Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization: International Perspectives 3031378520, 9783031378522

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Kevin Mary Nora Nafaa David Giband   Editors

Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization International Perspectives

Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization

Kevin Mary • Nora Nafaa • David Giband Editors

Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization International Perspectives

Editors Kevin Mary ART-DEV Institute University of Perpignan Perpignan, France

Nora Nafaa SAGE Institute University of Strasbourg Strasbourg, France

David Giband ART-DEV Institute University of Perpignan Perpignan, France

ISBN 978-3-031-37852-2    ISBN 978-3-031-37853-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Contents

1

 Geograph(ies) of Globalized Education Privatization(s): An Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Kevin Mary, Nora Nafaa, and David Giband

Part I Stakeholders and Entrepreneurs of a Globalized and Privatized Education 2

“The Best-Known Acronym in Education:” IBM and Corporate Involvement Education Policy in North Carolina��������������   19 Esther Cyna

3

The Rise of Private Universities in Lebanon: Strategies for Conquering New Student “Markets”����������������������������������������������   39 Lama Kabbanji and Kevin Mary

Part II Educational Segregation and Injustice 4

School as a Tool for Territorial Attractiveness? School Policies and Urban Renewal in Marseille����������������������������������������������   61 Gwenaëlle Audren

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Privatization Trends in French Public Universities: Challenging the Geographies of a Public Service ��������������������������������   85 Camille Vergnaud

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Educational Cities, Introducing a Neoliberal Order in Priority Educational Areas? ��������������������������������������������������������������  109 David Giband

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Contents

Part III Resistances, Oppositions and Alternatives 7

The Way Out Is Also in: Educators Committed to Transformative Learning and Care Ethics as a Means of Resisting Neoliberal Policies (Hautes-Alpes, France)����������������������  131 Clément Barniaudy

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Geographies of Resistance in the Chilean Education System in the Post-dictatorship Age (1990–2019): A Protest Event Analysis������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  153 Cristóbal Villalobos and Lluís Parcerisa

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Filling in the Gaps – Alternative Schools in French Rural Areas: From the Dismantling of Public Education to a New Horizon for Educational Entrepreneurs��������������������������������  171 Aurélie Delage, Nora Nafaa, and Manon Riffard

10 Conclusion:  Neoliberalized Private Education – Main Themes and Counter Hegemonic Futures�����������������������������������������������������������  195 Ranu Basu 11 Testimony:  The Return of the Taliban: Education in Danger in Contemporary Afghanistan����������������������������������������������  205 Mohammad Edris Raouf

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Overview of the privatization of education process��������������������������    8 Fig. 1.2 The different privatization processes explored in the book chapters������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    9 Fig. 2.1 Photography of a kindergarten Writing to Read computer lab in North Carolina, 1986. (Edwards, 2010)����������������������������������   26 Fig. 3.1 Distribution of universities in Lebanon (2019)���������������������������������   43 Fig. 3.2 Universities in Beirut and its suburbs (2019)������������������������������������   46 Fig. 4.1 Map of the study context: Income inequalities and precariousness in Marseille city centre��������������������������������������   63 Fig. 4.2 Change in median income per consumption unit in the study zone, 2001–2014�����������������������������������������������������������   68 Fig. 4.3 Photography of the new secondary school A. (Author: G. Audren, 2015)����������������������������������������������������������������   71 Fig. 4.4 Map of the local schools offer�����������������������������������������������������������   77 Fig. 6.1 The evolution of priority education policies in France (1981–2022)��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  114 Fig. 6.2 The great educative alliance. (Source: French ministry of national education, 2020)�������������������������������������������������������������  116 Fig. 6.3 School zones in Perpignan Educational City (2022)������������������������  119 Fig. 7.1 Localization of the Hautes-Alpes department in France and the Aix-Marseille academy��������������������������������������������������������  134 Fig. 8.1 Local and National protests (1990–2019). (Source: Own elaboration, Project Fondecyt N° 11190198)���������������������������  160 Fig. 8.2 Space of protest (1990–2019). (Source: Own elaboration. Project Fondecyt N° 11190198)��������������������������������������������������������  163 Fig. 9.1 Map of a fairly public school market in Dordogne���������������������������  177 Fig. 9.2 Map of a rural unchartered private school market in Dordogne�������  178 vii

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List of Figures

Fig. 9.3 Map of a diversified school market showcasing a strong private education offer in the Pyrénées-Orientales���������������������������  179 Fig. 9.4 Map of an alternative school market polarized by Perpignan in the Pyrénées-Orientales����������������������������������������������������������������  180 Fig. 9.5 Photographies of La Tour Rose school at Saint-Pierre-deFrugie in Dordogne (a) Main classroom (former living room). The furniture is put away for the holidays. (b) Activities individual room (former bedroom). (c) Recreation area with huts and chicken coop. The vegetable garden and the compost are outside the field (former pleasure garden). (Source: Delage, Nafaa & Riffard, UMR ART-Dev, autumn 2019)�����������������������������  182 Fig. 9.6 Photographies of the École Libre de Cerdagne at Ur in the Pyrénées-Orientales (a) Classroom (b) Play room (c) Outdoor playground. (Source: Delage, Nafaa and Riffard, UMR ART-Dev, february 2020)������������������������������������  184 Fig. 9.7 Map of the area of influence of the Ecole Libre de Cerdagne in Ur in the Pyrénées-Orientales���������������������������������������  187 Fig. 9.8 The school as part of the local alternative ecosystem in Saint-Pierre-de-Frugie������������������������������������������������������������������  189

List of Tables

Table 4.1 Evolution of socioeconomic indicators in the study zone between 2006 and 2014���������������������������������������������������������   67 Table 5.1 A chronological summary of Higher Education and Research Reforms in France����������������������������������������������������   89 Table 6.1 A few indicators by EPAs in the Cité educative of Perpignan�������  119 Table 7.1 Evolution in the numbers of learners and teachers in the Hautes-Alpes (2017–2021)���������������������������������������������������  135 Table 7.2 Profile of the educators interviewed by the author�������������������������  135 Table 8.1 Distribution of protest between regions (percentage)��������������������  161 Table 8.2 Distribution of protest among location and actors�������������������������  163 Table 8.3 Distribution of protest among location and tactics�������������������������  164 Table 9.1 School norms et alternatives in the French education system��������  176

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Chapter 1

Geograph(ies) of Globalized Education Privatization(s): An Introduction Kevin Mary, Nora Nafaa, and David Giband

The privatization of education is a controversial process. It is recommended by a broad spectrum of actors and generates sometimes strong opposition as its presupposed benefits have not been empirically and rigorously tested globally (Verger et al., 2016, p. 3). Nevertheless, the privatization of Education is now a global phenomenon which is constantly growing (Chevaillier & Pons, 2019). Numerous actors are advocating for privatizing education, including important agents such as international organizations or transnational firms on a global scale but also local community groups and even States themselves. As Verger et al. (2016) have noted, it can involve actors with divergent interests, such as ethnic minority groups and conservative think tanks. If education is going through such a growing trend of privatization, it may have to do with the complexity of this process and its multifaceted reality. It adopts multiple forms and undergoes variations according to national contexts, leading to forms of hybridization of education (Ball, 2009; Vinokur, 2004). Indeed, privatization is no longer limited to a social phenomenon marked by elitism and the search for an educational social endogamy. It now refers to a complex process with multiple dimensions that also affects the management and organization of schooling within national and local spaces, as well as the provision of a whole range of educational and extra-educational services by a myriad of actors (Walford, 2013). For its advocates, private education systems are led to produce innovative forms of education in order to meet these expectations and offer the “best school product” according to the principle recently enunciated by billionaire Jeff Bezos when

K. Mary (*) · D. Giband ART-DEV Institute, University of Perpignan, Perpignan, France e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] N. Nafaa SAGE Institute, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_1

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opening his new school (Bezos Academy): “the student will be the customer”.1 This, therefore, is supposed to improve the overall quality of education. It also expands choice through the trivialization of school choice policies that are allowing families to choose among a very wide range of schools. The consolidation of the private sector is part of the idea that it is more efficient because it is bound by the demands of results, but also by the assumption that the market will be able to regulate itself. But its development also highlighted several issues in terms of segregation and impoverishment of schools (Chevaillier & Pons, 2019, p. 36). After decades of education privatization, the issue of rising educational inequalities has not yet been answered. On the contrary, the process seems to be developing even further, as the authors in this book are showing regarding their different case studies. The political dispute over the privatization of education combined with its current complexity raises the (complicated) question of its definition.

1.1 Defining Privatization of Education Among the many authors who have tried to define this process (Rivzi, 2016), the distinction proposed by Ball and Youdell (2007) constitutes a robust framework in the scientific literature. Their approach encourages to differentiate between two different forms of privatization that circulate around public education. The first one refers to “the opening up of public education services to private sector participation on a for-profit basis and using the private sector to design, manage or deliver aspects of public education”. The authors call it the privatization of public education or “exogenous” privatization. In this case, the private sector is called upon to get involved in certain segments of public education. This type of situation often happens in the Global South where the action of the State, whether this is done through the State itself or through negotiations between States and international institutions2 stimulates the privatization process. There, the restructuring of national and local education systems, as in other sectors, does not automatically reflect a weakening of the State. It often accompanies, on the contrary, reforming public policies leading the State not to withdraw from education, but to accompany, or encourage, the processes of change underway (Hibou, 1999a). Two case studies in this book relate to this. As Cristobal Villalobos and Lluis Parcerisa are showing in Chile which constitutes a radical case study where the State strongly encouraged private stakeholders to create and develop private schools. In the Middle East, the Lebanese Higher Education system also represents a clear example when the end of  Piquard, A. “‘The student will be the customer’: American tech entrepreneurs turn to disrupting education”, Le Monde, on line edition, accessed on 09/26/2022, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/ article/2022/09/26/the-student-will-be-the-customer-american-tech-entrepreneurs-turn-to-­­ disrupting-education_5998256_13.html 2  Like the reforms – especially educational reforms – implemented in the 1980s in the global South through Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). 1

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the civil war marked a period of economic growth inspired by neoliberal principles, which favored the appeal to private capital, both local and foreign, to help rebuild the country. Many private actors have then invested in the Higher Education system creating a new geography of universities all throughout the country, as Lama Kabbanji and Kevin Mary develop in their Chap. 3. Nonetheless, on a global scale, Verger et al. argue that “education privatization is a process that tends to happen more at the level of service provision (with a higher presence of private schools) and funding (with families and other private actors paying for a larger portion of total educational expenses) than at the level of ownership in a strict sense” (2016, p. 7). As shown by Esther Cyna in her Chap. 2, IBM has been part of the push towards standardized testing in the United States, and especially in North Carolina where it was established as the firm proposed technological solutions to implement the testing. The second type of privatization highlighted by Ball and Youdell involves the “importing of ideas, techniques and practices from the private sector in order to make the public sector more like businesses and more business-like” (2007, p. 9). In this regard, the privatization process happens within the public sector. The authors refer to it as the privatization in public education, or “endogenous” privatization. This logic of importing ideas and techniques from the private sector relates to the reform programs developed within many public administrations known as New Public Management (NPM) (Gunter et  al., 2016). NPM in the Education sector usually means developing a managerial approach for the administrators, encouraging outcome-based strategies and endorsing local-based management (Gunter & Forrester, 2009). Camille Vergnaud’s Chap. 5 illustrates these incentives while focusing on the French Higher Education (HE) system evolution. She studied French government policies regarding HE in the long run, showing how the current situation of public universities (the so-called “autonomy” of public universities for example) has to do with NPM logics that have been continuously pushed since the 1960s. Privatization is not limited to key sectors such as higher education and research. In France, and broadly in western countries, as David Giband shows, priority education areas are the common targets of neoliberal policies. In most European countries, the priority education model has almost disappeared under the impact of neoliberal reforms launched since the beginning of the 2000s (Smith et  al., 2007). The launch in 2019 of the national program “Cités éducatives” (Educational cities) is a singular change. Inspired by similar programs in the UK and in the EU, this program is part of a low noise process of neoliberalization of education in France. This involves a concomitant set of limited but repeated reforms that focus on the commodification of education, the disassembling of the status of teachers, the competition between schools and the slow dismantling of priority education. New rules are implemented: public-private partnerships in distressed school districts, project-based funding, new forms of school governance etc. In the United States, private actors have a strong hold on educational policies, through their direct investment but also through other ways. As Esther Cyna shows, school finance inequalities in North Carolina are due to local budgets that vary from one school district to another, depending on the presence of strong industries and

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therefore a stronger tax base. Pushing State legislation, these industries can shape the education policies through fiscal decisions. These two types of privatization are “strongly interconnected” as Verger et al. (2016) have noted. They don’t necessarily reflect or adapt to every situation neither. Bray and Zhang (2019), for instance, pointed out how this definition doesn’t include forms of “shadow education” massively used by families in Asia but also in North Africa and the Middle East (tutoring, private school support). Some authors studying francophone countries in the global South also indicate that one of the main differences in the forms of privatization is between private for-profit and private non-profit (Lange, 2021, p. 232). Those two forms relate to different social demands: for-profit schools are usually run by small entrepreneurs or religious communities and non-profit schools are led by parents (known as “community schools”). Their geographies are very different: for-profit schools mainly opened in urban areas whereas non-profit community schools are mostly found in rural environments. Despite all this complexity and these different approaches to the privatization of education, the authors of this book advocate for a more general approach linking privatization to the neoliberalization process.

