The evolving discourse of the purpose of higher educationthe rhetoric of higher education reform

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Chapter 21

The Evolving Discourse of the
Purpose of Higher Education:

The Rhetoric of Higher Education Reform
Mary Runté
University of Lethbridge Alberta, Canada
Robert Runté
University of Lethbridge Alberta, Canada

ABSTRACT
A brief historical overview of the evolution of the public discourse of the purpose of higher education
is undertaken to provide context for current debates over investment in, and reform of, post-secondary
education. Four separate discourses are identified: higher education for enlightenment, to develop human capital, as manpower management, and as consumerism. The dominant discourse of the purpose of
higher education is shown to have changed from learning for its own sake to an emphasis on manpower
planning and consumerism. The separate assumptions and implications of these distinct discourses are
often confabulated with little apparent awareness of the contradictory nature of rhetoric drawn from
more than one discourse at a time. The authors provide a simple analytical framework to cut through
the confusion.

INTRODUCTION
There is frequently a disconnect between research and public policy in the field of higher education
(Hillman, Tandberg & Sponsler, 2015). Researchers need to ensure that their research is relevant to
public policy, or risk speaking only to themselves. By the same token, policy-makers need to ensure that
decision-making is evidence-based or risk making costly mistakes based on faulty assumptions. When
addressing fundamental issues, both researchers and policy-makers start from the values and assumptions implicit within the dominant discourse(s) of the purpose of higher education. Understanding how
this public discourse has changed over time is, then, fundamental to any analysis of either research or
policy trends.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0672-0.ch021

Copyright © 2017, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.



The Evolving Discourse of the Purpose of Higher Education

To be successful, educational leaders and administrators need to understand the assumptions that
underlie the policies for which they are responsible. This is surprisingly problematic because the arguments made to support investment in, or reform of, higher education often draw on four distinct (arguably
contradictory) discourses. As different discourses have historically appealed to different stakeholders,
switching between discourses depending on the audience addressed is a sensible and workable strategy
for administrators seeking support for their initiatives. Problems arise, however, when these separate
discourses become so confabulated that one is no longer able to disentangle them oneself.
Understanding discourse also abets predictability of changes in actual university practice. Sustainable
adoption of online courses, for example, can only be successful if relevant audiences can be convinced
that the platform fits within the discourse of higher education. Those institutions best able to predict
how shifts in discourse will impact program models and delivery mechanisms will be first to market and
therefore best able to capitalize on the emerging technologies. The emergence of online institutions, for
example, could be accurately predicted 35 years ago (Runté, 1981) —before there even was an Internet—through a simple extrapolation of the then emergent trends in the dominant discourse.
Therefore, it is impossible to understand shifts in government funding or public support for higher
education without first understanding changes in the public discourse of the purpose of higher education. This chapter traces the historical origins of the four competing discourses of the purpose of higher
education to examine the fundamental assumptions that direct investment and reform.

FOUR DISCOURSES OF HIGHER EDUCATION
The emergence of the modern university as a publicly funded institution was first predicated upon enlightenment ideals. A discourse of education as investment in human capital then developed in competition to this ideal. This human capital discourse was dominant during the explosive expansion of higher
education in the post-war era, but became subject to further refinement the early 1980s. The emergence
of these two new discourses was predicated on the assumption that only targeted investment based on
a measurable benefit to the economy justified expenditures from the public purse. Categorized by their
fundamental characteristics and presented in the order in which they became dominant, they are the

discourses of enlightenment, human capital, manpower and consumerism.

The Discourse of Enlightenment
The dominant discourse of the purpose of higher education initially was that any learning is of value
in and of itself. A significant proponent of this view was Cardinal Newman (1852), founder of Dublin
University: “Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind that
any kind of knowledge, if it really be such, is its own reward.” (p. 130)
Higher education, in the discourse of enlightenment, is not a means to some economic end, such as the
attainment of professional qualifications or an assured supply of trained manpower, but an end in itself.
Opposed to this view was the insistence that education must be of some utility in the practical world.
Already in Newman’s time, these arguments were being expressed in terms almost indistinguishable
from the present discourses of human capital and manpower planning. To quote Cardinal Newman’s
summary of the opposition:

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What is the real worth in the market of the article called “a liberal education”, on the supposition that
it does not teach us definitely how to advance our manufactures, or to improve our lands, or to better
our civil economy; or again, if it does not at once make this man a lawyer, that an engineer, and that a
surgeon; or at least if it does not lead to discoveries in chemistry, astronomy, geology, magnetism, and
science of every kind. (pp.171-172)
Against this view of the practical end of education, the proponents of enlightenment argue that
higher education—as opposed to mere training—was to develop the well-rounded individual, the ‘cultured gentleman’. In addition to a cultivated intellect, a disciplined and logical mind, the graduate was
expected to possess a discerning taste, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of his life, a sense
of responsibility to his society and civilization (Newman, p. 144), and other attributes of what would
today be termed the ‘self-actualized’ individual. Higher education that was narrowly vocational could not

