PRIVATIZATION OF

EDUCATION
CRITICISM OF EDUCATIONAL
PRIVATIZATION
HIGHER EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Presented By:
• Harmizi Bin Musa
• Hambalee Bin Roslee
• Chew Chiu Lee
• Logeshvaran A/L Alagirisamyby
 INTRODUCTION
 The private education sector is very different in
size and function based on a country.
 Closely related in Terms of History, Political
Structure, Religious Composition and Legal
Procedure
Countries Like Cuba, North Korea and
several other countries, banned the
formation of private schools to ensure that
there were no ideological differences In
the country.

Many parents send their children to

private schools to atend IGCSE
(International General Certificate Of
Secondary Education and the ultimate
goal is to facilitate admission to overseas
universities.
 Private education in Malaysia has been
around since the 1950s, mainly as a way for
students who cannot continue their
education in Government schools to obtain
their basic certificates. (Education act 1996)

 In the early 1970s there was a shift towards

the role and function of the private
education system where private education
entrepreneurs began to focus on pre-
university courses.
PROGRAM OFFERED

 PRE-UNIVERSITY matriculation programs in Australia, the

American university program and the Canadian matriculation
program. The latest development of private education is the
establishment of a branch campus in Malaysia. (Ee, 2003).

Universiti Monash Sunway di Kolej Sunway

Universiti Curtin, Kampus Miri
Universiti Nottingham, Kampus Malaysia
 CRITICISM ON PRIVATIZATIONS
OF EDUCATION
• widely embraced by governments around
the world
• supported by certain inter-governmental
organizations
• socially-committed non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and governments of
socialist persuasion
 ARGUMENTS FOR
PRIVATIZATION

• growing trend towards allowing private institutions to

become active players in the development and delivery of
social programmes.
• This trend is often referred to as privatization: it involves the
“transfer of assets, management, functions or responsibilities
previously owned or carried out by the State to private actors”
(Coomans & Hallo de Wold, 2005).
• The private sector has always been involved in education, with
family, religious institutions and philanthropic organizations
playing an important role in its funding and governance.
• public funding of education is a relatively recent historical
phenomenon.
 ARGUMENTS FOR
PRIVATIZATION
• Even in low-income countries such as India, the right
to education was inscribed in its constitution– even if this
aspiration was not enacted until only recently, mostly, it was
argued, due to the state’s lack of resources (Tilak, 2009).
• UNESCO expects Member States to invest heavily in the
realization of these goals, especially at primary and secondary
levels, but does not rule out a major role for private
investment in education.
• many of these claims can and have been contested (see for
example Verger et al., 2016). It has been shown that they are
often unsupported or contradicted by empirical evidence.
These ideological claims have nevertheless become highly
influential around the world.
• the lack of public funds to meet the growing demand for
these services, the importance of accountability and the need
to give consumers a choice.
• There is an ever growing belief that the state should no
longer be asked to carry the entire burden of funding growth
in public services;
 A GLOBAL TREND

•Corporate investment in low-income countries is often

accompanied with the requirement that they privatize many of
their government services (Dicken, 2015).

• Under Neoliberalism], citizens are rendered as investors and

consumers, and not as members of a polity who share certain
common traditions, spaces and experiences. What is more,
knowledge and education are valued and desired almost
exclusively for their contribution to the processes of capital
formation and enhancement.

• OECD, the World Bank and UNESCO has become increasingly

influential (Rutkowski, 2006).
 FORMS OF
PRIVATIZATION

Degefa (2011) focuses on the interlocking roles that the

state and the market play in privatizing institutions, and
helpfully suggests a continuum that involves four possible
modalities:
→Privatization as cost-sharing (public provision and private
financing modality);
→Privatization by application of business-like management
styles to public institutions (corporatization);
→Privatization through voucher system (market provision and
state financing);
→Privatization as emergence of non-state education sector
(market provision and financing).
 PRIVATIZATION OF
EDUCATION
• Three forms of privatization – delegation, divestment and
displacement.
• In addition to parental choice through vouchers, tuition
tax credits, charters and similar mechanisms, the most far
reaching mode of privatization through delegation has been
through contracts awarded competitively to private, for-
profit firms
 PROBLEMS AND
CONSEQUENCES
Privatization policies do not only specify the manner in which
schools are funded and administered, they have the potential to
redefine the very nature of education. Therefore, while
privatization has opened up the possibility of universal
participation in education, student opportunities are nonetheless
unequally distributed.

CONCLUSION: THE NEED FOR DEMOCRATIC

CONTROL

Privatization needs to be democratically controlled– to be

tamed in a manner that preserves education’s traditional
purposes of community building and working towards social
cohesion and solidarity.
 HIGHER EDUCATION AND
DEVELOPMENT
• Higher education is an important form of investment in human
capital. In fact, it can be regarded as a high level or a specialised
form of human capital, contribution of which to economic growth
is very significant.
• Higher education allows people to enjoy an enhanced ‘life of
mind’, offering the wider society, both cultural and political
benefits (TFHES, 2000, p. 37).
• Wide variations in the levels of development of higher education
between several countries: some have very well developed
higher education systems both in breadth and depth and in
others it is highly restricted to a small minority of the population.
 HIGHER EDUCATION AND
ECONOMIC GROWTH
• What is the effect of higher education on economic growth of
the countries?
• There is a general presumption that higher education is not
necessary for economic growth and development, particularly in
developing countries.
• Conventionally, the contribution of education to economic
development is analysed in terms of education-earnings
relationships and, more conveniently, in the form of rates of
return. Rates of return are a summary statistic of the
relationship between lifetime earnings and the costs of
education.
• Contribution of higher education to economic development can
also be measured better with the help of production function or
even a simple regression equation.
Public Policy and Development of Higher
Education.

Despite increasing awareness of the contribution of higher

education to development, many developing countries in the
Asian region have not expanded their higher education systems
adequately, due to a variety of factors – social, economic,
political and cultural. However, one of the most important
factors relates to public policies on the expansion of higher
education. Several developing countries continue to pay
inadequate attention to higher education. Two major areas of
public policy are worth examining here. They are the
(i) financing of higher education and
(ii) Privatisation.
 CONCLUSIONS AND
IMPLICATIONS

Higher education systems in many developing as well as

developed counties including in Asia and Pacific are also
characterised with a crisis, rather a continuing crisis, with
overcrowding, inadequate staffing, deteriorating standards and
quality, poor physical facilities, insufficient equipment, and
declining public budgets. More importantly, higher education is
subject to neglect and even discrimination in public policy.