1.2 Behind the Privatization(s), the Neoliberalization of Education Many authors argue that education is at the heart of the neoliberal project (McCreary et al., 2013). This project refers to a broad family of reforms and discourses which purpose is the expansion of markets, including education. It is differentiated from classical capitalism (as a process of accumulation through the exploitation of wage labor), through a process of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2003; Nafaa, 2021), an extra-economic coercive process extending capitalism to non-capitalist spaces and social groups, in this case the world of education (Mercille & Murphy, 2017). As geographer Ranu Basu has noticed, “these processes are most often normalized via neoliberal discourse and slowly take root in the mainstream education system” (Basu, 2004). While recourse to the private education sector can sometimes take place in the absence of public provision  – mostly in the Global South (i.e. the Lebanese HE system before 1951 or schools located in the informal suburbs of African cities nowadays) – in many cases, it is the result of the application of NPM logics. These logics include trivialization of school choice, the reduction of school and extracurricular services, the commodification of education, the promotion of educational entrepreneurship, the increasing responsibility of actors (students, parents, teachers, etc.) and the introduction of management standards. The introduction of management norms according to an evaluation/punishment system has resulted in increasingly fragmented, disparate and unequal educational landscapes in the form of near-markets. Thus, the introduction of “evaluation devices” (Garcia & Montagne, 2011) promotes an entrepreneurial model of

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education (including public education) based on the adoption of evaluation standards, a rhetoric of projects inviting the construction of partnerships and “new educational models” and the foundation of an increasingly unequal financial and human management. But these “new potentialities” opened up by situations of a near-market in education can hardly hide the renewal of educational inequalities and segregations, as well as the importance of their spatial inscription. Neoliberalization is the object of controversy and diverse interpretations (Laval & Dardot, 2009), but can be define as “a set of policies promoting the primacy of the market, the fluidity of capital and labour, and individual interest in all spheres of economic and political life” (Lipman & Haines, 2007). It has, for several decades now, sought to restructure education systems in depth under the heading of “new” education policies. These education policies, which appeared synchronously in several countries (United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand) in the early 2000s as part of the policies of the NPM, are declined in terms of free school choice, accountability, efficiency, evaluation and decentralization, and are intended to broaden the scope of privatization of the public education sector. The idea of the promotion of the individual interest in Education constitutes another form of privatization. Chevaillier & Pons depicted it as “individualized privatization” (2019, p. 35). It refers to the development of education models that meet the demands of individuals’ – children and parents – private aspirations and interests. This logic has encouraged the development of Homeschooling (Lubienski & Brewer, 2015), Shadow Education (Bray, 2021) and also Alternative schools as Aurelie Delage, Nora Nafaa and Manon Riffard show in their Chap. 9 about French rural areas. More generally, all these processes relate in fact to the State, which here, is not absent or even blocking the development of a near-market situation regarding education. On the contrary, State accompanies and encourages it, as political scientist Gilles Pinson recently noted (2020, p. 15). For Pinson, the position of the State “helping” and “protecting” the market is what constitutes the foundation of neoliberalism. The authors of this book are indeed unanimous: the deployment of new forms of privatization in education is primarily due to the action of the State, whether by his presence and action (i.e. chapter about the Chilean case study) or by his absence or withdraw (i.e. chapters focusing on rural France and Lebanon). Schools as public institutions are now an important part of the neoliberal reorganization projects of States. From elementary school to university, the introduction of norms and mechanisms from the NPM, combined with educational policies that promote the decentralization of education, place it in an entrepreneurial field. The latter, according to local contexts, is expressed in a whole series of tools, norms and injunctions affecting educational “governance”, the teaching act, and professional and parental practices. In this protean privatization process, the actors (individual or collective) play a central role. The acceleration of the privatization of public schools is partly due to the globalization of standards. In Europe, surveys such as PISA compare education systems and their performance. In the countries of the global South, and despite the differences between continents, international donors  – first and foremost the World Bank – are imposing their standards in the field of education. Their presence and

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action are made visible through major international conferences on education and their commitment to ensure the development of the “Education for All” slogan (Adamson et  al. 2021). They encouraged the process of State withdrawal by promoting the “diversification” of the field of education which has enabled the development of private institutions (Lange, 2003). Thus, these international donors infiltrate the state spheres that depend on their funding (Chauveau et al., 2001) and propose their own indicators: gross enrolment rate, primary school completion rate, etc. Indicators which ultimately and almost exclusively focus on quantitative evaluation criteria of access to education (Vinokur, 2005; Brilleau, 2003). In turn, the evaluation and establishment of these supranational standards, supported in particular by the standardization of tests and examinations in schools, feed these surveys which, by presenting their results in an essentially accounting form, serve to support the reforms of the public education sector.

1.3 Geographies of Education: Towards a Critical Approach The recent interest of geographers in education is part of a strong renewal of the discipline following the work of radical geography (Harvey, 2005). Geography, as a social science of territory (Di Méo & Buléon, 2005), has traditionally been reluctant to deal with issues related to education (Butler & Hamnett, 2007; Jahnke et  al., 2019; Bonini & Lange, 2016; Holloway & Jöns, 2012), even though education is a highly spatial issue (Giband et  al., 2022). Indeed, whether it is interested in the territoriality of educational actors, in the forms of sociospatial segregation generated by public educational policies or, more generally, in the spatial dimensions of the neoliberalization of education, geography has undergone a significant renewal in recent years, enabling it to enrich the field of educational research. Since the early 2000s, a critical turn has been taken by many geographers, inviting them to renew their approaches, theoretical and epistemic frameworks, and research objects. Among these, education has progressively asserted itself as an essential entry point for understanding the socio-spatial changes observed at both the global and local levels (Basu, 2010), in the global North as well as in the global South. The question that constitutes the guiding thread of this book has to do with the globalization of education. From a geographical perspective, this process does not produce homogeneous mechanisms of spatial diffusion of education as, for instance, a public good distributed in an equitable manner according to criteria aimed at promoting the social, economic and cultural development of individuals. Rather, it refers to the spatial forms, the political, social and economic processes that preside over the neoliberalization of education on a global scale. Education – or at least the neoliberal educational models and references that are being deployed on a global scale – is unquestionably a global phenomenon whose deployment modalities are as much a result of economic, political and geographical factors. What interests us here, therefore, is not so much the privatization of education stricto sensu, but rather the forms, processes and actors of the more or less

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unprecedented privatizations that the neoliberalization of education has been bringing about for more than a decade. The existing literature is rich in researches on privatization, but few consider it in the context of a strongly globalized neoliberalization, questioning moreover the links between privatization and segregation in a crossed North/South perspective. The objective of this book is to focus on the processes of privatization of all levels of education, from kindergarten to higher education, in order to observe (1) the forms they take, (2) to analyze the rhetoric and the representations created, and (3) to identify the actors and the spatial effects produced or producing this privatization. The perspective here is interdisciplinary (sociology of education, history, geography), making it possible to embrace the dynamics linked to school systems in a comprehensive manner. The will to bring crossed glances between the global North and the global South supports the idea of a globalization of these tendencies and processes, while showing that they can vary according to the different national contexts. Three main entries structure this book. First, the place of the “new educational entrepreneurs” also known as “edupreneurs”, is discussed (Lips, 2000). This leads us to question the actors of these markets: who are they? Who invest in the private education sector? To which social groups do they belong? In what ways do they benefit or not from this process? The presence of these actors and the framework in which they intervene thus make it possible to rethink the place and role of the State, which leads to re-examine the relationship between political and school systems (Lange & Diarra, 1999). Historian Esther Cyna’s Chap. 2 show how big private companies such as IBM in the United States can be considered as “edupreneurs”, while Lama Kabbanji and Kevin Mary’s work highlight how politicians can also be considered as edupreneurs when investing or even building private universities. Second, the forms of territorialities generated by privatization. They are rarely explored as a relevant topic in the study of globalization of education and privatization whereas it tends to produce, develop, and promote new forms of educational territorialities. It raises questions about the spatial nature of these markets and the reproduction or renewal of sociospatial inequalities linked to education. The spatial dimensions of such processes deserve to be reexamined in the light of a comparison between global North and South and study the forms of segregation generated by privatization. For example, what influence might schools or institutions of higher education have on the forms of segregation? The empirical approach based on extended fieldwork favored in the different chapters of this book has made it possible to question both rhetoric and discourse. The privatization of education involves an obvious and important use of discourse aimed at legitimizing the reforms underway. Camille Vergnaud’s Chap. 5 regarding HE and David Giband’s Chap. 6 work regarding primary and secondary education in France reveal the dissemination of such discourse within the education system and its actors (managers, teachers, parents, associations, unions, etc.). In Marseille as well, Gwenaëlle Audren highlights in her Chap. 4 how a new school offer participates in the discourse of the revitalization of a neighborhood (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2).

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NEOLIBERALIZATION OF EDUCATION PRIVATIZATION OF EDUCATION FOR-PROFIT / NON-PROFIT

ENDOGENOUS

EXOGENOUS 

      



    





  



  

  

OTHER FORMS 

 

 

   

 



  

FORMS OF PRIVATIZATION 



 
 
 
 
  

 



    

 

   


 
 
 

Sources : Ball & Youdell, 2007 ; Verger et alii., 2016 ; Chevaillier & Pons, 2019 ; Lange, 2021.

Conception : A. Delage, D. Giband, K. Mary, N. Nafaa (2022).

Fig. 1.1  Overview of the privatization of education process

1.4 Spatial and Territorial Perspectives: Scales and Segregations As much a support as a target of neoliberal reforms, space and territories, at their different levels, are strategic components of these reforms. At the national and local levels, it is a way to promote the decentralization of national education systems in order to enhance regional and local management, which is presented as more flexible and adapted to local needs. The local level (the city, the school district or even the school catchment area) is just as strategic. The reforms, carried out in the global North as well as in the global South, make it the pivot of the transformations under way. These transformations deregulate local public education systems (reorganization of the school map, or even the abolition of school sectorization), transform school catchment areas into forms of competitive markets, and boost incentives to make local education spaces that promote mobility (of pupils and teachers) by establishing new planning and contractualization tools for schools and educational

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Case Study

Education Level

Main type of Privatization

Forms of Privatization

Actors involved

Chapter 2

United States

Elementary and Secondary

Endogenous

Education Policies

Chapter 3

Lebanon

Higher

Exogenous

Chapter 4

France

Elementary and Secondary

Exogenous

Chapter 5

France

Higher

Endogenous

Chapter 6

France

Elementary and Secondary

Endogenous

Chapter 7

France

Elementary and Secondary

Endogenous

Education Policies Promotion of the individual interest

Chapter 8

Chile

Secondary and Higher

Exogenous

Education Policies

Chapter 9

France

Elementary

Exogenous

Promotion of the individual interest

Edupreneurs Local elected officials Educators

Chapter 11

Afghanistan

Secondary and Higher

Exogenous

Education Policies

International organisations Edupreneurs Afghan State

State of North Carolina IBM

Education Policies

State of Lebanon

Marketization

Edupreneurs

Urban policies

City of Marseille officials

Marketization

French State

Education Policies

Minister of Higher Education French State

Education Policies

French State

Urban policies

Local elected officials French State Educators International organisations Chilean State

Conception : D. Giband, K. Mary, N. Nafaa (2023).

Fig. 1.2  The different privatization processes explored in the book chapters

actors (as charter schools in the United States, free schools in the United Kingdom or the Cités Educatives in France). These new modes of spatial regulation of education are supposed to better align the objectives and operations of schools (public and private) with contractually set objectives. These determine a whole series of performance and educational “success” indicators, which concern for example the fight against school drop-out, or the national tests/exams results. This often leads to widespread competition at the local level and impulse the transformation of educational practices. The creation of increasingly competitive school markets (Félouzis et al., 2013) relates to one of the main forms of privatization: marketization. In fact, promoting market logics at all educative levels stimulates the privatization processes. If the concepts of marketization and privatization are different (Chevaillier & Pons, 2019, p.  33), they are also considered as linked inextricably (Whitty & Power, 2000). Marketization leads to the creation of new forms of schools and new social (trend towards increasing inequalities between institutions) and spatial dynamics (widening of student recruitment areas in secondary education, increased circulation of students and teachers in higher education, etc.). In Chile, this market logic was particularly advanced as Cristobal Villalobos and Lluis Parcerisa show in their Chap. 8. In the United States, it is also a question of adapting schools and education to the standards of the neoliberal city. The aim is to adapt education (its functioning, its territorial organization, its modes of financing) to the standards of the neoliberal city (deregulation, flexibility, privatization, competition) and to make education a driving force in urban attractiveness policies (Cucchiara, 2013). Taking

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advantage of the 2001 law, cities are transforming their schools into an educational market in which free choice of schooling, the encouragement of mobility (of students and teachers), the strengthening of conditions for competition between schools and the generalization of educational performance standards (evaluating students, teachers and schools in one fell swoop) are the priorities. This transformation into a market is accompanied by a triple partition/fragmentation between: territories with a high educational value (upper-class central neighborhoods, middle-class residential suburbs), educational territories of relegation (ethnic minority neighborhoods) and the margins to be conquered (mixed neighborhoods on the fronts of gentrification; Nafaa & Giband, 2019; Nafaa, 2021). All of this is part of the renewal of urban attractiveness and territorial differentiation policies initiated by a few pioneering cities like Chicago and Philadelphia since the early 2000s. Through a historical approach, Esther Cyna demonstrates the place of educational issues in the game of political actors at the local level, that of the Durham school district and its outskirts, but also at the regional level due to the conflicts at the level of the federal state of North Carolina. Using the archives data’s, particularly those of the governor, who testifies to the demands of his constituents, but also taxpayers, we can read the progressive evolution of educational policies in the United States. They are indeed moving from a desegregative paradigm, which favours the integration of schools – rather successful in Durham – to that of competitiveness and the measurability of school performance, concerning all social and racial groups. Engaging an entire industry of standardized test production, the obsession with performance provides indicators of the poor performance of some schools, often located in urban areas, with a majority of students of AfricanAmerican origin. These indicators are sometimes used as arguments for complaints from some voters in suburban and rural areas that are whiter and that seek to withdraw funding from schools in these black neighborhoods. Moreover, in this neoliberal context, education served transformations in local space. Education in cities – and more particularly in large metropolises – is now part of urban policies that make school transformations a lever for the transformation of urban spaces (Harvey, 2005). As Gwenaëlle Audren’s Chap. 4 on Marseille emphasizes, the city’s educational action is now clearly placed at the service of a public-private partnership, which is itself part of a vast project to internationalize Marseille (Berry-Chikhaoui, 2007) called Euroméditerranée. This project mainly consists in “modernizing” the harbor area of Marseille by making its local industrial apparatus disappear by building a new urban project turned towards a more creative economy where private high-end schools serve as an attraction tool for middle- and upper-class citizens. The United States, a pioneer in the promotion of “school choice” logics since the 1980s, highlight this process through the creation of a panoply of school offerings with varying degrees of privatization (Lipman, 2015). In a decentralized framework where the role of local non-institutional actors is important (local communities, parent-teacher associations), a complex hybridization of forms of privatization is produced, of which the charter school movement is an illustration, revealing diverse processes depending on the local context.

