Agents of Change: A Critical Analysis of Governing Actors in Alberta’s 2030 Higher Education Reform Plan
Keywords:
academic capitalism, neoliberalism, Canadian higher education, policy reformAbstract
Every province and territory in Canada has the authority to oversee higher education policies. In recent provincial and federal policy reforms, neoliberalism and academic capitalism have been gaining influence in Canadian higher education. This particularly applies to the policy reform plan Alberta 2030: Building Skills for Jobs, which was issued to develop higher education in the province. This paper critically analyzes the recent 10-year plan to reform Alberta’s higher education by combining Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What is the Problem Represented’ (WPR) approach and Chou et al.’s (2017) multi-actor framework. The purpose of this analysis is to provide insight into the actors and agendas affected by market-driven ideologies (i.e., neoliberalism and academic capitalism) on higher education policy in Alberta, Canada, with a focus on the abovementioned reform plan. The analysis underscores that the shift toward a profit-oriented approach challenges the traditional notion of higher education as a public good. This paper also discusses the implications of the reform plan and recommendations for its application.
Downloads
References
Alderman, G. (2001). The globalization of higher education: Some observations regarding the free market and the national interest. Higher Education in Europe, 26(1), 47–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/03797720120054175
Altbach, P. G. (2009). Higher education: An emerging field of research and policy. In R. M. Bassett & A. Maldonado-Maldonado (Eds.), International organizations and higher education policy: Thinking globally, acting locally? (pp. 7–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203876664
Apple, M. W. (2001). Comparing neo-liberal projects and inequality in education. Comparative Education, 37(4), 409–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060120091229
Bacchi, C. (2000). Policy as discourse: What does it mean? Where does it get us? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 21(1), 45–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300050005493
Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Pearson Education.
Bacchi, C., & Goodwin, S. (2016). Making and unmaking “subjects.” In C. Bacchi & S. Goodwin, Poststructural policy analysis: A guide to practice (pp. 69–81). Palgrave Pivot. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52546-8_5
Ball, S. J. (2007). Education plc: Understanding private sector participation in public sector education. Routledge.
Bastalich, W. (2010): Knowledge economy and research innovation. Studies in Higher Education, 35(7), 845–857. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070903406533
Brown, R. (2015). The marketisation of higher education: Issues and ironies. New Vistas, 1(1), 4–9. https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/3065
Busemeyer, M. R., Franzmann, S. T., & Garritzmann, J. L. (2013). Who owns education? Cleavage structures in the partisan competition over educational expansion. West European Politics, 36(3), 521–546. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2012.753703
Chou, M.-H., Jungblut, J., Ravinet, P., & Vukasovic, M. (2017). Higher education governance and policy: An introduction to multi-issue, multi-level and multi-actor dynamics. Policy and Society, 36(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2017.1287999
Deem, R., & Brehony, K. J. (2005). Management as ideology: The case of ‘new managerialism’ in higher education. Oxford Review of Education, 31(2), 217–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054980500117827
Diem, S., Young, M. D., Welton, A. D., Mansfield, K. C., & Lee, P. L. (2014). The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27(9), 1068–1090. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2014.916007
Drummond, J. (2003). Care of the self in a knowledge economy: Higher education, vocation and the ethics of Michel Foucault. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(1), 57–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-5812.00005
Fisher, D., Rubenson, K., Jones, G., & Shanahan, T. (2009). The political economy of post-secondary education: A comparison of British Columbia, Ontario and Québec. Higher Education, 57, 549–566. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9160-2
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1975)
Gale, T., Molla, T., & Parker, S. (2017). The illusion of meritocracy and the audacity of elitism: Expanding the evaluative space in education. In S. Parker, K. N. Gulson, & T. Gale (Eds.), Policy and inequality in education (pp. 7–21). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4039-9_2
Gates, L. P. (2010). Strategic planning with critical success factors and future scenarios: An integrated strategic planning framework (CMU/SEI-2010-TR-037). Carnegie Mellon University and The Software Engineering Institute. https://doi.org/10.1184/r1/6584420.v1
Giroux, H. (2002). Neoliberalism, corporate culture, and the promise of higher education: The university as a democratic public sphere. Harvard Educational Review, 72(4), 425–464. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.72.4.0515nr62324n71p1
Government of Alberta. (2002). Campus Alberta: A policy framework. Alberta Learning. https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/8567eda5-c35d-4d63-965b-83186cd7e726/resource/8eb0d971-6492-4650-8da1-5451042163d3/download/campusalbertframework.pdf
Government of Alberta. (2003). Post-secondary Learning Act. Alberta King’s Printer. https://kings-printer.alberta.ca/570.cfm?frm_isbn=9780779845460&search_by= link
Government of Alberta. (2007). Roles and mandates policy framework for Alberta’s publicly funded advanced education system. Alberta Advanced Education and Technology. https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/f84f2391-0eda-45d3-a7c6-e19ca51a2d59/resource/1447ca1d-2370-4c2d-a55f-973197985e1b/download/4178234-2007-11-roles-and-mandates.pdf
Government of Alberta. (2021). Alberta 2030: Building skills for jobs. Alberta Advanced Education. https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/24e31942-e84b-4298-a82c-713b0a272604/resource/b5a2072e-8872-45f9-b84d-784d0e98c732/download/ae-alberta-2030-building-skills-for-jobs-10-year-strategy-post-secondary-education-2021-04.pdf
Harrison, T., & Mueller, R. (2021, October 5). Roadmap or roadkill, a critical look at the government’s strategy for post-secondary education in Alberta. Parkland Institute. https://www.parklandinstitute.ca/roadmap_or_roadkill
Hauserman, C., & Stick, S. (2005). The history of post-secondary finance in Alberta - An analysis. Canadian Journal for Educational Administration and Policy, 42, 1–25. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/article/view/42722
Hazelkorn, E. (2015). Rankings and the reshaping of higher education: The battle for world-class excellence (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137446671
Jessop, B. (2018). On academic capitalism. Critical Policy Studies, 12(1), 104–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2017.1403342
Kirby, D. (2011). Strategies for widening access in a quasi-market higher education environment: Recent developments in Canada. Higher Education, 62(3), 267–278. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9386-7
Kohn, A. (1992). No contest: The case against competition. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Kudryavtsev, A., Stedman, R. C., & Krasny, M. E. (2012). Sense of place in environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 18(2), 229–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2011.609615
Lang, D. W. (2005). The political economy of performance funding. In F. Iacobucci & C. Tuohy (Eds.), Taking public universities seriously (pp. 226–250). University of Toronto Press.
