Neoliberalism, which plays a significant role in modern education, eliminates the personal value of man. This leads to a situation when the quality of higher education in the U.S. is depreciated, as the vector of main priorities of rectors shifts from quality to quantity. This article discusses the impact of neoliberalism on the quality of higher education and provides recommendations through which the CCBC could improve the educational process.
In the current environment, when competition in education is growing, universities need to create a favorable opinion about themselves. Each institution tries to be more attractive to its target audience by implementing various branding and advertising policies (Oleksenko, Molodychenko, & Scherbakova, 2018). As a result, the number of higher education institutions funded only by public funds is decreasing every year, while the number of private higher education institutions is increasing. This cumulatively determines the global crisis in higher education, which leads to the fact that socially vulnerable segments of society do not have the means to get a full education.
The main problem determining the deep crisis in this sphere is the commercial side of the educational process. Neoliberals are convinced that education can and should be a paid service for its primary audience (Hanesworth, 2017). The modern students are not an honorary category of society with the privilege of being trained (Oleksenko et al., 2018). People who now study at universities are referred to as recipients and the teaching staff as providers of educational services (Cannella & Koro-Ljungberg, 2017). Families become the objects of advertising technology; moreover, colleges, and universities become the subjects of marketing and participants in the race for the ratings introduced by someone (Hanesworth, 2017). In this race will always be the quest for survival and profit, crises, and speculation.
CCBC shares the values of access to education for different categories of the population, providing students with opportunities to continue their career path immediately after graduation. Despite its focus on the social function of the college, the institution offers paid services for students (“Costs and paying for college,” 2020). CCBC management is unlikely to be able to give up the commercial aspect of education, but instead, it must prioritize the quality of knowledge available to students.
A specific recommendation would be to make the admissions system more complex, with a direct impact on improving the quality of education by dropping out graduates from schools that do not need a college. In particular, the CCBC may implement a multistage admissions system that includes a written exam, an oral interview with the faculty, and an interview with deans and managers coordinating the learning process.
By providing training places only for people who need education, the CCBC will be able to improve quality noticeably. Students will be surrounded by more educated people, permanently feeling the competition that has a positive impact on the learning process. As a result, the CCBC will provide the society with highly qualified specialists who have been strictly selected and trained.
In conclusion, it should be noted that universities have become places where quantitative indicators and ratings are much more valuable than educational quality. To eliminate this problem, universities need to revise the rules of admission of applicants, making education more elitist on the one hand, and protecting the interests of socially vulnerable groups on the other.
References
Cannella, G. S., & Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2017). Neoliberalism in higher education: Can we understand? Can we resist and survive? Can we become without neoliberalism? Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 17(3), 155-162.
Costs and paying for college. (2020). Web.
Hanesworth, C. (2017). Neoliberal influences on American higher education and the consequences for social work programmes. Critical and Radical Social Work, 5(1), 41-57.
Oleksenko, R., Molodychenko, V., & Shcherbakova, N. (2018). Neoliberalism in higher education as a challenge for future civilization. Philosophy and Cosmology, 20(1), 113-119.