The Next Educational Bubble – Educational Brokers and Education Governance Mechanisms: Who Governs What!

Abstract

Today, the global education market is one of the faster growing sectors, and it has attracted several new actors or what we call educational brokers who are now responsible for shaping national agendas. The newer actors in education are vastly different for the former players in that whereas previous actors engrossed national educational systems through the provision of technical assistance to meet international standards, best practices, and benchmarks, these newer players are for-profit entities that emphasize austerity, leanness, human resource maximization, performance targets, and competition. Therefore, in this new educational landscape, national governments are seen as “clients” who receive “expert” advice from “external consultants” that have an assortment of experiences across different sectors. Education governance is no longer a statist endowed but one that incubates in laborites of best practices resonates with existing case studies and results driven based on Big Date collected. We argue that educational brokers are responsible for the emergence of a hybrid form of education governance that use business and market techniques to reform strategies within the education sector. We conclude by suggesting that collectively educational brokers are using what we call “educational sub-prime mechanisms” – higher interest rates, reduced quality collateral, and less advantageous terms to counterweight higher credit risk – to manage educational portfolios and newer forms of educational risk.

Citation

Jules, T.D. and Jefferson, S.S. (2016), "The Next Educational Bubble – Educational Brokers and Education Governance Mechanisms: Who Governs What!", The Global Educational Policy Environment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Public Policy and Governance, Vol. 26), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 123-147. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2053-769720160000026011