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In the global South, privatization processes in education have been observed according to a similar temporal pattern (McPherson et  al., 2014), but this time driven by the injunctions of international donors in the context of forms of “discharge” from the State (Hibou, 1999b; Mbembe, 1999). The Structural Adjustment Plans (SAPs) put in place from the 1980s onwards, combined with policies relating to “Education for All” (EFA) and the MDGs, have contributed to the development of the private sector, in a variety of forms, whether secular or denominational, for-profit or non-profit. In francophone Africa, international donors firstly aimed at educating the greatest number of students at the lowest cost. This negatively impacted the public-school system which is now seen as poor-quality education (Lange, 2021, p. 235). This strong influence of the international aid has its spatial and territorial consequences. In Africa, the World Bank has funded priorities given to rural areas (Lange, 2003, p.  157), paving the way for the development of private schools in urban areas, especially in the informal neighborhood on the outskirts of big cities (Lange, 2021). Regarding Higher Education in the global South, the Chap. 3 by Lama Kabbanji and Kevin Mary provides an example of how the recourse to the private sector is constructed. The authors put into perspective the development of a highly stratified university market in Lebanon, composed of a single public university, a few elite universities and a panoply of private offers that have been developing since the 1990s (after the end of the civil war) in the central districts of the large cities, but also on their outskirts, and even in the rural regions of the country. These new private universities are trying to win over new students from social groups that were previously on the bangs and are updating discursive devices based on strong distinctions in order to attract as many students as possible (double degrees, opening up to the international market, etc.). In Afghanistan, as shown by Mohammad Edris Raouf in his Chap. 11, as the regime of the Talibans fell, the number of higher education facilities exponentially increased since 1996, in order to welcome female students but also because of international investments in private education. A hierarchized private higher education market has then developed in the country. Based on a recent study of the privatization of HE in 7 countries in global South,3 sociologist Etienne Gerard insists that the process is fueled by (1) State withdrawal and the lack of public services regarding HE, (2) the deregulation of the HE systems and the way market logics were impulse, (3) the lack of regulation of the private sector of HE (Gérard, 2020, pp. 43–44). The spatial dimension of this process of privatization of education has also been the subject of various research studies focusing essentially on urban spaces. In this perspective, schools and universities are first considered as urban amenities (Meusburger et al., 2018). They are currently seen as carriers of potential territorial disparities (Ben Ayed, 2015). The privatization of education generates or accompanies various phenomena with spatial dimensions, like the processes of gentrification in city centers, but also of segregation linked to the commodification

 Case studies are Argentina, India, Mexico, Peru, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Vietnam. 3

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and hierarchization of the public-school offer being privatized (Cucchiara, 2013; Saltman, 2015). Not only can privatization be synonymous with the deregulation of the public education monopoly, but it can also concern the adaptation of public schools “to private standards”, as mentioned above, including those located in the most socially fragile spaces (schools in poor neighborhoods, for example). Thus, in the United States, the privatization of public schools in great difficulty and the generalization of criteria for good educational management according to a culture of performance and profitability are creating new school hierarchies within the urban and metropolitan school map (Giband & Nafaa, 2016). Rural areas are not left out and are faced with other problems such as the dematerialization of training, but also with practical decisions linked to the costs of public service, confronted with injunctions of territorial equality and school service (concerning the management of school transport, the grouping of establishments or the management of teaching staff). This protean privatization of public schools is not confined to the countries of the North and can be seen in various national contexts in the South, which are also part of global trends (Gulson & Fataar, 2011). In Africa, for example, the state is increasingly using private contractual employment in the education sector (Solaux & Suchaut, 2002). Ultimately, the issue of segregation refers to the conditions of access to quality public education, and thus to the problem of inequality (Henaff & Lange, 2011).

1.5 Issues and Challenges: Resistances, Oppositions, Alternatives Opposition and political dispute are rising regarding the different issues raised by the constant growth of the privatization of Education. One of the main issue and challenge created by this process is the regulation of this growing private sector that concerns all level of Education. It raises issues at both the educational and political levels (Chevaillier & Pons, 2019, pp.  36–38). First, the demonstration hasn’t yet been made that privatization improves the quality of education. In the United States, for example, private schools are more willing to invest in marketing and publicity than curricula and pedagogy in the strict sense (Lubienski et  al., 2019). Second, there is a risk that private education will become entirely autonomous, only following interests, priorities and opacity of dominant actors (Bellei, 2019) like, for instance, billionaires and international firms investing in education. On a broader level, the numerous negative effects of privatization in terms of segregation and impoverishment of schools and universities are generating oppositions and resistances. The rising inequalities among all levels of education are creating injustice on national and global levels. Resistances to the neoliberalization of education are very broad as the process has invested every aspect of education. In many national contexts, this resistance has been led by educators, through different movements as strikes. The example of the Chicago strike in the United States, led

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by the Chicago Teacher Union in 2012 is very well-known in the scientific literature as it spread to other cities as a model of resistance, even though it is an exception in the country in the city that had been the laboratory of neoliberal reforms since the 2000s (Lipman, 2011). In 2018–2019, a multi-state movement named RED for ED showcased educators wearing red shirts, as they were in Republican States (Arizona, California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Virginia, West Virginia), resisting budget cuts and low salaries. In every national context, resistance in education is at first led by teachers’ groups, unionized or not. However, the privatization and contractualization of education has resulted over time in weakening these organization as school systems depend more and more on part-time or non-tenured teachers. Locally, resistances can be observed when a specific school is targeted as when it is closed or moved to another location. It can happen in rural demographically declining areas but also in urban areas. Neoliberalism gives space to democracy, as it is part of its rhetoric. This space that is made of public audiences, consultative councils, neighborhood consultations, create spaces where resistance is held but also very controlled. By giving that space to resistances, political organizations that push for neoliberal reforms than ensure that resistances are controlled and limited. In his Chap. 7, Clement Barniaudy demonstrates that for educators the “way out is also in”. In a context of austerity led by neoliberal reform, rural schools face challenges that are different from urban ones but still have to face rationales of efficiency, budget management and testing results. In mountain rural margins, educators tend to be far, geographically but also pedagogically, from these rationales and resist these discourses through different education pedagogies. The classroom becomes a space of resistance. They turn to care ethics as a way to oppose the national neoliberal agenda. Furthermore, Aurélie Delage, Nora Nafaa and Manon Riffard in Chap. 9 explore this leads to rural margins as spaces of educational alternatives. Through two case studies, they show how public education teachers have left the system to create their own schools in villages where the public school had been closed and focus on another way of educating children. They show how being geographically marginalized from the traditional education markets allow these schools to propose a new model of education. In the early 2000s, some social scientists used to point out “the end of school” (Eliard, 2002), understood as the dismantling and the programmed end of the public educational system by neoliberal attacks. Twenty years later, as some of the authors of this book revealed, resistances and alternatives are on the rise. New ways of thinking education, far away from neoliberal perspectives and injunctions, are seeding in many countries, especially in the global north, from alternative schools to other forms of schooling. Other figures and new narratives are emerging, even if they are still not very visible, or even invisibilized by the dominant actors. Other figures are seeking to replace those of the “learner”, of the “Knowmads” (a play on words between ‘knowledge’ and ‘nomad’), a metaphor for the perpetual learner, who converts any life experience into a ‘learning opportunity’, thanks to the support of digital tools and advances in cognitive science. On the opposite, other figures and narratives are developing in the shadow of the neoliberal school to make the ‘slow education’ emerge, or for others to activate an open and free global education.

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Note for the Readers This book has been extended with a testimony that is an inside account of the evolution of the educational system in Afghanistan. This country is indeed distinguished by the radical changes undergone by its educational system, which went from being closed to the world to a sudden opening up, paving the way to rapid forms of privatization, followed by a new closure, which completely undermined the developments linked to the previous period. The coordinators of this book found it important to shed this new light on a situation that has not yet been well described. This testimony is also a call to conduct investigations in this country, which is today marked by a major backward movement, against the current global trends in education.

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Chevaillier, T., & Pons, X. (2019). Les privatisations de l’éducation: formes et enjeux. Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres, 82, 29–38. Cucchiara, M.  B. (2013). Marketing schools, marketing cities: Who wins and who loses when schools become Urban Amenities. University of Chicago Press. Di Méo, G. & Buléon, P. (dir.) (2005). L’espace social. Lecture géographique des sociétés. Armand Colin. Eliard, M. (2002). La fin de l’école. Presses Universitaires de France. Félouzis, G., Maroy, C., & Van Zanten, A. (2013). Les Marchés scolaires. Presses Universitaires de France. https://doi.org/10.3917/puf.felou.2013.01 Garcia, S., & Montagne, S. (2011). Pour une sociologie critique des dispositifs d’évaluation. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 189(4), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.3917/arss.189.0004 Gérard, E. (2020). L’expansion de l’enseignement supérieur privé et le creusement des inégalités sociales. Analyses à partir de l’Argentine, de l’Inde, du Mexique, du Pérou, de la République Démocratique du Congo, du Sénégal, du Vietnam. Papiers de recherche, AFD, 156. Giband, D., & Nafaa, N. (2016). Obama et l’école: néolibéralisation et marchandisation des districts scolaires urbains. Urbanités, Online. http://www.revue-­urbanites.fr/les-­villes-­americaines-­ obama-­et-­lecole-­neoliberalisation-­et-­marchandisation-­des-­districts-­scolaires-­urbains/ Giband, D., Nafaa, N., & Delage, A. (2022). Quelle(s) géographie(s) de l’éducation? Plaidoyer pour approche in-disciplinée de l’éducation en géographie. Les Annales de géographie, 746(4), 63–90. Gulson, K. N., & Fataar, A. (2011). Neoliberal governmentality, schooling and the city: Conceptual and empirical notes on and from the Global South. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(2), 269–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2011.562672 Gunter, H. M., & Forrester, G. (2009). School leadership and education policy-making in England. Policy Studies, 30(5), 495–511. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442870902899947 Gunter, H., Grimaldi, E., Hall, D., & Seprieri, R. (Eds.). (2016). Public new public management and the reform of education. London. Harvey, D. (2003). The new imperialism. Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. https://doi. org/10.1093/oso/9780199283262.001.0001 Henaff, N., & Lange, M.-F. (2011). Inégalités scolaires au Sud: transformation et reproduction. Autrepart, 59, 3–18. https://doi.org/10.3917/autr.059.0003 Hibou, B. (dir.). (1999a). La Privatisation des États. Karthala. Hibou, B. (1999b). La “décharge”, nouvel interventionnisme. Politique Africaine, 73(1), 6–15. https://doi.org/10.3917/polaf.073.0006 Holloway, S.  L., & Jöns, H. (2012). Geographies of education and learning. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(4), 482–488. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1475-­5661.2012.00542.x Jahnke, H., Kramer, C., & Meusburger, P. (Eds.). (2019). Geographies of schooling. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­18799-­6 Lange, M.-F. (2003). École et mondialisation: vers un nouvel ordre scolaire? Cahiers d’études africaines, 169–170, 143–166. Lange, M.-F. (2021). The evolution and forms of education privatisation within francophone countries. In F. Adamson, S. Aubry, M. de Koning, & D. Dorsi (Eds.), Realizing the Abidjan principles on the right to education (pp.  220–243). Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN: 978-1-83910-603-3. Lange, M.-F., & Diarra, S.  O. (1999). École et démocratie: l’ “explosion” scolaire sous la IIIe République au Mali. Politique Africaine, 76, 164–172. https://doi.org/10.3917/polaf.076.0164 Laval, C., & Dardot, P. (2009). La Nouvelle raison du monde. Essai sur la nouvelle société néolibérale. La Découverte. Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race and the right to the city. Routledge.

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Lipman, P. (2015). Urban education policy under Obama. Journal of Urban Affairs, 37, 57–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/juaf.12163 Lipman, P., & Haines, N. (2007). From accountability to privatization and African American exclusion: Chicago’s “renaissance 2010”. Educational Policy, 21(3), 471–502. https://doi. org/10.1177/0895904806297734 Lips, C. (2000). “Edupreneurs”: A survey of for-profit education (Policy Analysis, 386). Cato Institute. Lubienski, C., & Brewer, J. (2015). Does home education ‘work’? Challenging the assumptions behind the home education movement. In P.  Rothermel (dir.), International perspectives on home education. Do we still need school? (pp. 136–147). Palgrave Macmillan. Lubienski, C., Brewer, J., & Kim, J. A. (2019). Privatisation et logique marchande dans l’éducation aux États-Unis. Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres, 82, 57–66. Mbembe, A. (1999). Du gouvernement privé indirect. Politique africaine, 73(1), 103–121. https:// doi.org/10.3917/polaf.073.0103 McCreary, T., Basu, R., & Godlewska, A. (2013). Introduction: Critical geographies of education. Special Issue of the Canadian Geographer, 57(3), 255–259. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ doi/10.1111/cag.12031/pdf McPherson, I., Robertson, S., & Walford, G. (2014). Education, privatization and social justice: Case studies from Africa, South Asia and Southeastern Asia. Symposium Books. Mercille, J., & Murphy, E. (2017). What is privatization? A political economy framework. Environment and Planning A, 49(5), 1040–1059. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16689085 Meusburger, P., Heffernan, M., & Suarsana, L. (Eds.). (2018). Geographies of the University. Springer. Nafaa, N. (2021). Déposséder l’école pour servir la ville néolibérale aux États-Unis: les cas d’Atlanta et Philadelphie. Ph.D Dissertation (geography), University of Perpignan Via Domitia. Nafaa, N., & Giband, D. (2019). L’école à l’école du néolibéralisme: Réforme scolaire, bonnes pratiques et inégalités à Philadelphie. In I. Danic et al. (Eds.), Inégalités éducatives et espaces de vie (pp. 147–168). Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Pinson, G. (2020). La ville néolibérale. Presses Universitaires de France. Rivzi, F. (2016). Privatisation de l’éducation: tendances et conséquences. Recherche et prospective en éducation, 18, Paris, Unesco [Online]. https://fr.unesco.org/node/265310 Saltman, K.  J. (2015). Capitalizing on disaster: Taking and breaking public schools. Boulder, Londres. Smith, G., Smith, Th. & Smith, T. (2007). Whatever Happened to EPAs? Part 2: Educational Priority Areas – 40 years on. Forum, 49(1), 141–155. Solaux, G., & Suchaut, B. (2002). La privatisation “rampante” des systèmes éducatifs d’Afrique subsaharienne. Colloque ARES, Les voies de scolarisation alternative en Afrique subsaharienne, Strasbourg, 22 mai 2002. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Zancajo, A. (2016). The privatization of education: A political economy of global education reform. Teachers College Press. Vinokur, A. (2004). Public, privé,… ou hybride? Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, 3, 13–33. Vinokur, A. (2005). Pouvoirs et mesure en éducation. Avant-propos. Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, Hors-série, 1, 7–14. Walford, G. (2013). Privatisation, education and social justice: Introduction. Oxford Review of Education, 39(4), 421–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2013.820464 Whitty, G., & Power, S. (2000). Marketization and privatization in mass education systems. International Journal of Educational Development, 20(2), 93–107.

