent economy. The scripts traced here originate from Battelle, a primarily a Ohio-based research and development organization, also focused on classroom teaching and learning, specifically in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Mapping scripts related to the commodification of knowledge and the cyborg dialectic indicates promotion of the intelligent economy broadly and individually for Battelle itself across Ohio and beyond, through investments in educators, students and policy-makers but also Battelle’s potential employees and collaborators. This data-focus creates an educational intelligence not only in students, teachers and policy-makers but also in Battelle itself, legitimating it as an actor in education.

The chapter explores the value of dialogue and the dialogic for developing student and staff agency, “voice” and ethics in the context of a first-year undergraduate module of the BA Hons Education Studies, an undergraduate course at The Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design and a Postgraduate Certificate of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education module, at London Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. The authors take a case study approach, making use of Freire’s ideas of critical pedagogy, to reflect on their personal learning and teaching experience as well as the feedback received from students and staff. The aim of the chapter is to explore how to empower (non-traditional) students and staff – and bridge the gap between students’ and teachers’ understanding of what this might entail. Rather than trying to bring students “up to speed” to prepare them for successful study and a professional career, or better “train” staff to deliver policy and strategy, we argue that we need to welcome them for the people they are as we help them to navigate a Higher Education system in need of humanizing.