The Privatization of Education: A Political Economy of Global Education Reform

Education privatization is a global phenomenon that has crystallized in countries with very different cultural, political, and economic backgrounds. In this book, the authors examine how privatization policies are being adopted and why so many countries are engaging in this type of education reform. The authors explore the contexts, key personnel, and policy initiatives that explain the worldwide advance of the private sector in education, and identify six different paths toward education privatization—as a drastic state sector reform (e.g., Chile, the U.K.), as an incremental reform (e.g., the U.S.A.), in social-democratic welfare states, as historical public-private partnerships (e.g., Netherlands, Spain), as de facto privatization in low-income countries, and privatization via disaster.

Book Features:

• The first comprehensive, in-depth investigation of the political economy of education privatization at a global scale.
• An analysis of the different strategies, discourses, and agents that have contributed to advancing (and resisting) education privatization trends.
• An examination of the role of private corporations, policy entrepreneurs, philanthropic organizations, think-tanks, and teacher unions.

“Rich in examples, careful in its analysis, important in its conclusions and recommendations for further work, this book is a vital, rigorous, up-to-date resource for education policy researchers.”
—Stephen J. Ball, University College London

“Few issues are as significant as is education privatization across the globe; few treatments of this issue offer both the breadth and nuanced understanding that this book does.”
—Christopher Lubienski, Indiana University