Education in crisis - this way out

With the advent of the market forces in the post-socialist education space, the logic of service provision has become commonplace in schools. For many teachers, “education entrepreneurship” has become a part of the individual and collective professional identity formation. In Lithuania, for example, the 2003 Law on Education codified the concept of a “freelance teacher,” whereby teachers can become licensed to engage in private educational activities on an individual basis. According to the Law, freelance teachers have the right to ...

The collapse of the socialist bloc in 1989 was accompanied by a severe economic decline. This resulted in the decrease of education spending in most countries of Southeast/Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Twenty years later, the global financial crisis has dealt another major blow to the educational systems of the former socialist bloc. As public expenditure on education declined, the share of costs borne by individuals and families has exponentially grown in most countries of the region. The new private ...

Privatisation in public education has become the focus of much-needed analysis, highlighting the ethical dangers associated with education reforms promoting competition, choice, performance management, private-public partnerships, and commercialization in education* However, one of the most widespread (yet mostly invisible) forms of privatisation in public education – private tutoring – has generally remained outside of policy review. Billion-dollar industry According to 2012 estimates, private tutoring constituted a US$11 billion industry in the United States alone. It has become a worldwide phenomenon that ...

While academics and policymakers are debating whether education could be preserved as a public good in the aftermath of the global economic crisis, the business world has a different take on the issue. For private equity investors in the United States, education is first and foremost a lucrative investment opportunity. It is merely a commodity that can be opportunely bought and sold in the growing educational marketplace. On 26 July, the Capital Roundtable (America's leading conference company for the middle-market private ...

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rhetoric of "crisis" has dominated education policy debates in the former socialist bloc countries. The titles of numerous education policy briefs, studies, and reports made this clearly visible—A Generation at Risk: Children in the Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (Asian Development Bank 1998), Youth in Central Asia: Losing the New Generation (International Crisis Group 2003), and Public Spending on Education in the CIS-7 Countries: The Hidden Crisis (World ...