provide this: Society itself requires some other contribution from each individual, besides the particular
duties of his profession. (Dr. Copleston, quoted by Newman, p. 184)
And again:
As a friend, as a companion, as a citizen at large; in the connections of domestic life; in the improvement
and embellishment of his leisure, he has a sphere of action, revolving, if you please, with the sphere of
his profession, but not clashing with it; in which if he can show none of the advantages of an improved
understanding, whatever may be his skill or proficiency in the other, he is no more than an ill-educated
man. (Davidson, quoted by Newman, p. 186)
Thus, higher education in the discourse of enlightenment was not simply for professional training, but
was expected to produce the intellectual, cultural, and ruling elite of the nation. Of course, in this period
universities were elite institutions, even when there was some provision made for the more promising
sons of the ‘lower orders’ through scholarships and sponsored mobility. A liberal education reflects the
educational priorities of a landed aristocracy, where the accumulation of cultural capital was how one
identified oneself as a member of the elite.
Higher education in the discourse of enlightenment was also necessarily perceived as representing
consumption. As an end in itself, education was by definition incapable of providing a direct economic
return. Professional and vocational training that had a demonstrable economic usefulness were on that
account not considered part of liberal education. Consequently, liberal studies undertaken for their own
sake must necessarily represent consumption. And since education was largely the preserve of the elite,
it was a form of conspicuous consumption for the upper classes: one went to (private) universities because it was expected of gentlemen, not because it was required for economic advantage or determined
one’s social status. The benefits accruing from the establishment of universities were thought to be of
a cultural rather than economic nature. Universities, like opera houses and art galleries, were the result
of economic growth and prosperity, not the cause.

The Discourse of Human Capital
By the late 1950’s, however, this view of university as consumption was almost completely displaced by
the discourse of human capital, which held that expenditures on education were an investment in human
capital and the nation’s economic progress. To quote Nobel laureate Theodore Schultz, best known of
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human capital’s modern proponents, speaking on the benefits of education as an investment: “Much of
what we call consumption constitutes investment in human capital. Direct expenditures on education,
health, and internal migration to take advantage of better job opportunities are clear examples (1977, p.
313).” Viewed in this light, investment in education was as vital—and often a precondition for—investment in industry. Investment in human capital, as with any other investment, could be expected to yield
measurable economic return, and was no longer seen as simply personal consumption.
Human capital could be considered from two perspectives: that of the individual, and that of the
state. For the state, investment in human capital was a necessary prerequisite for economic progress and
successful competition with other industrial nations. For example, the first issue of University Affairs
(October, 1959) published by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (now, Universities
Canada), quoted Cyril James:
The U.S.S.R. is putting a tremendous amount of money and effort into education because it realizes
that trained men—not natural resources—are the foundation of national prosperity and essential for
continuing economic growth.
In the world in which we live more people with a good education are required for national progress,
and if we in Canada want to maintain our prosperity and our welfare we too must find ways to see that
the brightest of our youngsters are encouraged and enabled to get all of the education of which they
are capable.
Similarly, it was often argued, throughout this period, that Third World nations were underdeveloped
primarily due to widespread illiteracy and a disastrous lack of graduates. Post-war Europe, for example,
was said to have had fewer intact capital resources than many African nations, but the recovery of the
European economies proceeded at a much more rapid pace than did the development of the African
states. The differences in human capital, particularly in terms of education, seemed to account for this.
Thus, the discourse of human capital was adopted by such agencies as the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, and was exported
throughout the world as the basis for most of the development strategies and policies of the 1950s and
1960s (Schultz, p. 322; and Karabel & Halsey, pp. 13-15).

From the individual’s point of view, staying in high school, working one’s way through college (or
other forms of post-secondary training) represented an investment in the individual’s own earning capacities. A medical student, for example, would be prepared to undertake a long and costly course of
studies only in anticipation of realizing substantial return on this investment upon entering the medical
profession. Even here, however, the state may expect to receive an indirect benefit in that the higher
wages realized by the trained worker imply higher tax revenues as well. Karabel and Halsey also make
the interesting observation that:
...what must be further remarked about the theory of human capital is the direct appeal to pro-capitalist
ideological sentiment that resides in its insistence that the worker is a holder of capital—(as embodied
in his skills and knowledge) and that he has the capacity to invest (in himself). Thus in a single bold
conceptual stroke, the wage earner, who holds no property and controls neither the process nor the
product of his labour, is transformed into a capitalist. (p. 13)