Larsen, M. A., & Al-Haque, R. (2020). Canadian internationalization policy network as assemblage. In M. Tamtik, R. D. Trilokekar, & A. G. Jones (Eds.), International education as public policy in Canada (pp. 336–357). McGill-Queen’s University Press.
McMorrow, A. (2017). Poststructuralism. In S. McGlinchey, R. Walters, & C. Scheinpflug (Eds.), International relations theory (pp. 56–61). E-International Relations Publishing. https://www.e-ir.info/publication/international-relations-theory
Metcalfe, A. S. (2010). Revisiting academic capitalism in Canada: No longer the exception. The Journal of Higher Education, 81(4), 489–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2010.11779062
Metcalfe, A. S., & Fenwick, T. (2009). Knowledge for whose society? Knowledge production, higher education, and federal policy in Canada. Higher Education, 57(2), 209–225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9142-4
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (1996). Knowledge-based economy. https://one.oecd.org/document/OCDE/GD%2896%29102/En/pdf
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2017). In-depth analysis of the labour market relevance and outcomes of higher education systems: Analytical framework and country practices report (EDU/EDPC[2017]2). https://one.oecd.org/document/EDU/EDPC(2017)2/En/pdf
Olssen, M., & Peters, M. A. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: From the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 20(3), 313– 345. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930500108718
Ozaga, J. (2007). Knowledge and policy: Research and knowledge transfer. Critical Studies in Education, 48(1), 63–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508480601120988
Parkland Institute (2021, October 4). A dangerous road for Alberta post-secondary institutions: New report shows impact of provincial government’s changes and cuts [Media release]. https://www.parklandinstitute.ca/roadmap_or_roadkill_release
Pollitt, C., & Bouckaert, G. (2011). Public management reform: A comparative analysis—New public management, governance, and the neo-Weberian state (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Polster, C. (2005). Privatizing Canada’s public universities. Canadian Dimension, 39(5), 18– 20. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/privatizing-canadas-public-universities-claire-polster
Powell, W. W., & Snellman, K. (2004). The knowledge economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 199–220. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100037
Rawolle, S., & Lingard, B. (2008). The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and researching education policy. Journal of Education Policy, 23(6), 729–741.
Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2009). Globalizing education policy. Routledge.
Sahlberg, P. (2006). Education reform for raising economic competitiveness. Journal of Educational Change, 7(4), 259–287. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-005-4884-6
Saunders, S. (2007). The impact of neoliberalism on college students. Journal of College and Character, 8(5), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.2202/1940-1639.1620
Schmaus, D. & Wimmer, R. (2013). Government policy and postsecondary education in Alberta: A ‘Field Theory’ analysis. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 59(1), 92–107. https://doi.org/10.11575/ajer.v59i1.55697
Schulze-Cleven, T., Reitz, T., Maesse, J., & Angermuller, J. (2017). The new political
economy of higher education: Between distributional conflicts and discursive stratification. Higher Education, 73, 795–812. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0114-4
Sengupta, E., Blessinger, P., & Nezaami, N. (2022). Introduction to governance and management in higher education. In Sengupta, E., Blessinger, P. and Nezaami, N. (Eds.), Governance and management in higher education (pp. 3–11). Emerald Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120220000043001
Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state, and higher education. Johns Hopkins University Press.
St. George, E. (2006). Positioning higher education for the knowledge based economy. Higher Education, 52(4), 589–610. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-005-0955-0
Sum, N.-L. (2009). The production of hegemonic policy discourses: ‘Competitiveness’ as a knowledge brand and its (re-)contextualizations. Critical Policy Studies, 3(2), 184–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460170903385668
Tamtik, M., Trilokekar, R. D., & Jones, G. A. (2020). International education as public policy in Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
University of Alberta Students’ Union. (2020). Alberta 2030 recommendations. https://www.su.ualberta.ca/media/uploads/1143/UASUAlberta2030.pdf
University of Calgary Faculty Association. (2021, May). Alberta
2030: Building skills for jobs. Academic Views. https://www.tucfa.com/academic-views/alberta-2030-building-skills-for-jobs
Vukasovic, M. (2017). Stakeholder organizations in the European higher education area: Exploring transnational policy dynamic. Policy and Society, 36(1), 109–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2017.1286741
Xiao, J., (2020). International education as a strategic investment in developing a knowledge-ready workforce in Alberta. In M. Tamtik, R. D. Trilokekar, & G. A. Jones (Eds.), International education as public policy in Canada (pp. 113–134). McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Marwa Younes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
