Description
The book pivots between the 1970s and the mid-2020s using the notion of ‘threads through time’ including the upsurge of opportunity and aspiration which appeared to drive HE and Access yet encompassed the emergence of new forms of inequality in both Great Britain and Australia. This was an international phenomenon which continues to shape the educational and occupational worlds we live in across widely differing cultures.
Globalisation, cosmopolitanisation and internationalisation of learning opportunities impacted everywhere, alongside intensive local and community pressures for change and equity. The transformations brought about by widely adopted neoliberal economic and social policies re-shaped the purposes of universities in a period of market predominance. New elitism and hierarchies of value now associated with universities mean we now have mass participation but also differentiation rooted in racial, ethnic and social divisions. Universities now serve conflicting ‘publics’, where race, ethnic identity, class and transnational identities can clash and where notions of the common good must engage with the steep gradient of differentiated value ( league tables which help determine and legitimise historic and contemporary inequalities).
The book explores the possibilities of a critical and what Stuart Hall called a ‘universal curriculum’ as a response to the reshaped public sphere.