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In any event, the discourse of human capital was generally thought to account for the obvious correlation between years of education and salaries, and students were encouraged to continue their education
as an investment in their future, and to regard a university degree as the key to all opportunity. Thus the
discourse encouraged the demand for high school completion and university on the part of students (and
their parents) at the same time that it urged governments to meet this demand.
In Canada, for example, the precepts of human capital theory were popularized by the Economic
Council of Canada, which tended to emphasize the need to expand public schooling, higher education
and university-based research to catch up with the United States which had demonstrated higher completion rates of high school and university: “In Canada relatively more resources have been put into capital
facilities, while in the United States relatively more resources have been put into the development of
a more highly educated labour force and into the development and application of new technology…”
(ECC, 1966, p. 13). As a result of this perceived failure to keep pace with the United States, the Council
concluded that “. . . the shortage of skilled and trained technical, professional and managerial manpower
is even more critical than the problem of enlarging the physical facilities required for output” (p. 13)

and recommended “tremendous expansion” of enrollment rates and creation of infrastructure at university and technical school to create a “sharply accelerating flow of professional and other highly skilled
manpower (p. 13).”
The following year John Deutsch of the Economic Council of Canada announced that:
In its studies the Council has found the rate of return from investment in education, both to the individual
and the economy as a whole, is at least as large, and probably larger than, almost any other form of
investment. This has led us to recommend that the advancement of education and training at all levels
in Canada be given a very high place in the public policy and that investment in education be accorded
first place in the scale of priorities.
Naturally enough, Canadian educators were not slow to adopt a discourse of human capital themselves, given the immediate benefit to their universities in terms of funding and prioritization. The
highly influential Bladen Commission’s report on Financing Higher Education In Canada (1967) said
reinforced the Economic Council’s conclusion and charged government with creating the demand to
fulfill this mandate: “The people demand it; our economic growth requires it; our governments must
take the action necessary to implement it (p.1).” The human capital discourse thus became the theoretical basis upon which the explosive expansion of public schooling and higher education in Canada and
elsewhere was justified.
This discourse remained practically unchallenged throughout the 1960s, with its only opposition
coming from a few traditionalists who reacted against what they perceived as the dehumanizing human
capital approach and argued the enlightenment discourse’s view that the university’s mission was intellectual and cultural, not economic. Steacie (1960), for example, stated that:
Education should be considered as a Canadian problem and not as a race with anyone.... Most emphatically, Canadian university graduates should not be considered mere units of military armament.
In fact it cannot be emphasized too strongly that the whole manpower concept is quite foreign to the
real purpose of a university....(p.5)

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Most educators, however, argued that the emphasis on the economic benefits of this expansion was
in no way inconsistent with the university’s intellectual and cultural functions: “The assumption—and I
think it is a fair one—is simply that to fulfill its social and cultural functions a system of education must

first of all be economically efficient (Aird, 1967, p.6).”
By the early 1970s, however, the theory of human capital was under attack in terms both of its basic
assumptions and its specific policy recommendations. Writers such as Lester Thurow and Barry Bluestone
questioned the discourse’s contention that employment status and wage rates could be explained simply
on the basis of variations in human capital. Bluestone contends that the correlation between education
and income, such as the contrast in salaries between physician and janitor, was on the surface reasonable.
This correlation, however was extrapolated to all labour research and ultimately was used to support the
contention that one’s economic situation was a matter of personal choice: “Those who invested more in
themselves would (almost automatically) find employment more often, reap higher wages, and benefit
from greater economic security (1977, p.337).” Government response to social issues, such as poverty,
were directed towards educational programs almost exclusively as “a technical exercise of finding the right
combination of manpower programs or human-resource development schemes to lift each individual from
personal disadvantage (p. 338)” whilst ignoring crises such as systemic discrimination as a root cause:
But many of those who suffer from low wages and unemployment have a considerable amount of human
capital. They fail to find jobs that pay a living wage because of racism, sexism, economic depression,
and uneven development of industries and regions. Compared with some workers who have found steady
employment in high-wage industries, these workers have, in many cases, even more human capital, but
happen to be the wrong color or sex, to be too young or too old, or to live on the wrong side of town or
in the wrong part of the country. The inadequacy of the economic system is a more important cause of
poverty than the inadequacy of people. (p.338)
The failure of the American “War on Poverty”, which was premised largely on a discourse of human
capital, would seem to support Bluestone’s contention that “...the human-capital school has attempted
to immunize the patient when it should have been eradicating the disease (p. 338).”
Once it was demonstrated that investment in human capital was not sufficient to ensure either personal
advancement or the eradication of poverty, the increasing investment in public schools, the creation of
community colleges (which were explicitly the agency for educational investment in the lower classes
and minority groups), and the expansion of the university system ceased to be seen as a panacea for all
of society’s ills.
The major reaction against the discourse of human capital, however, came as a result of increasing
graduate unemployment (or underemployment), decreasing enrolments, and spiraling costs, all of which