Part I

Stakeholders and Entrepreneurs of a Globalized and Privatized Education

Chapter 2

“The Best-Known Acronym in Education:” IBM and Corporate Involvement Education Policy in North Carolina Esther Cyna

Abstract This chapter explores the role of International Business Machines Corporation (INM) in shaping education policy in the state of North Carolina. The American information technology company was the largest publicly traded company in the 1960s, and it became actively involved in state public schools both by providing software in schools and by setting curriculum standards that would provide the company with competitive graduates for employment. Based on archival research in the North Carolina State Archives, this chapter investigates the influence of the multinational corporation on local and state policy. Starting in the 1960s, public education became a key point in the state’s attractiveness for private corporations. The involvement of IBM in public education happened at several different scales, from setting up computers inside classrooms to shaping the entire state’s educational agenda. To what extent did the company influence state policymakers into implementing new standards of education to produce generations of high school graduates that fit employment requirements for multinational corporations? Keywords  Education reform · North Carolina · Testing · IBM · Education history As he shuffled through his childhood belongings at his parents’ house, Benj Edwards came upon a kindergarten workbook that he had long forgotten about, and which brought up fond memories of his early years in North Carolina (Edwards, 2010). He flipped through the pages of the workbook that, in 1986, supported his first spelling efforts as he started to learn how to read. The logo on the cover caught his attention. “A strange realization washed over me,” he wrote—“IBM taught me how to read.”

E. Cyna (*) University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Paris-Saclay, CHCSC, Versailles, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_2

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How did International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) come to design and implement public school curriculum? In the 1980s, the technology company ran a reading program, Writing to Read, which Edwards and his classmates used in school at a time when computers were becoming increasingly present in people’s lives. IBM was founded in 1911 in Endicott, New York, and grew over the course of the twentieth century as demand for information technology increased (Cortada, 2018). The multinational corporation was the largest publicly traded company in the 1960s, and routinely entered government contracts. In 1935, it had contracted with the federal Social Security Administration for tabulating equipment (Norberg, 1990). In the second half of the twentieth century, IBM became actively involved in state public schools both by providing software in schools and by setting curriculum standards that would provide it with graduates competitive for employment. Based on research in the state archives of North Carolina and sources from the press, this chapter highlights the influence of IBM on state education policy. Business leaders have been involved in U.S. public education for decades, but the nature and scope of their involvement has changed over time (Kantor & Tyack, 1982). The tremendous influence of IBM, which created the dominant computing platform in the 1960s and 1970s, in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) and in North Carolina in general illustrates how businesses became increasingly powerful in education reform (McCorkle, 2012). The company came to the RTP in the 1960s, at a moment when politicians actively courted industry that required high-skills, in an intentional move to transition away from manufacturing and textile (Korstad & Leloudis, 2010, p. 46). IBM promoted standards-based reform and testing, especially in terms of data collection—they created software that they sold to North Carolina public schools to that effect. The numerous exchanges between the North Carolina state superintendent of public instruction and IBM representatives over the period is a testament to their tremendous influence. By 1992, Superintendent of Public Instruction Bob Etheridge called IBM the “company that is the best-known acronym in education” (Etheridge, 1992). The involvement of IBM in public education happened at several different scales, from setting up computers inside classrooms to shaping the entire state’s educational agenda, as this chapter analyzes. First, I explain why and how the state of North Carolina sought to attract the technology giant to its state, and the role of public schooling within that strategy. Then, I examine several educational initiatives led by IBM in the 1980s and 1990s in North Carolina to show how the company partnered with school districts and the state to promote its programs. Finally, I outline the role of IBM in steering the state of North Carolina towards standards-based reform, a movement in public education that shaped the wider federal agenda.

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2.1 Courting Industries: Business Incentives and Public Education 2.1.1 Uneven Industry Development and Unequal Schooling in North Carolina North Carolina witnessed growth and a rise in its economy in the last decade of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, the state’s average per capita income was 72% of the national average, but by 2000, it had risen to 91% of the national average (Goldsmith, 2018, p. 4). That growth, however, was uneven, and largely concentrated in metropolitan areas that successfully attracted industry. Charlotte was an international banking center; Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh gravitated around the “brain magnet” of the RTP (Cummings, 2020; Walden, 2008). In 2018, Steven Wrenn, the former superintendent of Halifax County Schools, reflected on the poverty of that rural school district in northeastern North Carolina by comparing it to schools in the Research Triangle, saying, “take a place like Durham, for example. Well, Halifax didn’t have IBM” (Wrenn, 2018). His mention of the tech giant hinted at the interrelationship between school budget and industry presence. In the United States, schools are local creatures: they are largely funded through local taxes and operated by entities such as locally elected or appointed boards of education. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the local unit of the school district determines most of what happens in schools (Gamson & Hodge, 2018). The lines that delimit school districts hold tremendous power as they delineate attendance zones and tax bases. School funding uses local property tax levy, which means that the wealth in real estate property of a certain school district directly affects its school budget (Ryan, 2010; Baker, 2018). For example, a wealthy school district with an average house value of $800,000 will yield more money for its schools than a neighboring district with an average house value of $300,000, and that will be true even if the poorer district chooses to tax itself more heavily (Sracic, 2006). Because of this localized structure of school funding, the presence of industry inside the boundaries of a school district affects its budget. Large companies were weary of school quality when making decisions about relocating or establishing a presence in a new area. In a 1988 article for Business North Carolina magazine, journalists pointed out that North Carolina public schools were a major negative talking point for any company looking to move offices to the southern state (Nelson Ross, 1988). “North Carolina’s literacy statistics are enough to alarm anyone concerned about the state’s future prosperity,” they wrote. Particularly perplexing was the discrepancy between the Research Triangle Area and the rest of the state, as the tech hub had more Ph.D.s per capita than any other metropolitan area in the country, while many native North Carolinians, especially in the state’s rural areas, did not know how to read and write. About 30% of the people in 41 counties out of 100 in North Carolina were functionally illiterate at that time, with these numbers going up to 40% in certain rural counties. These metrics frightened companies that considered moving to the state, as some of its least

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educated residents could hardly be considered for employment, in their view. Business leaders and policymakers who wanted to develop and expand the Research Triangle Park (RTP) therefore became involved in marketing its schools. This strategy fell within the state’s wider effort to improve its human capital (Goldsmith, 2018). As North Carolina historian William Goldsmith argued, the state’s children became “the new cash crop,” “because policymakers came to believe that economic growth—for the locality, for the state, for the nation, for everyplace everywhere— depended on innovators and entrepreneurs, visionaries who harnessed knowledge to their smarts and created new processes and products” (Goldsmith, 2018, p. 1). The case of IBM, a company that Research Triangle leaders aggressively courted, highlights the role of schools when it came to attracting industries.

2.1.2 Schools and Economic Development: The Research Triangle Project IBM was among the first big names to settle in the region in 1965, which marked a “turning point” in the words of one of the RTP founders, as it validated the entire project (McCorkle, 2012; Faircloth, 1999). Research Triangle leaders sold the idea of the RTP to IBM by promising that the area would become a large technological hub, and emphasized the many advantages that North Carolina provided to corporations—it was a non-union state, and one that offered large corporate tax cuts (Faircloth, 1999). IBM became the largest private employer in the Triangle area (McFadden, 1992). The Durham metropolitan area, which forms one end of the “triangle” with Raleigh and Chapel Hill, had two school districts, and they did not equally benefit from IBM’s presence when it came to their budget. The Durham suburbs witnessed tremendous growth between 1970 and 1980, with an increase in total population of about 20,000 people, who, contrary to previous trends, did not move to the city of Durham but to the suburbs and wider county (Anderson, 2011, p. 449). Large RTP companies generated significant revenue through taxes, either for Wake or Durham County Schools, depending on their location within the Park, which straddled two counties. New industrial development in Durham benefited the Durham County Schools, the suburban school district, but not the Durham City Schools, the urban district. In August of 1980, for example, General Electric announced an investment of fifty-five million dollars to build a new microelectronics center in the RTP (Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce, 1981). These investments, and the booming RTP, benefitted Durham County Schools, and added to the overall county tax base, but did not contribute to the city’s supplemental tax base. In a 1989 interview, Josephine Clement, who chaired the Durham City Board of Education during the 1970s and later became a member of the Board of County Commissioners, drew direct connections between the location of businesses outside of the city, which she identified as the direct result of urban planning starting in the

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1950s, and low city school budgets. “The city has a very small—the city school district, I should say—has a very small tax base as opposed to the county school system,” she explained (Clement, 1989). For Clement, the uneven growth sparked by the RTP compounded the oppressive effect of racist urban policies such as urban renewal, which “tore down homes and businesses and whatnot, and hastened the flight to the suburbs so that the shopping centers and so forth are outside the city” of Durham. Speaking about the Durham City Schools, Clement concluded, “we don’t even get the advantage of the shopping centers and businesses like that, that are all on the outskirts of town.” Compared to the Durham City Schools, the suburban county district benefited from the arrival of “taxpaying giants,” as a local journalist described IBM (Yeoman, 2018). Black leadership in Durham decried White politicians’ discriminatory investments and patent neglect of downtown Durham over the years, especially in stark contrast with the development of the RTP. Identifying government as White elite that was unwilling to invest in Black downtown, despite the fiscal contribution of its residents to municipal resources, NAACP leaders called upon Black Durhamites to invest their own money into a revitalization project (“NAACP Speaker,” 1983). Drawing on the rich history of Black-led businesses in Durham, Wilbert Tatum, speaker at the NAACP annual dinner in 1983, addressed the crowd to lay bare the indifference of government to Black taxpayer rights when it came to revitalizing downtown Durham, saying, “I used to think that government would do it for us since we paid taxes. […] We must do it ourselves in partnership with those who are black, white, polka-dotted, Jewish and Gentile—a coalition to do it together” (“NAACP Speaker,” 1983). His call for unity contrasted with the starkly divided landscape of the city to which the RTP project contributed.

2.1.3 Industry Involvement in Education to Develop a High-Skilled Workforce Courting businesses was a priority for North Carolina. In line with the state’s business progressivism tradition, which he sought to embody, Governor James B. Hunt promoted the involvement of businesses above all else, and advocated not only business partnerships, but also the appointment of business leaders to key political positions such as chairman of the State Board of Education (Christensen, 2010). He appointed billionaire building manufacturer Clemmie Dixon Spangler, Jr. to the top state position in 1982 (Southern Governors’ Association, 1983, pp. 374–375). The paradigm that drove the educational agenda of many Southern governors at the time was “education for economic growth,” a mantra that Governor Hunt championed to the point that the phrase became his trademark (Hunt, 1984). He drew on the legacy of Terry Sanford, who served as governor from 1961 to 1965 (Covington & Ellis, 1999; Christensen, 2010). Sanford had broken away from a previous tradition embodied by Governor Hodges, which held that, according to historian William

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Goldsmith, “industry came first and better schools followed” (Goldsmith, 2018, p. 72). At the Southern Governors Association’s 1983 meeting, Hunt preached the ethos of education for economic growth by outlining what, in his views, had led North Carolina to its educational success. In 1983, Governor Hunt created the business-led North Carolina Business Committee for Education (NCBCE), as North Carolina was, in Hunt’s words, “realizing that economic development depend[ed] on a strong state education system” (Hunt, 1993). NCBCE became a major actor in education reform in the state. At the time of its creation, Hunt had gathered 58 “of the top businesses” to participate, and he boasted the fact that they counted “the big, big ones, the R.  J. Reynolds diamond, all the big banks and so on” (Southern Governors’ Association, 1983, p. 374). He believed that this business force would lead to better education, because these were the actors who could keep the state’s “feet to the fire.” By 1993, the NCBCE counted over a hundred corporate leaders (Hunt, 1993). Although the predominantly White, predominantly male group of business executives was bipartisan, and sought to symbolize new progressive ideas for North Carolina’s schools, the policies NCBCE promoted aligned with an economic agenda that centered corporate growth and furthered market principles such as competition, even in public schooling. In 1989, George Kahdy, NCBCE’s executive director, supported Governor Martin’s proposed policy to abolish attendance zoning for a “schools of choice” plan despite virulent opposition from Black legislators, who charged the plan was a weapon to fight against the integration of schools (“Black Legislators,” 1989). Business partnerships provided resources at a time of dwindling federal support, as John Clendenin, BellSouth Corporation’s chairman of the board and member of NCBCE argued in 1985 at a public education conference in Charlotte (Hidlay, 1985). In 1989, NCBCE launched a program called “Cities in Schools North Carolina” (CISNC) with an initial grant of $35,000 to fund operational expenses (“CIS Receives Grant,” 1991). In rural Franklin County, as the public schools struggled financially, Novo Nordisk Biochem Inc., a biochemical industry firm, donated $50,000 and lab equipment to the Franklinton public schools (Cohen, 1991). It also donated thousands of dollars to Franklin County directly. The school superintendent, Dr. McGhee, said that the schools needed such help to “meet the needs of business and industry” (Cohen, 1991). State officials in North Carolina preached the gospel of education for economic development and business involvement throughout the 1980s. In September 1989, state superintendent Bob Etheridge addressed the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and Merchants Association with language that paralleled Hunt’s. “Strong business leadership is insisting that education reform become a permanent element in corporate policies and school system goals,” he posited (Etheridge, 1989). Etheridge connected business interests with accountability and testing policies, which the state had implemented, in his perspective, in “return for this aid and promise of jobs.” North Carolina businesses demanded “something in return—that schools get their test scores up and their dropout rates down.” Both elements, however, were reaching an all-time low in North Carolina.

