ABSTRACT
The view that investment in higher education would bring limited social and economic benefi ts to developing countries, advocated for decades by powerful western governments and international organisations such as the World Bank, was dramatically overturned in the late 1980s. Hegemonic ideological, political and economic forces associated with globalisation and the ‘knowledge economy’ have repositioned higher education in developing countries as a crucial site for social development and for the production, dissemination, and transfer of economically productive knowledge and innovation. Indeed, the vision now being promoted is that quality higher education is an essential pre-requisite for developing countries to escape their peripheral status in the global economy. The new orthodoxy originating from organisations such as the World Bank is that the knowledge economy, which signals a trend away from material production and manual work towards knowledge-related products and services, could reduce the disparity between rich and poor nations (Task Force on Higher Education in Developing Countries 2000.) The rationale is that the ability to transmit and access information rapidly across the globe has the potential to transform countries that are materially poor into countries that are ‘information rich’ with the ability to utilize knowledge for economic development. In the views of international agencies and powerful governments, the shift to a knowledge economy implies a change in the relationship between higher education and the economy, with higher education being positioned as an important producer of economically productive knowledge (Peters 2001).