seemed to indicate that the limits of expansion had been reached, especially in the post-secondary system.
Although the model had postulated that investment in human capital inevitably resulted in economic
growth—probably equal to or even in excess of the scale of the investment—this was not, in fact, happening. The Canadian economy, for example, was experiencing recession, high unemployment, and inflation.
Instead of the predicted phenomenon of an expanding economy absorbing an expanding graduate class,
the economy was being over-supplied with expensive, over-trained manpower.
This in turn led to a falling off of enrolments as the public realized that personal investment in higher
education, both in terms of the direct costs and in foregone earnings, might not provide an adequate return.
(From time to time the trend has reversed, as those who cannot find suitable employment seek refuge
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from unfavourable labour markets by enrolling in further education. Although most of these individuals
retain some hope that the additional skills gained may increase their marketability, further schooling has
generally been seen as viable only in contrast to the bleak hopes of finding wage employment during
periods of high unemployment.)
The increasing public disillusionment with undergraduate education especially was also reflected
in a growing resentment for the rising cost of university education to the taxpayer, and a subsequent
reordering of priorities by governments. The unlimited investment in higher education that had been
premised on a discourse of human capital came to an abrupt end.
Some writers, such as Alexander Lockhart, concluded that the discourse of human capital had never
been appropriate, arguing that distinctions between Canada and the US economic systems and industrial
priorities made the importation of the discourse to Canadian soil both unsuccessful and undesirable:
At the time (1965), the principle areas of human capital shortage in the US economy were in the aerospace, electronic components, and other industries dependent upon public contract and subsidy which
in turn were part of the function of America’s role as a world power.
Clearly, Canada has no such potential, as illustrated by the Government’s foreclosure of the ‘Arrow’,
all-Canadian fighter aircraft, and the subsequent collapse of the Canadian aircraft industry. To have
imported uncritically a theoretical discourse designed to meet the manpower goals reflected the American

reality would thus seem illogical in the extreme. (p. 252)
Lockhart provided a convincing analysis of the errors of the Economic Council of Canada’s assumption throughout the 1960s that the demand for highly trained manpower in Canada was outstripping
supply, and he also questioned the presumed economic benefits of university expansion in Canada on
the scale experienced in the United States. He pointed out that Sweden had achieved a higher level of
industrialization and a slightly better standard of living than had Canada during the 1960s, but with only
half the number of graduates.
The Economic Council of Canada was itself expressing reservations about the costs of unrestrained
investment and expansion of higher education as early as 1970. The focus of its reports showed a shift
away from the discourse of human capital and the concomitant emphasis on the necessity for investment
in education to one on the need for greater efficiency, cost effectiveness, co-ordination to reduce duplication, and a general need to reduce costs. The Council’s 1971 publication, Canadian Higher Education In
The Seventies, for example, included a series of articles re-stressing the consumption view of education,
particularly for purposes of predicting future enrolments. Educators and administrators who had come to
expect the unqualified support of economists in their bid for a larger share of the GNP, suddenly found
their former allies urging accountability and even cutbacks. To quote J. F. Leddy, then President of the
University of Windsor:
Yet, in spite of this swing in the pendulum, Canadian Universities have not changed during the last five
years in their performance and in their genuine importance to Canada. All that has happened is that
those who begin and end their superficial case for the university with economic and materialistic considerations only, now find that, if they can ride smoothly upward with favourable arguments provided
by the Economic Council of Canada in a given year, they must be prepared to plunge on down the slope
of the roller coaster a few years later in a time of depression. (1971, p.5)

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Similarly, in the United States there were a series of reports throughout the 1980s—for example, A
Nation At Risk, Action for Excellence, Making the Grade and Educating Americans for the 21st Century—attacking the schools for their failure to deliver on their promises of economic and social returns
on investment. America was losing its competitive standing in the world, it was claimed, because Soviet

school children took four years of science and two of calculus, whereas 50% of Americans had no science or math past grade 10. To quote Governor James B. Hunt (Chair of the Task Force on Education
for Economic Growth), “We Americans want to insure that we can continue to compete in the world
economy. We want our economic productivity increased, our technological capability enhanced and
our standing in the world restored” (1984, p. 539). These reports therefore called for greater corporate
input into increasingly standardized curriculum, increasing math and science requirements, tightening
graduation standards, and eliminating ‘unnecessary frills’—i.e., the seemingly non-vocational liberal
arts. Art, music and drama classes became obvious targets as the emphasis was increasingly placed on job
training, which in the view of these reports meant a greater emphasis on math and science. The business
sector came in for criticism for not being sufficiently involved in determining curriculum: “We must tell
the business community that, if it wants better employees and higher profits, it must be involved in what
the schools teach and how they teach it. (Hunt, 1984, p. 540).”
None of these reports offered any concrete evidence that their recommended changes would in fact
improve economic performance; it was simply assumed. Critics like Joel Spring (1984) quickly pointed
out that lower American productivity was unrelated to schooling, but the result of the questionable
short-term strategies of American business leaders who had opted to exploit the worker surplus created
by the babyboom to employ cheap labour, rather than invest in expensive machinery. As babyboomers
flooded the American labour market in the 1960s and 1970s, entry-level salaries sharply decreased,
making hiring cheap labour the attractive alternative to investment in infrastructure; and government
became obsessed with vocational training in the (largely mistaken) belief that youth unemployment
was caused by a lack of skills (rather than simple babyboom demographics). As cheap, trained labour
became increasingly available, productivity necessarily went down, because productivity is defined as
output per worker hour. In contrast, labour-starved post-war Japan became the world leader in robotics because it was the only possible response to that nation’s labour shortages. Japanese productivity
went up because there were relatively fewer workers available/required to supervise their increasingly
mechanized factories, while American productivity went down because their factories relied instead on
armies of babyboomers. Thus, the higher productivity of Japanese workers related to the higher degree
of mechanization of Japanese production compared to American business, and was largely unrelated to
the trumpeted differences in their educational systems.
As the babyboom petered out in the West, the oversupply of entry-level labour correspondingly
dried up, threatening to drive up salaries; as employed babyboomers aged, so did their expectation for
higher wages to reflect their lengthening seniority. As workers thus became significantly more expensive, American business leaders abruptly became preoccupied with worker productivity and blamed