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In the 1980s and 1990s, the role of businesses in public education was at a new apex, in the state as well as on a national scale, at a moment when the private sector was highly venerated (Mehta, 2013). In 1999, the executive director of NCBCE, Tom Williams, former superintendent of Johnston County Schools, claimed that the decade of the 1990s had seen “the relationship between businesses and schools warm considerably” (Goldstein, 1999). Yet the seeds for such partnerships were planted even earlier, as the story of IBM’s educational initiatives shows. The multinational expanded its involvement in public schools in the 1980s. It developed educational programs and marketed its software to them. Several examples of IBM educational programs show the different ways businesses influenced public education in late twentieth-century North Carolina.

2.2 “The K-12 Marketplace:” IBM’s Public-Private Partnerships IBM established a presence in North Carolina public schools through several channels. It provided software for administrative systems, as well as curricular materials, especially when it came to learning how to read and write. Additionally, IBM funded targeted programs in North Carolina public schools such as ProjectFirst, an initiative that placed students in schools as technology assistants. The timing of these programs is telling—they were developed at a time when education policymakers were looking to introduce more standardized testing in school and to take the direction of “accountability” measures, a move that also marked a shift away from racial desegregation as the main focus of education reform. IBM inserted itself into classrooms starting at the end of the 1970s with its typewriters. R. Joyner Brooks, the IBM account manager of the office products division wrote to Governor Hunt at the end of 1979 to highlight the positive impact that IBM Selectric Typewriters and IBM curriculum were making in Person County schools, where fourth, fifth and sixth graders began using IBM tools in 1978 (Brooks, 1979). The program was part of the Compensatory Education program of the Person County School System, the goal of which was to “enhance, upgrade, and motivate Title I students identified as deficient” by having these students “concentrate on language skills improvements using the typewriter to perform daily assignments” (Brooks, 1979). R. Joyner Brooks called the change that he saw in Person County Schools as “an outstanding human interest story,” as he believed students had greatly benefited from the program and were “taking pride in their work for the first time.” Thus IBM saw an opportunity to market its program and machines in the compensatory education arena, which had gained traction in the 1960s. The deficit framework of this strand of education programs drew from popular theories about the culture of poverty (Spencer, 2012). At the federal level, the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) embodied the conceptualization of poverty and remedial education of the time by targeting poor students in what historian

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Mahasan Offutt-Chaney identified as the “punitive function of federal education policy” (Offutt-Chaney, 2020), when the federal government crafted education reform that allowed for the control and punishment of Black urban youth by characterizing children of color as disorderly and deficient. Carving a space for its machine within that space, IBM increased its educational presence over the years, moving from targeted reading and writing programs for a segment of the student population who, according to their school system, needed additional instruction, to entire schools. Its most expansive program yet was called Writing to Read, which had national reach in the 1980s.

2.2.1 “The Teacher Is the Educational Manager:” IBM’s Writing to Read Writing to Read (WTR) was a computer-based literacy program for kindergarten and first grade students created by retired education John Henry Martin and marketed by IBM in the 1980s (Hechinger, 1982; Stavros, 1993). WTR brought children to computer labs where they listened to recording of words that they learned to decipher on computer screens (Fig. 2.1). In the 1984 WTR commercial, a child boasted the program as he walked through a kindergarten classroom equipped with IBM computers (IBM, 1984). The child repeated the company name throughout the commercial, noting that Writing to Read was “from IBM,” and a voiceover specified that the program was “supported and funded by IBM.” The company’s blue logo concluded the advertisement. Capitalizing on the innovative aspect of computer technology, IBM promoted its program as a tool to speed up the learning process and teach children how to read earlier in their school career than in traditional curriculum.

Fig. 2.1  Photography of a kindergarten Writing to Read computer lab in North Carolina, 1986. (Edwards, 2010)

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The program included activities on and off the computer, with accompanying workbooks, to help students learn how to read by simultaneously learning how to write. The program cost about $15,000, counting computers, tape recorders, typewriters and software (Parshall, 1987, p. 39). By 1985, WTR was in 200 North Carolina schools across the state, in rural and urban counties (Nelson & Ross, 1988). As with every other aspect of its involvement in public education, IBM justified its investment in WTR by pointing out its need for a better educated workforce as a private company. “We believe if we as a nation are going to survive and IBM is going to survive as a corporation, we have a responsibility to help the educator,” IBM’s state education adviser Charlie Guidotti declared in 1988  in support of WTR (Nelson & Ross, 1988). The program did not receive unmitigated success, however, as many practitioners were critical of it. Gail Parshall, a public school teacher, shared her experience with WTR in a 1987 article (Parshall, 1987). She listed some positive results in her school’s kindergarten and first-grade students, who quickly came to recognize consonant sounds, and noted that parents seemed enthusiastic (Parshall, 1987, p. 42). However, she warned readers that the program had many drawbacks as well, especially in terms of its logistical implementation as the program was organized during extra hours that teachers had to work weekly, outside of instruction time (Parshall, 1987, p. 48). In her school, kindergarten classes would go to the special computer center for an hour four days a week, and first grade students would go for forty-five minutes five days a week (Parshall, 1987, p. 42). Parshall observed issues “with just about every part of the Writing to Read program” (Parshall, 1987, p. 45). She deplored the additional work that the program required of teachers. Her biggest concern was that programs such as WTR would “go too far in de-emphasizing the role of the teacher” (Parshall, 1987, p. 49). She was alarmed at IBM’s own thinking about this, since its promotional material referred to the teacher as “the educational manager,” whose role in WTR was to monitor students, and not provide instruction (Parshall, 1987, p.  49). This type of phrasing translated the contamination of managing techniques and language into education. Others expressed similar criticism. In 1990, Pamela Freyd and James H. Lytle criticized IBM’s WTR as a “corporate approach to the 2R’s”—2Rs referring to reading and writing in an article published in Educational Leadership (Freyd & Lytle, 1990). They identified WTR as “the largest direct corporate intervention in basic skills instruction currently implemented in this country,” and lamented the fact that it had received little scrutiny. They reminded readers about the design of the program, which only ran on IBM machines, and listed several reasons why, in their view, the program was so successful despite the fact that it was not grounded in solid pedagogical theory. “First, rarely are teachers provided with thousands of dollars worth of equipment,” they argued, adding that the presence of an aide increased the appeal. “Perhaps teachers also feel good that an organization of IBM’s stature endorses movement in the classroom and nonstandard spelling,” they wrote, while recognizing the fact that children, parents and administrators seemed to enjoy the program. “And yet, the only part of the program that is special to WTR, the phonics drill and practice using a phonemic alphabet,” they charged, “has no

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empirical foundation in research on language learning” (Freyd & Lytle, 1990, p. 88). Skeptical of the program, they sided with another researcher, Slavin, who in 1988 had considered WTR “far too expensive for the results it achieves” (Freyd & Lytle, 1990, p. 88). Many shared the same sentiment; in 1991, B. Singh led a study that indicated that there were “nearly zero effects for kindergartners in the area of reading,” and the positive effects seemed to be limited to visual and sound recognition (Singh, 1991). Critics generally agreed that the success of WTR was mostly due to the appeal of new technology and of a partnership with a prestigious company such as IBM (Slavin, 1990). Despite the reservation of the research community, WTR was widely popular, and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction encouraged its implementation across the state. By the end of the 1980s, many public schools in North Carolina used IBM materials, whether through WTR or for their administrative systems. In 1989, 109 school districts out of 140 in the state used IBM System 36 (State Board of Education, 1989). IBM decided to further develop its educational branch.

2.2.2 “A Company Within a Company:” Creating EduQuest, the IBM Educational Systems Company By the early 1990s, IBM was so involved in public education that the company created an internal company dedicated to educational materials and their promotion, EduQuest. IBM representatives described EduQuest as “a company within a company” (West, 1992). The stated goal of the business unit was “to market and support IBM products and services to K-12 schools in North Carolina” with “individuals dedicated to the K-12 marketplace,” a term that translated IBM’s vision of education as a place for competition and profit (Lebov, 1992). Annie G. Lebov, IBM Sector Manager of North Carolina Educational Systems, wrote to the state superintendent Bob Etheridge to explain that it was the company’s “primary objective to develop partnerships with the school systems of North Carolina, and the Department of Public Instruction, so that IBM’s products and services can be of the highest value in improving student performance and managing the various organizations concerned with that task” (Lebov, 1992). The mission of EduQuest was to develop and promote computer systems and “courseware,” that is to say software for instructional programs such as WTR to schools across the country. In Kentucky, for example, a school tested IBM programs designed by EduQuest to match the new teaching methods dictated by the new Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, which promoted standards-based education (“Part of a Process,” 1992). In response to a legal case that challenged the state of Kentucky’s public education, Rose v. Council for Better Education (1989), and that resulted in the Kentucky Supreme Court finding that the state’s public schools violated the state constitution, the Kentucky legislature had passed the

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Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) to establish state educational standards. At the time, KERA was the most comprehensive effort of educational reform in the country, and IBM’s EduQuest partnered with the state’s schools to bolster these efforts with new technology (Trimble & Forsaith, 1995).

2.2.3 Project FIRST and the Instability of Private Recruitment for Public Schools IBM’s participation in public educational affairs sometimes targeted specific communities. In the mid-1990s, the company launched a teaching program in Charlotte, North Carolina called Project FIRST (Fostering Instructional Reform through Service and Technology). The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district (CMS) is the largest in the state, and is known for the ambitious two-way desegregation program it implemented from the 1970s to the 1990s (Gaillard, 2006; Smith, 2004; Lassiter, 2007; Mickelson et al., 2015). The metropolitan district maintains close ties with the private sector, and has had experience “with intense business involvement in school reform,” as sociologist Roslyn Arlin Mickelson noted in 1999 since leaders from IBM and other companies have a say in directing CMS educational policy (Mickelson, 1999, p. 476). Project FIRST was a collaboration between the CharlotteMecklenburg School Foundation and IBM, and it placed AmeriCorps volunteers and retired IBM employees as technology coordinators into public middle schools, and provided computers to these schools. AmeriCorps is a federal program that enlists young people after college for a national service (Bass, 2013). The goal of Project FIRST was to provide additional technological resources to the twenty-two middle schools that were not magnet schools, as CMS had implemented a magnet program, and magnet schools benefitted from additional resources compared to their non-magnet counterparts (Mickelson, 1999, p. 477, p. 482). Sharing his experience as an AmeriCorps volunteer with Project FIRST in the Charlotte Observer in 1995, William Dobbins stressed the innovative aspect of the project when he prided himself in having helped students who seemed to “enjoy learning new and challenging skills that will help prepare them for the ever-changing era of technology” (Dobbins, 1995). Yet others had less glowing accounts of their experience, and instead underlined the mismatch between the program’s ambition and the training it provided to volunteers (Mickelson, 1999, p.  483). In fact, volunteers were not selected based on their computer skills or experience with technology, and IBM did not provide any technological training. The volunteers that entered CMS middle schools had uneven skills and backgrounds. The inadequacy of some volunteers compounded logistical issues with Project FIRST. Most of the non-magnet middle schools could not use the technology that came with Project FIRST, because of inadequate electrical wiring, high teacher turnover, and insufficient training regarding software and computers (Mickelson, 1999, p.  483). By contrast, magnet middle schools received significant financial

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investment from the district: Erasmus, a science and technology magnet middle school, received $750,000  in 1993 while the non-magnet school Westchester received one AmeriCorps volunteer and IBM computers, but remained dilapidated and under-resourced (Mickelson, 1999, p. 483). Project FIRST was symptomatic of philanthropic efforts to solve complex issues of inequality between schools (Finkelstein, 1991; Wrigley, 1992). Resource disparities inside CMS had a long history, one that is rooted in racial discrimination, poverty, and decades of school reform efforts that prioritized the needs of White suburban families. IBM overstated the impact of technology and volunteer programs on these realities. The sporadic benefits of the program in certain schools, with debated results, were dwarfed by the entrenched and lasting inequalities between schools in CMS, which the magnet program intensified in the late 1990s as it eclipsed the district’s desegregation plan (Mickelson et al., 2015). Who, then, most profited from business involvement in public education? While volunteers like Dobbins pointed out positive results, the actors who most benefited were the companies themselves who could boast community involvement, promote their products and increase their presence in school districts. Counties and school districts could also justify, through such partnerships, not providing equal resources to all schools. Monetary profit from government contracts was substantial and created long-term relationships, and a lasting source of revenue for IBM. Beyond targeted programs such as WTR, Eduquest and Project FIRST, IBM influenced the state’s wider policy agenda in what remains perhaps some of its most enduring impact. Together with many allies, at a time when political and business agendas aligned, Lou Gerstner, IBM’s CEO, invested time, money and manpower in promoting standards-based reform.

2.3 The Role of IBM in Late Twentieth-Century Standards-Based Reform Historians have argued that ideas about performance gained traction in unprecedented proportions at a moment when anxieties over international competition dominated much of the national conversation (Berliner & Biddle, 1996; Davies, 2007). Scholars often cite the 1983 publication of A Nation At Risk, an alarming report that warned the country against a “rising tide of mediocrity” that would bring about the nation’s decline, as the major catalyst of the contemporary accountability movement. For Gareth Davies, A Nation at Risk marked a true turning point because it “linked economic anxiety with concerns about the quality of education” (Davies, 2007, p. 271). Developing a high-skilled workforce for a new economic order became a central concern of the Cold War U.  S. (Cyna, 2020). In 1989, the year when all fifty governors met with President George H.  W. Bush in Charlottesville to discuss education policy and agreed on an agenda of outcomes-based education, North

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Carolina had to reckon with the fact that it ranked last on the SAT standardized tests that largely condition access to higher education (Public School Forum, 1989). These concerning results pushed state officials to intensify their testing agenda. The early testing impulse in the state took on a new dimension through end-of-course testing and high-stakes testing, meaning test that can determine student placement, grade progress and graduation (Moses & Nanna, 2007). Standards-based reform here designates all policies that aimed “to align many of the major components of the education system—especially student assessments, school accountability, and teacher training—around explicit, state-determined standards” (Rhodes, 2012, p. 211). Any use of standardized test score data to make policy choices fell under the large umbrella of the “accountability” movement, which I define as the assessment of student achievement, teacher performance, and school (district) quality based on quantifiable measures that may or may not include structural factors such as school funding, poverty, or racial discrimination (Lingard et al., 2013; Lipman, 2004).

