ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 discusses the politics of neoliberal planning in public higher education. Through the case study of one public university, this chapter looks at journalistic, media and scholarly discourses about various issues in the higher education sector as a whole, and explores how the government has succeeded in pulling various neoliberal ideas together into the operationalisation of public higher education in Bangladesh. To explore neoliberal planning in the public higher education, this chapter identifies the establishment of the Jagannath University during the time of formation of the Strategic Plan for Higher Education (SPHE) as a case. The chapter takes the SPHE as a departure point to analyse the micro-politics of neoliberal planning in public higher education sector and pay attention to the relationship between local and global policy actors. This chapter shows that although the Jagannath movement succeeded in achieving its desired changes, there has been no meaningful change in the overall direction of neoliberal transformation in public higher education sector. Public universities have creatively adopted various measures to offload financial pressure onto students.