the schools (rather than their own short-sightedness) for the economy’s shortcomings (Spring, 1984).
The calls for educational reform therefore shifted to a focus on the need for higher standards, more
science and math, and greater technological literacy in the hopes that these now more expensive workers
could be made correspondingly more productive. The continued calls for expansion of skills training at
every level, and for greater efforts to ensure the schooling of marginalized populations (women, minorities,
etc.) may have resonated with the public, but the more cynical may notice that such measures also had
the effect of shoring up the then dwindling numbers of entry level workers. By replacing babyboomers
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with formerly excluded or marginalized populations, the continued expansion of skill training had the
effect of increasing the reserve army of the un- and under-employed, thereby driving wages back down.
Spring and others therefore pointed out that responding to the short term interests of the business sector may not be in the best public interest, as these policies would result in lower wages, not the higher
incomes promised by the discourse of human capital; that in effect, the education system was being used
to exploit workers (Spring, 1984).

The Discourse of Manpower
Nevertheless, there was no returning to the enlightenment discourse. Criticism of the human capital discourse was generally directed at specific details and recommendations, rather than to the basic premise
that expenditure in higher education represents investment. For example, Lockhart’s critique focused on
the applicability of a particular recommendation, that of the development of Ph.D. programs in science,
to the particular Canadian context. Although he succeeded in demonstrating the illogic of that policy
being adopted in Canada—and by extension, the discourse’s contention that economic growth inevitably
follows any investment in human capital—he did not question that people represent an economic resource
that requires investment, or that the function of education is primarily vocational. In other words, rather
than a complete rejection of the discourse of human capital in favour of a discourse of enlightenment,
all that happened was that investment in human capital was demoted from a ‘necessary and sufficient’
factor for economic growth to a ‘necessary but not sufficient’ factor. Similarly, certain other assumptions,

such as the assertion that the labour market is freely competitive, were dropped or refined; but these
changes represent the emergence of a new discourse, rather than a return to a discourse of enlightenment.
This new version of the human capital model may be seen as a discourse of manpower planning.
This manpower-based discourse is similar to the human capital model with this essential difference:
whereas the discourse of human capital viewed the development of any level of schooling as investment
in economic growth through the creation of new human capital, the manpower discourse is more narrowly
interpreted to recommend investment in only those programs for which there is a demonstrable demand
for its graduates in the labour market. In other words, investment based on a discourse of manpower
training is determined by the specific manpower requirements of the economy, rather than premised on
the development of the economy through a general rise in the population’s level of education. Whereas
the discourse of human capital viewed public education as a prerequisite for the development of the
nation’s industries, the more refined discourse of manpower considers schools and universities as a
national industry, where investment can be made on the basis of such criteria as the usefulness of the
product (both in terms of graduates and research), efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and so on, just like any
other public corporation.
In some ways, the emergence of a discourse of manpower needs represents a further movement
away from the discourse of enlightenment. The enlightenment discourse emphasized that any learning
was worthwhile for its own sake; the human capital discourse similarly accepted that any learning was
an investment in human capital; but the manpower discourse rejects any learning in favour of specific,
vocationally and economically useful learning. Thus, for example, the enlightenment discourse favoured
a liberal arts program as the best approach to general intellectual development; and the human capital
discourse accepted liberal studies as a useful investment in generalized skills; but proponents of the
discourse of manpower needs regard liberal studies with great skepticism, as its direct economic and

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vocational relevance is difficult to demonstrate. Under a manpower-centered discourse, then, one would
expect a trend towards an even greater vocationalization of higher education than with a discourse of
human capital.
This was certainly the case elsewhere. To take Singapore as just one example, Ashton and Sung
(1997) noted that the government directly manipulated the education system to ensure that graduates
closely matched projected manpower needs.
...to make Singapore a regional center for certain of the knowledge-based industries, the government
decided that it requires not just a significant portion of the population to move through higher education...
but, crucially, that the system must produce the requisite number of scientists and engineers to provide
the level of research and development required to sustain such industries. ... In this situation education
can never be allowed the kind of autonomy it has experienced in the West, but will always need to be
subordinated to the needs of nation-building and especially of economic development. (p.217)
Western governments could shift the dominant discourse towards one of manpower planning, but
were unprepared to be seen to be limiting educational opportunity for voters’ children, or too blatantly
assaulting university autonomy. Governments could therefore only manipulate universities indirectly
through pairing general cutbacks with specific financial incentives. In Alberta, for example, funding for
higher education was divided into ‘base funding’ (ongoing grants) and ‘funding envelopes’ which made
additional funding available for specific programs favoured by the government’s economic planners.
Coping with generalized cutbacks (or just the failure to keep up with inflation, capital costs, and so on)
on the one hand, and significant grants for targeted programs on the other, post-secondary institutions
generally allowed themselves to be shaped by government economic policies, without the need for direct
government edict.
Similarly, since government investment in education is premised upon the manpower needs of the
economy, there is a strong desire on the part of government to assess students for the cost of that portion of their education which is of private benefit; that is, which represents individual consumption. For
example, in a report prepared by John Buttrick for the Ontario Economic Council (February 1978), the
recommendation was made that university tuition fees be allowed to rise to the point where they covered
nearly the full cost of teaching: “I find the case for subsidization of post-secondary education to be very
weak, except for research and public service components. p. 10).”
The manpower model of education remains a dominant discourse. In India, for example, Delhi
University recently shifted to a four-year undergraduate model, arguing that they were “not turning out

