Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth : A discourse analysis investigating discourse on the role and aims of higher education in the context of corporate partnerships

Sammanfattning

This thesis explores corporate philanthropy in public higher education in the Netherlands as a symptom of a broader shift from public to corporate influence. It investigates how higher education institutions and corporate actors discursively construct the role and aims of higher education in the context of corporate philanthropy and in doing so, addresses a gap of critical, empirical research of this phenomenon in a non-US context. The thesis conducts a discourse analysis based on Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, combined with Henry Giroux’s critical theory and critical pedagogy, approaching discourse from a post-structuralist standpoint, to emphasise that the normalisation of values and ideas is not a given, but a hegemonic practice. This study conducted six interviews, three with higher education institutions, and three corporations who are actively involved in partnerships with higher education. The analysis reconstructed the discursive patterns on the role and aims of higher education and philanthropy through hegemonic tendencies and antagonisms within and across the interviews. The results show a strong hegemonic tendency that constructs higher education as a responsive and non-autonomous institution, whose main aims should be to serve public problems. However, the analysis demonstrated that the construction of public problems was discursively aligned with corporate problems and an economic logic, aligning public good with labour-market needs, innovation and economic prosperity. As a result, higher education was often positioned as a labour-pipeline, while little space is reserved for cultural, democratic or critical responsibilities. These findings were then interpreted using Giroux’s writings, to contrast them with a critical pedagogical construction of higher education as an autonomous, democratic counterinstitution. This thesis shows how corporate influence on higher education is legitimised through discursive constructions, and in doing so invites readers to critically question what is presented as truth, resist that these development are inevitable, and to inspire to think of alternatives.