Masking Neoliberal Ideology: Teleological Framing and the 'Reinvention' of Higher Education

Over recent decades neoliberal ideology, in the guise of market imperatives, has gained resonance within institutions of higher education around the world. Neoliberal proposals are too often characterised as 'realistic' responses to competitive market needs for efficient outcomes, although the proposals themselves are ideological and many of them fail, once implemented. Post-global recession, for example, tech entrepreneurs and university administrators warned that higher education must be reinvented or become extinct due to innovations in online courses and market competition. These neoliberal frames were resonant with teleological cultural narratives of inevitable progress, which shut down consideration of alternatives to solve university problems. This study looks at a microcosm of larger trends in academia through a comparative content analysis that identifies how frames were constructed to promote the reinvention of higher education through online courses at a state university in California and a research university in Missouri, USA. Neoliberal policies failed at both institutions as millions of dollars were spent to jumpstart the reinvention. These cases sensitize us to how neoliberal framing masks corporate interests and poor administrative decision-making influenced more by ideology than research and evidence.