employable graduates…We have not touched the knowledge component but added other values such as
communication, applied language, information technology, basic mathematics and other skills that each
graduate must have to be employable (emphasis added, Vice-chancellor Professor Singh, as quoted by
Mishra, 2014).”
The relationship between these first three discourses may be seen in Table 1. Movement from left
to right represents four associated trends: (1) a shift from an emphasis on the needs of the individual
to the needs of the economy; (2) a shift in the cost burden from the individual to the society; (3) a shift
in control from the universities to governments; and (4) a transition in scale from elite to mass institutions. Each of these parallel developments is interdependent, as it is unlikely that any of them could
have emerged without the others.

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Table 1: Discourses of higher education
Enlightenment Discourse

Human Capital Discourse

Manpower Discourse

Needs of individual given priority

Needs of individual seen as converging
with needs of society

Societal needs given priority

Costs borne by the individual
(consumption)

Costs shared by the individual and the
society (investment)

Cost borne by the public (investment)

Schools private; universities autonomous

Public schools; universities autonomous
within provincial or state system

Public schools; Universities controlled by
governments;

Schools/colleges elite institutions

Schools and universitites becomes mass
institutions

Multiversities part of universal postsecondary system

Note: The above represent ‘ideal types’ and may not exist in pure form

Even under the manpower discourse, however, there is usually some (implicit) acknowledgement that
there are a few indirect benefits that presumably result from having a culturally literate populace. For
example, a region without sufficient educational opportunities might experience difficulty in attracting
or retaining the best corporate managers for their industries, as these people would desire good schools
for their children; yet such variables are not easy to recognize, let alone measure.

When such indirect benefits are acknowledged, however, they are generally seen as being outside the
economic sphere. To the extent that a liberal arts orientation functions to educate students rather than to
provide specific vocational training (or industry related research), universities and colleges are perceived
as cultural institutions on a par with public libraries, museums, art galleries, and sports arenas. In other
words, post-secondary education is the product of economic prosperity, rather than a contributing factor.

The Discourse of Consumerism
This refinement of the human capital discourse into the manpower discourse led to a corresponding
refinement of the enlightenment discourse into a discourse of consumerism. Under the manpower discourse, universities were encouraged to see their main function as vocational preparation, and the needs
of the economy are placed ahead of those of the individual. Courses and programs that offer the student
opportunities for self-actualization outside the vocational context were shunted off the main campuses
to a new type of facility.
These new institutions, the open universities, marketed university-level education to adults who were,
by and large, already participating in the economy. They catered to part-time students who undertook
study in their own homes as a leisure activity. In England, for example, the Open University originally
catered to teachers seeking to upgrade their diplomas to degrees (but who would presumably remain in
their current positions as teachers upon graduation), housewives (who would likely remain housewives),
retired workers (who were by definition not relevant to manpower considerations) and an assortment of
others seeking to “improve themselves.” Relatively few seemed to sign up for courses in the hopes of
improving their marketable skills.
The first such institution in Canada was Athabasca University in the province of Alberta. At first
glance, 1970s Alberta would appear to be the last place on Earth one would have expected a consumeroriented, open-admissions, distance-education university to emerge, given the province’s neoconservative government, elected on a platform of spending cutbacks (Runté, 1981). Closer examination reveals

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that Athabasca University had been originally intended as a residential liberal arts institution to be

