Neoliberal reform discourse in Egyptian higher education

Abstract

The global neoliberal discourse on Higher Education (HE) reform has become dominant in both the developed and developing worlds. The paper tackles the Egyptian HE reforms that have been produced in line with the global neoliberal discourse through the World Bank’s (WB) funded reform projects. Through Foucauldian discourse and genealogical analysis, the study questioned, troubled, and de-naturalized the inevitability and persistence of the neoliberal discourse in Egyptian HE. Far from being deterministic and rational, the process of transfer of the global neoliberal discourse to Egyptian HE was embedded in the interaction of a number of discursive and structural selectivities as captured by the Strategic Relational Approach. On one hand, privatization, cost-sharing strategies, and quality assurance systems constituted the major policy reforms produced by the neoliberal discourse. On the other hand academic freedoms, university autonomy, and equitable access to HE have been discursively disallowed, de-problematized and excluded. The 25th of January revolution represented a discontinuity that threatened the collapse of the neoliberal discourse while the crushing of the revolution perpetuated and reinforced the neoliberal discourse reflecting a mutual relationship between neoliberal and authoritarian discourses and governmentalities.