2.3.1 North Carolina and Standards-Based Reform In its 1984 special issue on schools, the News and Observer claimed that in “the vanguard of the reform movement [were] the Southern states, a region that [had] historically ranked at the bottom nationally in education spending and student performance on tests” (Christensen, 1984). The journalist went on to describe the leaders of this educational movement. “Young, aggressive governors such as Democrats D. Robert Graham of Florida, William Clinton of Arkansas and James B. Hunt Jr. of North Carolina, and Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee” were the heroes of this story, and the governors had curated an image of educational leaders that culminated when it shaped national policy in the 1990s (Christensen, 1984). From September 25 to 28, 1983, a few months after the U.S. Commission on Excellence in Education published its influential Nation at Risk report, Southern governors met in Austin, Texas, to share their experience and knowledge in educational reform (Southern Governors’ Association, 1983). Many of these governors represented a new generation of Southern Democrats, one that was committed to economic development and preached the potential for a “New South” (Goldsmith, 2018; Christensen, 2010). The various speeches and workshops of the annual meeting testified to the prominence of standards-based reform and competition concerns. After years of making national news due to desegregation battles, Southern states congratulated one another for being on the cusp of change. The 1983 Southern Governors’ Association meeting records show that southern governors saw themselves as the pioneers of education reform in the new paradigm of performance, which shifts the narrative away from A Nation at Risk towards reform efforts in individual states as the main engine for the standards and accountability movement. Alexander of Tennessee called Governor Hunt the most

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influential of them all in educational reform, especially when it came to bringing businesses into public education affairs (Southern Governors’ Association, 1983, p. 371). Southern governors’ vision of educational progress dovetailed Cold War competition ideology, with the reawakening of global geopolitical tensions during the Reagan years (Mehta, 2013). A week before the 1989 Charlottesville Education Summit, the purpose of which was to set a bipartisan agenda for education reform in the twenty-first century, the Southern Governors Association met to discuss the South’s educational agenda in the hope of representing a strong, cohesive block (Southern Governors’ Association, 1988; Vinovskis, 1999). Among the main topics were the “restructuring of education” for a “competitive work force” (Southern Governors’ Association, 1988, p.  350). While claims around the link between education and the health of the U.S. economy were not novel, and had pervaded policy discourse around vocational education since the nineteenth century, they gained new impetus from global competitive anxiety in the late 1980s. Pete Dupont, former governor of Delaware, gave an impassioned speech about the need for competition in the education sector. He claimed the American education system was “failing” because its organization was un-American, as it did not “have the enthusiasm and the push and the impetus of competition” that characterized American capitalism (Southern Governors’ Association, 1988, p. 356). Terrel Bell, former U.S. Secretary of Education and head of the U.S. Commission on Excellence in Education that released A Nation at Risk in 1983, also argued in favor of adding more competition into the education system. He supported DuPont’s argument that political leaders should “weave into the fabric of the total cloth of education as much of the free enterprising market system economy as [they could]” (Southern Governors’ Association, 1988, pp. 364–365). The political climate of the 1980s and 1990s made it easy for corporations to step into the educational realm. Archival records show that during the 1990s, State Superintendent of Education Bob Etheridge worked closely with Lou Gerstner, IBM’s CEO, who was personally involved in promoting the agenda of standards-­ based reform.

2.3.2 Lou Gerstner, CEO and Champion of the Standards-­Based Education Reform Agenda IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner was very involved in education (Gerstner, 1994). He was amongst the early-1990s businessmen or “policy entrepreneurs” who pushed for the testing and accountability agenda (Mehta, 2013). In 1995, Gerstner gave a keynote speech at the Governors’ Association Annual Meeting in Vermont. “We can win gold medals in the education Olympics,” he declared, drawing a competition metaphor between education and sports. “But it will take a world-class effort and it will only happen if you, the CEOs of the system,” he continued as he compared

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governors to business leaders, “reach out, grab it by the throat, shake it up and insist that it happen” (Gerstner, 1995). In his view, business leaders should control and dominate U.S. education policy. His business rhetoric pitched corporate leaders against “academicians” who, in his portrayal, slowed down the pace of progress by requiring longer timelines for change. Former Governor of South Carolina Richard Riley, then U.  S. Secretary of Education, followed up on Gerstner’s speech to congratulate him. Riley addressed Gerstner by first name, starting a paragraph by “Lou,” in a letter: I am convinced that you have identified precisely the right agenda for education reform in this country—clearly defined and challenging academic standards for all students together with real accountability for results; the use of new technologies to provide new tools for improved teaching and learning and the basis for restructuring our schools; and investing the resources needed to support change (Riley, 1995).

The same ideas, Riley told Gerstner in that laudatory letter, had guided the federal government’s recent overhaul of Title I. From an aid model, which dated back to War on Poverty efforts, Title I had recently become focused on “high standards with assessments and accountability geared to those standards.” Riley reminded Gerstner that the federal government had tied sanctions to Title I, taking measures such as replacing staff when schools did not meet goals. What Secretary Richard W. Riley described was a punitive model of education policymaking. In his letter, Riley specifically mentioned Goals 2000: Educate America Act, a 1994 federal law that laid the groundwork for standards-based reform and established the first national standards in education (Rhodes, 2012). Riley added that the Act included a new way for schools to access private funding sources, since the Act “provide[d] local schools with venture capital to support change—to develop strategic plans, provide needed professional development, purchase technology, and promote real partnerships with parents, employers and others in the community.” The U.S.  Secretary of Education thus boasted the emphasis on public-private partnerships that the government encouraged. Federal policy starting in the last two decades of the twentieth century furthered what scholars have called the “marketization of education” (Bartlett et al., 2002). In 1991, the White House under President Bush created the New American School Development Corporation, whose goal was to create innovative “break-the-mold” schools, and the private nonprofit corporation was funded and managed by private businesses (Whiting, 1993). The government’s trust in private actors to drive educational reform continued unabated. Following Bush’s footsteps when it came to education policy, President Clinton maintained National Goals 2000 and its National Skills Standards Board. The bipartisan consensus on standards-based reform and accountability continued to run through the Bush and Obama presidencies in the 2000s and 2010s (Weiss & McGuinn, 2017).

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2.4 Conclusion IBM capitalized on the growing popularity of technology in the second half of the twentieth century to grow its influence in areas beyond the private sector, as its involvement in public education shows. The state of North Carolina, seeking to attract industry, welcomed these partnerships. The state’s leadership spearheaded an educational reform movement around standards and standardized testing in a way that made it particularly ripe for partnering with a computer firm. The state’s tradition of business progressivism underpinned the many IBM programs it supported. IBM’s influence grew in the space that the specific ideological view of education as preparation for the workforce created for it to flourish. The North Carolina Business Committee for Education, created in 1983, still embodies that viewpoint. On its website, the group states that it has, since its creation, “provided a critical link between North Carolina business leaders and the state’s education decision makers, helping to create connections between the education curriculum and the overall work readiness of citizens across the state” (NCBCE, 2022). The idea that schools should tailor curriculum to what industries desire remains a powerful idea, one that drives policy to this day. In 2018, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper spoke at a NCBCE event about computer science education by framing education as a preparation for jobs in the technology industry. “We are in a race with innovation,” he said, “and connecting what teachers teach to what industry needs is vitally important in preparing students to take advantage of work-based learning opportunities that will help them be job ready” (Porter, 2018). In fact, NCBCE promotes “work-based education” initiatives that explicitly encourage educators to incorporate connections with professionals and companies in the K-12 curriculum (NCBCE, 2022). One of the areas in which NCBCE has been most active in recent years is remote learning, and the group hosted a series of conferences with partners such as Google, AT&T and Dell in the summer of 2020 to assist North Carolina schools with their transition to virtual instruction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The dependence of K-12 schools on private businesses for technology increased during the pandemic, as schools were forced to shift to online instruction (Lynch, 2020). Companies like Zoom promoted its tool to K-12 schools across the country, thus establishing itself as a new staple in education (Konrad, 2020). The lasting impact of the pandemic on these public-private partnerships may accelerate the stronghold of companies on secondary and higher education. Looking at business involvement in education from a historical perspective shows that although the current moment seems to reach new heights, companies and policymakers have blurred the lines between public and private for decades, accelerating the process in the 1980s and 1990s as state and district officials welcomed corporations into public schools and cast private actors as legitimate experts and policy advisors on public education matters.

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References Anderson, J. B. (2011). Durham County: A History of Durham County, North Carolina. Duke University Press. Baker, B. D. (2018). Educational inequality and school finance: Why money matters for America’s students. Harvard Education Press. Bartlett, L., Frederick, M., Gulbrandsen, T., & Murillo, E. (2002). The marketization of education: Public schools for private ends. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 33(1), 5–29. Bass, M. (2013). The politics and civics of National Service: Lessons from the civilian conservation corps, VISTA, and AmeriCorps. Brookings Institution Press. Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1996). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Addison Wesley. Black Legislators Assail ‘Schools of Choice’ Plan. (1989, February 17). The News and Observer, 3C. Brooks, R. J. (1979, November 1). [Letter to Governor James B. Hunt, Jr.,]. State Archives of North Carolina [folder “Department of Public Instruction, B-W,” box 314, General Correspondence, 1979, State Agencies, Boards, and Commissions, Education, Governor Hunt papers]. Christensen, R. (1984, March 11). Public education hotly debated as reform fever rises in U.S. The News and Observer, 12G. Christensen, R. (2010). The paradox of tar heel politics: The personalities, elections, and events that shaped modern North Carolina. University of North Carolina Press. CIS Receives Grant. (1991, May 2). Rocky Mount Telegram, 2. Clement, J. (1989, August 3). Interview by Kathy Nasstrom, Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cohen, C. (1991, October 20). Novo Nordisk Helps Franklinton Schools. The News and Observer, 3F. Cortada, J. (2018). Change and continuity at IBM: Key themes in histories of IBM. Business History Review, 92(1), 117–148. Covington, H. E., & Ellis, M. A. (1999). Terry Sanford: Politics, Progress, and outrageous ambitions. Duke University Press. Cummings, A. S. (2020). Brain magnet: Research Triangle Park and the idea of the idea economy. Columbia University Press. Cyna, E. (2020). “Such a powerful tool:” Testing, business interests and school segregation in North Carolina, 1970s–1990s. Cahiers de la Recherche sur l’Éducation et les Savoirs, 19, 105–126. Davies, G. (2007). See government grow: Education politics from Johnson to Reagan. University Press of Kansas. Dobbins, W. (1995, April 9). Americorps program Offers Many Rewards. The Charlotte Observer, 2B. Edwards, B. (2010). [Retro Scan Special] IBM taught me how to read. Vintage Computing & Gaming. https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/480/ibm-­taught-­me-­how-­to-­ read. Accessed 15 Feb 2022. Etheridge. B. (1989, September 26). Remarks by State Superintendent Bob Etheridge, Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and Merchants Association. State Archives of North Carolina [folder: “Speeches, 1989,” box 1, Department of Public Instruction, State Superintendent, Office of the State Superintendent, 33443 Superintendent’s Speeches File, 1989]. Raleigh, NC. Etheridge, B. (1992, January 17). Remarks by State Superintendent Bob Etheridge, IBM Education Representatives [1. Folder: Speeches, 1992, box 1, Superintendent’s Speeches File, 1992–1993]. Department of Public Instruction, State Archives of North Carolina. Faircloth, L. (1999, March 22). Interview by Joseph Mosnier. Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Finkelstein, B. (1991). Dollars and dreams: Classrooms as fictitious message systems, 1790–1930. History of Education Quarterly, 31(4), 463–487.

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Mickelson, R. A. (1999). International business machinations: A case study of corporate involvement in local education reform. Teachers College Record, 100(3), 476–512. Mickelson, R. A., Smith, S. S., & Smith, A. H. (Eds.). (2015). Yesterday, today and tomorrow: School desegregation and resegregation in Charlotte. Harvard University Press. NAACP Speaker Says Durham Residents Must Revitalize City. (1983, November 21). The Durham Sun, 8A. Nelson, L., & Ross, S.  D. (1988). Companies Make Schools Their Business. Business, North Carolina, 8(2), 28. Norberg, A.  L. (1990). High-technology calculation in the early 20th century: Punched card machinery in business and government. Technology and Culture, 31(4), 753–779. North Carolina Business Committee for Education. https://ncbce.org/about/. Accessed 12 Feb 2022. Offutt-Chaney, M. (2020). Discipline for the ‘Educationally Deprived’: ESEA and the Punitive Function of Federal Education Policy 1965–1998. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley. Parshall, G. (1987). IBM’s writing to read program: One Teacher’s experience. Language Arts Journal of Michigan, 3(2), 39–51. Part of a process, not an event. (1992, May 3). The Paducah Sun, 8A. Porter, F. (2018, December 6). North Carolina education and business leaders work to shape the future of computer science education for the state. NC Governor Roy Cooper. https://governor.nc.gov/news/north-­carolina-­education-­and-­business-­leaders-­work-­shape-­future-­computer-­ science-­education. Accessed 12 Feb 2022. Public School Forum of North Carolina. (1989). North Carolina ranks last on SAT scores. The Forum Report, 4(4), 2. Rhodes, J.  H. (2012). An education in politics: The origins of no child left behind. Cornell University Press. Riley, R. (1995, August 2). [Letter to Louis V.  Gerstner, Jr., Chairman and CEO of IBM Corporation]. State Archives of North Carolina [folder: “Education/Info (folder 5),” box 25, Governor Hunt Correspondence, 1995, Governor Hunt Papers]. Ryan, J. E. (2010). Five miles away, a world apart: One City, two schools, and the story of educational opportunity in modern America. Oxford University Press. Singh, B. (1991). IBM’s writing to read program: The right stuff or just high tech fluff?. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Florida Educational Research Association (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED339015). Slavin, R. E. (1990). IBM’s writing to read: Is it right for Reading? The Phi Delta Kappan, 72(3), 214–216. Smith, S. S. (2004). Boom for whom? Education, desegregation, and development in Charlotte. State University of New York Press. Southern Governors’ Association. (1983, September 25–28). Proceedings of the Southern Governors’ Association, 49th Annual Meeting. Southern Governors Association papers [folder 2, box 1] Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Southern Governors’ Association. (1988, September 26–27). Proceedings of the Southern Governors’ Association, 54th Annual Meeting. Southern Governors Association papers [folder 14: “Annual Meeting, 1988,” box 3] Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Spencer, J. (2012). From ‘cultural deprivation’ to cultural capital: The roots and continued relevance of compensatory education. Teachers College Record, 114(6), 1–41. Sracic, P. A. (2006). San Antonio v. Rodriguez and the pursuit of equal education: The debate over discrimination and school funding. University Press of Kansas. State Board of Education (1989, March 9). North Carolina State Archives [State Board of Education Minutes, Department of Public Instruction, State Board of Education Minutes Files – 1987–1999].

