Education in Economics
A. Economic Globalisation and Education:
An Outline From The Article
1. “Hoogvelt (1997) takes as her starting point three distinctive features of economic globalisation in the contemporary period.”
a. “[T]he advent of a new market discipline…which…creates an ‘awareness of global competition which constrains individuals and groups, and even national governments, to conform to international standards of price and quality (Hoogvelt 1997, p. 124).’”
b. “[S]he (Hoogvelt) describes flexible accumulation through global webs by which she refers to the ‘way in which the fusion of computer technology with telecommunications makes it possible for firms to relocate an ever-widening range of operations and functions to wherever cost-competitive labour, assets and infrastructure are available.(p. 126)’”
c. “Hoogvelt describes financial global deepening which has involved a ‘tremendous increase in the mobility of capital’ through ‘the press of a computer button’ and ‘the way it is being disconnected from social relationships in which money and wealth were previously embedded(129).’”
2. “For authors such as Castells (1993) and Amin (1997), the upshot of the new technologies has been to create pockets of the ‘Fourth World’ in the former First, Second and Third Worlds” with “[m]uch of sub-Saharan Africa…included in this emerging ‘Fourth World.’”
a. “[T]he World Bank and IMF since the 1980’s, ha[ve]…impose[d] structural adjustment policies on many countries of sub-Saharan Africa” as stated below: 1.) “cuts in government expenditure”
2.) “trade liberalization policies”
3.) “currency devaluation”
4.) “reduction of price controls”
5.) “a shift to export oriented policies”
6.) “revised fiscal policies to increase government revenue”
7.) “user charges for public services like education and increased
privitasation”
3. Tikly sees “two” ramifications created from the structural adjustment policies on “education in low income, postcolonial countries” as stated in the following questions:
a. What are “the implications of economic globalisation for education provision”?
b. What is “the relationship between education, skills formation and global labour markets”?
4. The problematics associated with economic globalisation and education of the poor are as follows:
a. “According to Ilon, ‘a national system of schooling is likely to give way to local systems for the poor and global systems for the rich (p. 99)’”
b. “There is also a need to avoid crude functionalism and the idea of a clear-cut ‘correspondence’ between education and the emerging global division of labour.”
c. “[A]lthough there exists at one level a commonality of interests, the economic and political interests of the global élite are not always of a piece.”
d. “[T]here remains a negative correspondence between the high skill requirements of business and the public sector at the national level and skills that the indigenous education system is able to produce…exacerbated by the crippling ‘brain drain.’”
5. “What is being argued is that education can only begin to play such a role (“hope of a better future through education”) if there is a fundamental change in the nature of the West’s economic relationship with Africa and to the global (and national) division of labour.”