located in a suburb of Edmonton, the provincial capital, to absorb the overflow from the University of
Alberta, when the latter institution had been unable to expand sufficiently rapidly during the late 1960s
to accommodate student (i.e., voter-parent) demand. Before it could be built, however, the Progressive
Conservative party won the 1971 provincial elections on a platform that explicitly rejected the discourse of human capital espoused by the previous governing party, in favour of an agenda of spending
cuts and carefully targeted investment in higher education. General university funding was cut or held
below the rate of inflation, while special funds were made available to schools of Management and
other vocational programs favoured by the new government. Consequently, Athabasca University was
immediately demoted from a residential liberal arts university to a correspondence institution styled
closely on England’s Open University (Alberta Advanced Education and Manpower, 1975). Not only
was a correspondence university considerably less expensive for the government to finance, it served the
purpose of meeting consumer demand for more university places without overproducing over qualified
workers. Only 40% of students registering with Athabasca University cited career reasons for doing so
(1979/80 AU Calendar). The majority of students cited either educational or personal reasons: that is,
they were seeking either a degree, or some form of self-fulfillment. In either event, the pursuit of liberal
studies was perceived by both the individual and the state as a consumer activity, rather than primarily
as an investment. That Athabasca University was the first university in Canada to accept payment by
credit card is perhaps indicative of its consumer orientation (Runté, 1981).
Critics pointed out that the primary purpose of Athabasca University was to facilitate cutbacks to
universal access to state-subsidized liberal arts education through the established campuses; as entrance
standards were arbitrarily raised and enrolments in liberal arts faculties constrained at the University of
Alberta and University of Calgary (Alberta’s two major provincial institutions), demand for increased
access from students (and their voter parents) was deflected by offering open access to Athabasca University (Runté, 1981). Athabasca’s correspondence delivery model was not only much cheaper for the
state, it charged students a higher proportion of the actual costs of their courses, and left the majority of
students as full-time workers, fully participating in the labour market as they completed correspondence
work at night and on weekends. By offering this consumer-oriented liberal arts option, the province was
able to shift the growth of established universities to more vocationally-oriented faculties (Runté, 1981).
The consumerism discourse is even more clearly seen in the field of adult education. To take just one
example, by the 1970s the Edmonton Journal was publishing a twice-yearly “Education Supplement”
listing a host of evening and weekend classes offered by Public and Separate School Boards, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Grant MacEwan Community College (now University), Athabasca
University, and the Department of Extension of the University of Alberta. Not only did this represent

a vast choice of courses (and of class times, locations, instructors, levels of difficulty, and costs) from
which the potential student could choose, but also represented the emergence of a mass market, mass
media level of curriculums. Instead of courses in Latin or classical Greek, one found belly-dancing lessons, ski classes, pottery courses, and cooking lessons, all of which would have been unthinkable under
a discourse of enlightenment, which necessarily focused on the ‘high culture’ of educated elites, rather
than the popular culture of the masses. Of course, there were also a good many more ‘serious’ courses
offered as well, some of which might even have been of vocational relevance, but the emphasis was
always on providing the student with the knowledge and skills that the student requested, rather than
training the pupil to the intellectual standard assumed within the discourse of enlightenment or to satisfy
a particular need in the labour market.
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All that was before the emergence of the Internet and online courses. Today, of course, the options
available to consumers are practically unlimited. The phrase “online courses” brings up about 997,000,000
results on Google, 56,000,000 on Bing; even allowing for the inevitable mistaken and duplicate entries,
it is obvious that essentially any knowledge appropriate to higher education is today available to consumers as a course online. (Readers are challenged to identify a topic that cannot be found as part of an
online course.)
Thus one sees the increasing emergence of educational institutions that are largely autonomous, give
priority to the needs of the individual, and often charge the student the full cost of education, as under
the discourse of enlightenment, but which are nevertheless mass rather than elite institutions. Whereas
the discourse of enlightenment included both the concept of the ‘cloistered scholar’ and an absolute standard against which the ‘educated gentleman’ was measured, neither is to be found in the cafeteria-style
offerings and part-time, at-home study of recreational education. The new discourse of consumerism is
therefore distinct from the enlightenment discourse.

UNTANGLING CONFABULATED DISCOURSES
The long history of debate over the purpose of higher education continues uninterrupted, with important
practical implications for educational leaders and administrators. To take just one recent (2015) attempt

to unravel these competing discourses, Appiahsept distinguishes between “Utility” and “Utopia” and
explains how these competing orientations impact tenure, campus culture, civility, and so on. Under the
Utopian (i.e., Enlightenment) discourse, for example, tenure serves to ensure research free from outside
influence; whereas under the Utility (i.e., Manpower) discourse, tenure is perceived as a barrier to program flexibility and efficiency, and gives rise to a corresponding emphasis on instructor accountability
(Appiahsept). It is therefore crucial that one understands how these discourses relate to one another in
order to tease out their implications for program funding and reform.
The relationship of these four discourses may be seen in Figure 1. The enlightenment discourse and
the consumerism discourse both portray schooling as intrinsically valuable regardless of vocational relevance, in contrast to the human capital and manpower discourses which both depict higher education as
a means of social and economic development. Both the human capital and consumerism discourses see
higher education as input determined, with universities responding to the demands and market choices
of students. Both the manpower and enlightenment discourses see schooling as ‘output determined’,
with both public schooling and post-secondary institutions responding to the needs of the labour market
and the economy in the former, and to the intellectual standards of the ‘cultured gentleman’ in the latter.
It should be emphasized, however, that these four discourses are not entirely mutually exclusive. Colleges often offer a multitude of programs that effectively stream students based on perceived ability (i.e.,
cultural capital) and career aspiration. Universities often house a multitude of faculties and programs,
some of which will be focused strictly on intellectual training, while others emphasize vocational or
professional preparation. Most post-secondary institutions, for example, provide facilities for outreach
and consumer education beside their regular mandates. Vocationally oriented post-secondary institutions
will often require students to take courses not directly related to vocational skills because they are felt
to be of general intellectual benefit (e.g., ‘Engineer English’). Often a single course or program can be
seen to draw upon both the manpower and consumerism discourses as some students register for career
reasons while others take courses purely for personal satisfaction.
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For example, in its Mandate Statement (Undergraduate Calendar, 2015-16), the University of Lethbridge distinguishes itself from other Alberta universities as “founded on the principles of a liberal
education” (p.6). One would therefore anticipate a discourse of enlightenment to dominate, and there

