ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the various sources of support for the GRE in graduate admissions aimed less at leaving the reader a breadcrumb trail through the policy. It reframes the present consideration of neoliberal education policies away from exclusively naming actors and organizations as neoliberal entities and highlights how they behave neoliberally and inevitably preserve inequalities in graduate education and American educational spaces. Neoliberalism's privileging of individual self-interest, unfettered markets, and cost-cutting to increase profitability has turned the educational spaces into increasingly hyper-competitive environments that perpetuate the neoliberal position that education is both a private benefit and a private responsibility. Neoliberal notions of accountability and excellence are best articulated as genuine barriers to entry, not thoughtful stewardship of American public resources and rights. Americans have watched state and local funding for elementary and secondary schools dwindle as increased spending on prisons and the military, tax cuts, and other discretionary budget items have been prioritized at the expense of public K-12 education.