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Stavros, A.  M. (1993). Structuring literacy instruction: A study of the effects of IBM’s writing to read program on teacher attitudes and behaviors. Ph.D.  Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Trimble, C. S., & Forsaith, A. C. (1995). Achieving equity and excellence in Kentucky education. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 28(3), 599–653. Vinovskis, M. (1999). The road to Charlottesville: The 1989 education summit. National Education Goals Panel. Walden, M. L. (2008). North Carolina in the connected age: Challenges and opportunities in a globalizing economy. University of North Carolina Press. Weiss, J., & McGuinn, P. (2017). The evolving role of the state education Agency in the era of ESSA and trump: Past, present, and uncertain future (CPRE Working Papers). Consortium for Policy Research in Education. West, P. (1992, February 5). I.B.M. launches EduQuest to better serve K-12 market. Education Week. Whiting, J. T. (1993). The new American schools development corporation: Did it create a climate for real reform? The Phi Delta Kappan, 74(10), 777–779. Wrenn, S. L. (2018, August 16). Interview by Esther Cyna [digital recording]. In possession of the author. Wrigley, J. C. (1992). Class politics and the public schools. Rutgers University Press. Yeoman, B. (2018, February 20). How dividing county school districts can lead to De Facto Segregation. Pacific Standard.

Chapter 3

The Rise of Private Universities in Lebanon: Strategies for Conquering New Student “Markets” Lama Kabbanji and Kevin Mary

Abstract  In Lebanon, since 2005, more than half of tertiary students are enrolled in a private institution. The Lebanese higher education system now appears stratified, consisting of a single public university, a few elite universities, and a myriad of private market-oriented universities, whose development began in the early 1990s and the development of neo-liberal economic policies. This chapter examines the strategies put in place by these private universities to conquer new student «markets». We first analyze their spatial deployment through campus openings all throughout the Lebanese territory. We develop here the idea of a new geography of higher education in Lebanon that has resulted in a relocation to the peripheries and urban margins, following the logic of academic capitalism. After the “confessional” fallback of universities during the war, the increase of geographic relocations to the peripheries here expresses the rise of a “student market” within the framework of the liberalization of the Lebanese economy, without dismantling the confessional lines of demarcation established by the war. We then discuss the competition that results from the establishment of these new institutions. Finally, we look at the representations of which these universities are carriers and which refer to the search for international «labels» synonymous for them with a certain quality of teaching. These analyzes allow us to identify how the dominant neo-liberal model of higher education has been adapted in the Lebanese context. Keywords  Lebanon · Higher education · Academic capitalism · Internationalization · Privatization

L. Kabbanji Institute of Research for Development, Marseille, France e-mail: [email protected] K. Mary (*) ART-DEV Institute, University of Perpignan, Perpignan, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_3

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3.1 Introduction Since 2005, more than half of higher education students in Lebanon are enrolled in a private institution. In the 2018–2019 academic year, more than 60% of them are attending this type of institution, or 138,224 students.1 The higher education system in Lebanon is stratified, consisting of 47 institutions, including a single public university, the Lebanese University, which has seen its status and resources steadily decline since the war in Lebanon (1975–1990), a few elite universities, and a myriad of market-driven private universities. This strengthening of the private sector – which is essentially the work of universities2 – is fairly recent, since it dates back to the early 1990s and the implementation of neoliberal-inspired policies by the successive governments of Rafiq Hariri, which paved the way for the development of private initiatives in higher education. This dynamic then continued and intensified at the turn of the 2000s, under the effect of an ever more advanced deregulation of the education sector (Melonio & Mezouagh, 2010). However, the emergence of private higher education in Lebanon is not new. On the contrary, it is at the origin of the development of universities in the country from the middle of the nineteenth century. Within the framework of Christian religious missions, two universities based on the Western model were established. The first, the American University of Beirut (AUB), dates back to 1866 and the second, the University of Saint Joseph (USJ), was established in 1875. These two institutions dominated the Lebanese academic world for nearly 70 years. It was not until the inauguration of the Lebanese University (UL) in 1951 that a third university emerged, this one public. Four other private universities were then created between 1960 and 1987, essentially to respond to a desire to rebalance the socio-confessional order.3 Today, they constitute the elite universities, well established in the Lebanese academic landscape and benefiting from a significant symbolic prestige (Kabbanji, 2012). The higher education institutions discussed in this article are part of what might be called a “second wave” of institutions inaugurated in the 1990s. They are focused on a utilitarian vision of education. The context of post-war reconstruction has in fact endorsed the Lebanese government’s choice to call on private capital, both local and foreign (Baumann, 2016). The logic of the development of the private sector of higher education after the 1990s has more to do with the absorption of student surpluses than with the model of private growth dedicated to the training of elites, as was the case before the war.

  Educational Research and Development Center (ERDC) figures: http://www.crdp.org/ files/202006040404521.pdf 2  Of the 47 institutions mentioned above, only 9 are university institutes or colleges. 3  For a more detailed development of the formation of these early universities in Lebanon, see Kabbanji, 2012: 128–129. 1

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In the 2000s, Lebanese higher education was characterized by the multiplication of the number of private institutions in a context in which the State encouraged competition between all these universities by its withdrawal (Kabbanji op.  cit.). This new wave is at first entirely privatized: no new public university has been created. The Lebanese higher education sector appears to be very poorly regulated and therefore very composite. There are major contrasts between large universities such as the Lebanese International University (LIU) and its 20,000 students  – making it the largest private university in the country in terms of enrollment in 2019 – and institutions that remain confidential, almost hidden in buildings in the Beirut suburbs or in simple houses in remote rural areas. If it is established that these institutions are part of a market and profit-oriented approach (Kabbanji, 2012; Herrera, 2006), this article proposes to grasp the logics and strategies put in place by these universities to develop. In doing so, we attempt to understand the extent to which higher education in Lebanon is being reorganized along entrepreneurial lines and, if so, how this dynamic, which refers to the concept of academic capitalism, is being developed.4 In the words of Jessop, “the university is a place where the market and the profit are not the same”. In Jessop’s words, while academic capitalism describes a general trend in the overall structural organization and strategic reorientation of the fields of education and research, the notion of entrepreneurship serves to capture the logic and content of this strategic reorientation (Jessop, 2018). Picking up on the elements identified by Schumpeter to analyze entrepreneurial innovation in the firm, Jessop examines how “entrepreneurial” universities will develop five types of strategies to increase their revenues, reputation, or international ranking. Among these, two in particular apply to the case of the universities that are the subject of this article: the search for new markets to sell their products and services (opening of delocalized branches, geographic or social expansion of the student recruitment pool, etc.), as well as new “sources of supply” of students, teachers or researchers to improve their competitiveness (lowering of costs, improvement of reputation and international ranking, signing of cooperation agreements with elite universities, development of new sources of revenue, etc.). In this chapter, we examine how these two types of strategies are implemented in Lebanon and their effects on the geography of higher education in the country. In particular, we analyze the spatial deployment of private institutions through the opening of campuses throughout the Lebanese territory, the objective of which is to seek out new student “clientele” from ever further away. We then discuss the competition that arises from the establishment of these new institutions and the ways in which they try to respond to it by attempting to distinguish themselves from one another. Finally, the text looks at the representations that some of these universities carry and that refer to the search for international “labels”, synonymous in their eyes with a certain quality of teaching. These analyses allow us to identify,  The concept of academic capitalism has been developed to study the increasingly complex connections between academia and capitalism (Slaughter & Barret, 2015; Jessop, 2017, 2018). This concept provides an appropriate theoretical framework for understanding the extent to which higher education and research are being reorganized along capitalist or entrepreneurial lines. 4

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ultimately, the way in which the dominant neoliberal model of higher education has been adapted to the Lebanese context. This study first mobilizes the administrative data of the Lebanese Center for Research and Pedagogical Development (CRDP) and the universities’ websites. These sources were used to conduct an initial mapping of higher education, which helps to illustrate the expansion patterns of institutions created after 1990. The research is also based on a first round of surveys conducted in 2017 and 2018. Field visits were conducted in the different regions to validate the administrative data and the geolocation of universities. We then focused specifically on the cases of the Lebanese International University (LIU) and the Modern University for Business and Science (MUBS), two of the most reputable “second wave” universities in Lebanon with different business strategies. LIU, founded in 2001  in the Eastern Bekaa, is, in 2019, the largest in terms of enrollment (second only to the Lebanese public university). It also stands out for having the largest number of branches in Lebanon, of which the Beirut campus is the most important,5 as well as for its international expansion strategy. The MUBS, created in 2000  in Beirut, favors partnerships with foreign universities, co-diplomation, and relies on the “excellence” of its training offer, backed by the adoption of the American education model. A dozen semi-structured interviews were conducted with various actors of these two universities (university directors, administrative and pedagogical managers, researchers and teachers). Informal interviews were also conducted with the administrative staff and teaching staff of various other institutions. Finally, the article draws on knowledge accumulated from research conducted between 2014 and 2016, in Lebanon, on academic mobilities and knowledge production in the social sciences, during which a survey was conducted in four Lebanese universities (Kabbanji et al., 2019).6

3.2 A New Geography of Higher Education from 1990 Onwards With 47 officially recognized higher education institutions in 2019 for a population of about six million inhabitants, coupled with a national territory marked by its small size,7 the Lebanese university network is characterized above all by the density of its offer. The current distribution, however, reflects an evolution in time and space according to a global movement of push from the centers to the peripheries of the country.

 13,000 students were enrolled there in 2018 according to an interview conducted at the Beirut campus in October 2018. 6  Source: http://theacss.org/pages/rgp_cycle2_kabbanji 7  With an area of approximately 10,000 km2, the Lebanese territory is barely larger than Cyprus or Corsica. 5

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Generally speaking, the distribution of higher education institutions is grafted onto the major population zones of the national territory (Fig.  3.1). Thus, the university network is dense in the coastal urban areas, particularly in Beirut and the coastal areas located to the north and south of the capital: the universities are asserting themselves here as a component or “metropolitan marker” (Dang Vu et al., 2015). The Beirut metropolis logically constitutes the country’s first university hub by taking advantage of the concentration of high value-added activities (large companies, decision-making centers, international airport, etc.) present in this territory. A second hub is emerging in the north, in Tripoli, the country’s second largest city, while the rural areas of the south and west are the most deprived of higher education infrastructure. The southern part of Lebanon is densely populated,

Urban area AUT

LIU

UOB

Halba Tripoli

AUL

UL

BAU AUT AOU UL 2 km

UOB

UT Batroun

MUT JU LIU

USF

ULF Zghorta

Hermel

NORD

BAALBEKHERMEL

UPA Jbeil (Byblos)

LAU AUT

Acronyms :

BEIRUT

Jounieh USEK AUL

N

AKKAR

AZMU

MONTLIBAN

LGU St. Paul Institute

LCU AKU : Al-Kafaat University AUNOHR : Academic University College for Non-Violence and Human Rights NDU AOU : Arab Open University USEK ULF AUB : American University of Beirut AUNOHR AUT UPA AUCE : American University of Culture and Educaon Beyrouth AUL : Arts, Science and Technology University in Lebanon MUBS Baabda Zahlé AUST : American University of Science and Technology MUC ULF AUT : American University of Technology IUL Aley UL MUBS AZMU : AZM University UOB BAU BAU : Beirut Arab University ESA : École supérieure des Affaires MUBS RHU GU : Global University LIU AUCE IUL : Islamic University of Lebanon JU : Al-Jinan University BAU Deir al-Qamar JUIT : Joya University Instute of Technology AUL NDU LAU : Lebanese American University Joubb Janine LCU : Lebanese Canadian University IUL See on next Saïda LGU : Lebanese German University map LIU : Lebanese Interna onal University SUC LRCU : Lebanese Red Cross University LIU MEU : Middle East University JU MU : Al-Maaref University MUBS : Modern University of Business and Sciences UL MUC : MUC University College of Technology PU MUT : Al-Manar University of Tripoli AUCE NDU : Notre Dame University LIU NEST : Near East School of Theology OUC : Ouzai University College Nabatiyé PU : Phoenicia University Marjayoun RAU : Al-Rassoul Al-Aazam University Ins tute RHU : Rafic Hariri University LIU Tyr SUC : Sidoon University College JUIT AUT UL : Université libanaise (public) IUL ULF : Université Libano-Française ULS : Université La Sagesse AUCE UOB : University of Balamand 25 km UPA : Antonine University USAL : University of Sciences and Arts in Lebanon AUCE USEK : Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik USF : Université Sainte Famille Bint Jbail USJ : Université Saint-Joseph UT : University of Tripoli

IUL

Baalbek AUCE LIU

BEKAA

NABATIYÉ

SUD

University Status Private university

ULF

Public university University’s name (acronym)

Creaon date Before 1990 Between1990 and 2000 After 2000

Univesity Network MUBS LIU

Main Campus Annex

Territorial layout Muhafazat’s limit Sources : Lebanese Ministry of Higher Educaon, 2017 ; Author’s invesgaons, 2017-2022.

SUD

Muhafazat’s name

Fig. 3.1  Distribution of universities in Lebanon (2019)

Main roads Baabda City’s Name

Capital city Main city L. Kabbanji, K. Mary, ART-DEV, CEPED, 2022.

