Description
In this work, I examine neoliberalism in higher education, showing that it creates dehumanizing hierarchies like that of Social Stockholm Syndrome. As education at the university becomes increasingly involved in neoliberal practices and methodologies, any genuine notions towards becoming more human in the Buberian sense are eliminated. Some examples of this include Student Learning Outcomes where students must memorize and regurgitate facts for assessments leading to commodifying them into objects, universities' mirroring corporate managerial structures and practices, infiltration of funding from private interest groups, and a pedagogy that becomes increasingly disconnected from the larger social context due to hyper-focus of market-based skills for the status quo. In essence, neoliberalism prevents higher education from becoming a force for a more just, equal, and democratic world as well as preventing progress towards becoming more human: a difference between living and simply existing. In this work, I utilize criteria for having Social Stockholm Syndrome in order to better analyze the oppressive pedagogy of neoliberalism in higher education, where neoliberalism is the captor and those involved at the university (students, faculty, and the administration) are the hostages. This work also includes an examination of two alternative educational pedagogies so as to undermine any common misconceptions of a lack of other alternatives to the dominant neoliberal model. These alternatives do not allow an oppressive hierarchy like the Social Stockholm Syndrome of neoliberalism as they instead seek to liberate and progress us further towards Buberian genuine human beings. The alternatives that I examine in this work are Paulo Freire's "Problem Posing Education" and anarchist education.