are indeed references to the development of the intellectual rigour and civic-mindedness of the cultured
individual: “[ours is] . . . the university in Alberta that empowers individuals with broader knowledge
and prepares them to think critically and creatively, communicate clearly, solve complex problems, and
contribute fully to society (p.7).” Statements such as “We are committed to the individual student as a
person of ultimate worth (p.7)” reflect the emphasis within the enlightenment discourse on the needs of
the individual. On the other hand, even within the opening paragraph of the Mandate Statement there are
references to “certificate programs that lead to professional specialization (p.6) (manpower orientation)
and “open studies for lifelong learners (p.6)” (consumerism). Elsewhere in the Calendar we discover the
introduction of market modifiers (p.59) wherein management students are charged higher tuition fees
than students from other faculties, even when enrolled in the exact same courses. Such a policy reflects
the human capital assumption that a management degree will provide a higher return on investment for
that individual, than for graduates who took the same course(s) as part of a Fine Arts or Arts and Science degree, and therefore the management student will be prepared to accept such market modifiers.

CONCLUSION
Understanding the shift from the enlightenment discourse to the manpower and consumerism discourses
places much of the current criticism of post-secondary education into clearer perspective. Having promised under the tenants of the human capital discourse to solve unemployment, poverty, racism, sexism,
and essentially all other social ills, it is hardly surprising that institutions of higher education now come
into criticism for having failed to deliver. The emphasis on accountability, high standards, ‘relevant’
curricula, and so on, are attempts to make the ongoing investment in higher education finally pay off.
Having once invited the business sector into discussions of which skills and knowledge would be relevant
to their manpower needs, as part of schooling’s promise to further economic development, we cannot
now complain that curriculum is being designed by lobbyists rather than educators.
If the public looks to education to cure every social ill from poverty to gender discrimination to Isis
recruitment, it is because the public uncritically adopted a discourse that justifies educational funding on
the basis of its social returns on investment. Educational leaders need to understand that higher education is not a panacea and cannot in fact address every emergent social need; and that attempting to do so
often makes university complicit in deflecting attention from the real sources of the problem. Blacks or
indigenous peoples are not unemployed because they lack requisite skills, but because racism ensures
they are the last hired and the first laid off; the economy faltered in 2008 because American bankers
took fraudulent advantage of deregulation—and because capitalist economies go through cycles—not
because post-secondary institutions did not graduate the right mix of manpower.

Educational administrators need to understand that these four discourses have become ideologies that
influence public opinion, and that the rhetoric of the earlier discourses is often still used to gain public
support for a neoconservative or corporate agenda. Educational leaders need to tease out these underlying
assumptions and contradictions, as lobbyists reference the enlightenment discourse’s insistence on high
standards to introduce vocationalized curricula that displace critical thinking with trained incapacity—that
is, such strenuous training in technique that it undermines one’s ability to question goals (Merton, 1957,
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Runté & Runté, 2007); or reference the human capital discourse’s promise of a better life for graduates
to advocate for an expansion of skills training, when the ultimate outcome of such expansion is more
likely to be lower wages. Identifying and critiquing these contradictions is the first step in effectively
resisting these so-called reforms.
For example, corporate leaders like to claim that they are outsourcing jobs or hiring foreign workers
because Canadian workers lack the necessary skills, when what they really mean is that there are no
Canadians with those skills willing to work for the wages they are offering. The importation of Chinese
minors to work a coalmine in British Columbia (Canada) is a clear example (Stueck). Claiming a lack
of skilled workers blames the post-secondary system for failing to adopt relevant curricula, and blames
workers for not having invested in the training for which corporate leaders are no longer willing to pay.
Advocating for expansion of skills training in the school/post-secondary system transfers the responsibility for training costs from corporations to the individual worker and to the public purse. Students now
pay tuition and forego wages, often assuming massive debt, for training they would once have been paid
to obtain on the job. Yet there is little in the public discourse that asks why taxpayers are being asked
to subsidize training for the private profit of corporations. Far from the promise of better employment
for graduates, in the long run, expanded public-subsidized skills training significantly lowers wages by
expanding the pool of available skilled workers competing for the same jobs.
Educators need, therefore, to be able to separate the rhetoric from the reality, and to identify these
obfuscations and contradictions to the public. They need to be completely clear on what exactly they

believe to be the true purpose of education, and how this should be accomplished, before stepping into
the arena of public discourse.

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