Reclaiming Public Universities: Comparative Reflections for Reforms

This book explores the nature of public universities and higher education reforms in emerging economies, with a focus on India, South Africa and Brazil. Drawing on context-based case studies, the essays in the volume highlight the state of public universities amongst the developing world with their shared colonial past and social, caste and race inequalities. Based on comparative and multidisciplinary studies, the book provides a critical account of the policy reforms and changes on account of globalization and markets in higher education in public universities of the Global South regions.

The chapters also compare methodological approaches to university reform and restructuring of public universities and higher education systems in USA, Australia, the European Union and India, and examine the California model, the Bologna process, the Melbourne model, the University of Delhi reforms, and engage critically with the New Public Management inspired reform policies. The book further lays the groundwork for understanding 'massification' in a contextual way, and the possibilities for expansion of scale of mass higher education through public provision.

With its empirical findings and social theory analyses by global experts, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of education, higher education, sociology and social anthropology, development studies, public policy and administration, politics, political economy, and Global South studies. It will also be useful to educationists, policymakers and civil society organizations.

Manisha Priyam is Professor of Education Policy at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, India. She has been a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, with an ICSSR fellowship award (2013-14). She has a Ph.D. in International Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests include educational policy reforms, school decentralization, gender and social equity issues in higher education. Her publications include The Contested Politics of Educational Reforms: Aligning Opportunities with Interests (2015).