I had a write a reflection on the article by John Holmwood: Race and the Neoliberal University. 

I come to London at 15 years old, not speaking the language or knowing the culture. To say it was a sock to the system and has affected, deeply, the rest of my life is an understatement. My family and I escaped the war in ex-Yugoslavia and came here to find a better life. My dad had a job, but we were still looked down upon by the English community.  

What resonated with me reading through the article was the unfairness of the education system. Why does someone with lots of family money deserve a better education then me. I went to a state school to finish my secondary education and then to university. Luckily by that time my parents had £3000 to pay for my yearly tuition and I was able to pursue my dreams of higher education. But why am I so special, why am I allowed to embrace this learning opportunity? Isn’t the purpose of education to make the world a better place? So how come only the privileged people are allowed to exercise that purpose. 

Now, in my 40s and on the other side of the education I still question it and cannot let it go. Being part of UAL EDI committee, my role is to challenge the status quo and, together with my EDI peers, come up with solutions to intergrade all and we do mean all. It’s not just being allowed to study but also what content we are teaching and who and how we are teaching. Are we teaching facts or are we teaching exploration and development of thought?

But the higher education system is just like private lower education. Is this market correct? It appears to highly skewed towards the wealthy? Does education fuel capitalism? Are we teaching money, status, greed or our we teaching something else? 

What would be interesting to see from this article is data. Data on when the education was free, what happened to the university graduates then. Where did they go, what did they do, how did they lives turned out? The interesting thing would be determining the questionnaire criteria and the success measures. What is success and how do we measure it? Money, impact to the society, wellness, community…. The list goes on.