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but its territory is marked by the Israeli occupation until 2000, the war waged by Israel in Lebanon in 2006 and tensions in the border area. This region could see the development of new university campuses in the future, as sociologist Jacques Kabbanji, a specialist in higher education, states.8 The examination of the distribution of universities on the scale of Lebanon as well as that of Beirut and its suburbs reveals, in addition to the global trends expressed above, several logics. The first is that of the “duplication” of universities according to a pattern of opening annexes on the national territory which took place according to two distinct temporalities and logics. First, it was Lebanon’s entry into the civil war from 1975 to 1989 that led the universities to split up on either side of the demarcation line separating the eastern and western districts of Beirut. In a territory at war where travel is difficult, even dangerous, the goal is to be able to reach the users and the teaching staff. This is the case of the Lebanese University (UL), whose faculties are mostly located in West Beirut but which is opening new ones on the other side of the “green line”9 by renting out buildings that are not always suitable for teaching. It also expanded into the Bekaa with an annex in Zahle, then opened a branch in Tripoli and Saida. The American University of Beirut (AUB) left its stronghold in the western district of Hamra to open an Off campus program in the east of the city, which has since closed. Although it spared the universities, the almost total destruction of downtown Beirut was intended to halt any development of “mixed” territories in terms of their population (Beyhum, 1994). The universities that opened during the war did so in accordance with new logics of “community” centralities, such as the Sunni University of Tripoli and the Greek Orthodox University of Balamand, located a few kilometers south of the city. Far from a real process of decentralization, which had been promoted before the war, the universities had become an “ideological stake in a policy of autonomizing political territories” (Beyhum, 1994). At the end of the war in 1990, the map of higher education was thus partially redrawn by new relations between universities and territories. The period that began then, on the other hand, was quite different in its context. Once peace was established and accessibility restored, new universities, and especially annexes, were created both in the capital and in the different regions of the country, to the point where certain areas now appear saturated, such as Beirut and its northern and southern urban continuum. After the “community” withdrawal of universities during the war, the progression of geographical relocations towards the peripheries expresses here the rise of a “student market” in the context of the liberalization of the Lebanese economy, without however calling into question the confessional demarcation lines established by the war.

 Interview in Beirut, October 2017.  Name given to the demarcation line separating the Muslim-majority neighborhoods of West Beirut from the Christian-majority neighborhoods of East Beirut, on either side of Damascus Street. Uninhabited during the war, this street has gradually seen the development of a vegetation cover. 8 9

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The development of the Modern University for Business and Science (MUBS) provides a glimpse into this process. Established in 2000, the university was first located in a small building in the Hamra district of Beirut, close to universities such as AUB and the Lebanese American University (LAU). Too small, the building was soon abandoned in favor of a location even closer to the city center, on the outskirts of Spears Street. Then, the establishment of branches elsewhere in the country was justified by “the need of other regions”, in the words of the dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences: In the Chouf region, there were very few universities... two or three at most... and they were very far from each other, so it was a good thing to establish in this region that lacked universities. In Aley and Semkanieh, it was the same thing [...]. Being spread out across the country allowed us to attract more students.10

In this case, the strategy consists of anticipating the demand for higher education by positioning itself as close as possible – geographically – to the inhabitants of rural areas who have not been used to attracting the attention of the academic world. The logic of targeting potential students as a priority, as described here, is more akin to the commercial franchise model than to the opening of a prestigious institution, the engine of a local knowledge economy, as can be seen in metropolises (Veltz, 2014). In this strategy of peripheral location, MUBS is also finding new allies among local authorities who see universities as urban amenities, factors of dynamism and renewal for their municipality, as the dean of MUBS indicates: We have opened all our campuses in coordination with the municipalities wherever we have set up. […] In Dammour, the municipality told us that the opening of our university would allow the residents to increase their level of education, to be more open.

Teaching in the annexes requires little in the way of resources and can be conducted in non-specific facilities. This allows institutions to make a limited initial investment in the opening of annexes. A simple house can be used to house a university, as is the case in the city of Baakline, where one of the AUCE branches has moved into an old bourgeois house. The large university logo on the front of the house makes it look like a “village university”. Other times, only a few rooms or a floor of a building are used as offices. These annexes are not always easily recognizable or identifiable and the imprint they leave on the urban landscape is sometimes very small. In addition to Lebanon’s rural areas, peripheral urban areas have also been the focus of university investment, particularly in the Beirut suburbs. The map showing the location of higher education institutions in the Lebanese capital and its adjacent suburbs shows a university network that is almost equally dense inside and outside the municipal boundaries of Beirut (Fig.  3.2). In the suburbs, if we look at the periods of creation of the institutions, almost half of them were established after the

 Interview in Beirut, October 2017. The official website of MUBS further states in a tab recounting its history that the university has “brought higher education to areas of Lebanon that were previously neglected and forgotten”. 10

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L. Kabbanji and K. Mary University status

Mediterranean Sea

Private university

N

MUBS

AUB ESA

NEST Hamra

ULF

Mar Mikhael

Haigazian MUBS

LAU LIU

Bachoura

AUL OUC

AOU

AUST

AUL

ULS

UL

After 2000

AUCE

LIU

AUL

CHIYAH

GHOBEIRY

Between 1990 and 2000

DEKOUANEH

AUCE

University name (acronym*) Before 1990

UL UL

USJ

Mazraa

BAU

UL

ULF

JDEIDEH

BORJ HAMMOUD

BEIRUT

Verdun

Mousaitbeh

UOB

Downtown

GU

Ras Beirut

UL

Public university

JAL EL-DIB Harbour

UL AKU

MEU

UL

BEIT MERI AUB Main Campus AUCE

Annex

Tripoli

MU

USAL BORJ EL-BRAJNEH RAU

LRCU

MUC HARET HREIK

AUCE HADATH

MANSOURIEH

Beirut city limits

Saïda Tyr

CHIYAH Municipality

MREIJEH UPA

Mazraa

BAABDA 1 km

LAYLAKI

Urban area

Beirut

UL

AARAIYA

Neighborhood name Main roads Airport

Fig. 3.2  Universities in Beirut and its suburbs (2019)

war.11 In Beirut, on the other hand, the universities created after 1990 are less numerous than the older ones.12 In the south of the capital, a new and particularly active front of institutional creation seems to be emerging, consisting of several universities that have opened since 1990 and that are not annexes. Before the end of the war, only the University College of Technology (MUC) was located in this area. Since then, there are four new institutions. This Beirut suburb, located between the municipal limits of the capital and the airport, is a historically stigmatized area that in current representations refers to “a Shiite, poor, anarchic, illegal and Islamist territory” (Harb, 2003). The dâhiye,13 as the inhabitants of Beirut call it, is indeed one of the most densely populated popular suburbs of the capital. Its urbanization is partly informal. Since the mid-1980s, its population has been almost exclusively Shiite, highly politicized and has its own system of service management provided by

 Of the twenty-three institutions listed in the suburbs of Beirut on Figure 3.2, ten opened after 1990. Half of these institutions are annexes (eleven out of twenty-three), including five for the Lebanese University (UL) alone. 12  Eighteen universities were listed in Beirut, seven of which opened after 1990. In the Lebanese capital, only five institutions are annexes. 13  A term that usually refers in Arabic to the land and housing surrounding a city. In the Beirut context, however, it refers more specifically to that space distinct from the city, which stands out from the other suburbs of Beirut. To speak of the other suburbs, Beirutians use the plural al-dawâhî (Harb op. cit.). 11

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Hezbollah14 (Harb op. cit.). This suburb, which claims to be “the only protest suburb with its own identity” (Harb op. cit.), has more of the characteristics of a margin than a simple periphery. The result of a process of social and spatial relegation, it appears to be the bearer of an original territorial production. Ultimately, these university locations, which are moving ever further into the peripheries and margins of the country, evoke new geographical anchors in the quest for resources or outlets. Capital must thus circulate ever more rapidly and in ever more distant spaces to find a “spatial fix”. The Marxist geographer David Harvey (2001) makes this notion the cornerstone of a geopolitics of capitalism. In order to find new ways for capital, spatial displacement is an option.15

3.3 Competing Universities Among the “obstacles” and “challenges” to be overcome at the time of the creation of the MUBS in the early 2000s16 was the strong competition that exists today among private universities. “There are a lot of universities, a lot of competition,” says one of the deans of this university.17 In many ways, the market for private universities has become more competitive. In many respects, the Lebanese higher education market appears saturated. The density of the university network requires institutions to find ways to stand out in order to better capture student demand and make their investments profitable. While these universities have not escaped the homogenization of higher education, and in particular the adoption, for the vast majority of them, of the hegemonic, i.e. American, model of higher education (Marginson, 2008), they nevertheless deploy distinct strategies to attract a new student “clientele”. Some, like LIU, are more successful than others.

3.3.1 Conquering New Markets… By Relocating Abroad The Lebanese International University (LIU) is, in 2019, the second largest university in the country after the public university in terms of student enrollment. The university was founded in 2001 in the Eastern Bekaa, the home region of its founder, Abdel Rahim Mrad, a Sunni businessman and Minister of Higher Education at the time of the university’s establishment. Mrad is also a member of the political bureau of the Nasserite Unity Party (Itihad). It was in the name of the Nasserite ideology  Literally the “Party of God,” Hezbollah is a Shiite Islamist group and political party based in Lebanon. It was formed following the 1982 Israeli military intervention in Lebanon, with Iranian funding. 15  For more on David Harvey’s space fix, see especially Keucheyan, 2013, pp. 150–158. 16  Source: MUBS official website, page tracing the history of the university’s education. 17  Interview in Dammour, Lebanon, October 2017. 14

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that he first had the idea of opening branches in the Arab countries.18 This explains the meteoric development of the LIU: In 1976, I returned to Brazil and the will to build overcame the will to destroy (referring to the Lebanese war that was in its early stages). With some close friends, we collected donations from Lebanese expatriates and from some Arab countries to build a model school. We did not think at the time that the idea would evolve and that the elementary school would develop into a secondary school, then a technical school, that a sports school would also be created and then an orphanage and that all this would lead to the creation of the Lebanese International University (LIU), first established in the heart of the Lebanese countryside and then in other cities: Beirut, Sidon, Tripoli, Nabatieh, Jdeideh and then to the Arab and Muslim countries: from Yemen to Sudan, through Senegal, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Egypt because this is how we understand Nassiriya and pan-Arabism.19

The first branch abroad will be opened in Yemen. Today, LIU’s Dakar branch has established itself as one of the most important private universities in the country’s pharmacy education landscape.20

3.4 Broaden the Social Base of Student Recruitment 3.4.1 Mobilize an a-confessional Discourse The logic of territorial expansion described above has been accompanied by a desire to broaden the social base of student recruitment. To this end, many recently created universities have adopted an a-confessional approach: a little more than half of those that appeared after the war put forward forms of openness ranging from the vague requirement to “break down borders in a globalized world” for the American University of Technology (AUT) to the more specific desire to “transcend religions and sectarian borders” including at the level of “local and regional political parties” promoted by the MUBS, through to the promotion of “access to education based on diversity” for the Phoenician University (PU).21 None of the universities show a confessional basis of operation. The adoption of an a-confessional discourse, which is also reflected in the names of several of these universities (see Fig. 3.1), seems to be linked to a strategy of attracting a wider “clientele”. The example of the LIU is interesting here. Its founder, Abdel Rahim Mrad, presents himself as a great patron of the arts, offering his

 Interview at LIU, Beirut, October 2018.  “Biography of the Union Party Chairman, His Eminence Minister Abdel Rahim Murad,” November 30, 2014: http://www.mepanorama.net 20  Interview in Dakar (Euromed University), November 2018. 21  Source: websites of the various private universities established after 1990 that were recognized by the Lebanese state in 2016. Of the twenty-four institutions listed, nineteen promote forms of “diversity” while three could not be listed due to a non-functional web address. 18 19

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services generously to the entire population of his region, regardless of religion. Following his first appointment as a member of parliament, he writes: This parliamentary seat has allowed me to offer even more services to the people of the region and thus continue a process I started in the 1960s by offering aid to mosques and churches, building roads, drilling wells, constructing sewage systems, and helping clubs and associations, without the idea of a seat in Parliament being on the table.22

For Mrad, through the LIU, it is about building the foundations of “Arab educational unity.” The mobilization of the pan-Arab register, however, seems to be only a strategy developed because of Mr. Mrad’s membership in a Nasserite political party. Indeed, on the one hand, the LIU offers training in English; on the other hand, when it establishes itself in countries such as Senegal, it blends completely into the Senegalese university landscape and no longer even refers to its Lebanese and “pan-­ Arab” origins. Thus, the Lebanese branch of the LIU has adopted the name Euromed University to attract students from the sub-region.23 The LIU is thus pursuing a logic of developing local markets in Lebanon and abroad, rather than a logic of internationalization. Also, and in apparent contradiction with the discourse mobilized for marketing purposes, the spatial distribution of these same institutions is often reminiscent of a logic of anchoring in territories marked by their denominational heritage. First of all, none of the new universities have been established everywhere in Lebanon. Only the Lebanese University (public) is. The Lebanese International University (LIU), established in 2001, is the private university that appears to be the most spatially dispersed, but it avoids areas with a Christian majority. These new universities are in fact almost systematically associated with confessional networks. The MUBS is associated with the Druze populations by its founder and its student recruitment is affected by this: it is present in all the major Druze population basins and absent in the Bekaa and the North. The American University for Culture and Education (AUCE) is present only in areas where there are Christian populations, notably in the eastern neighborhoods and suburbs of Beirut. The universities in the southern suburbs of Beirut, on the other hand, appear to be very marked by their links with Hezbollah and the Shiite populations in general. This tendency is less evident in the “mixed” areas where these universities regularly meet, such as in the Mount Lebanon region and especially in Beirut.

 “Biography of the Union Party Chairman, His Eminence Minister Abdel Rahim Murad,” November 30, 2014: http://www.mepanorama.net 23  Interview in Dakar (Euromed University), November 2018. 22

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3.4.2 Affordable Tuition Fees and Financial Aid The issue of tuition fees is essential to understanding the way in which private universities are trying to conquer new student “markets”. For them, it is a tool used as part of a logic of “social opening” and is implemented through two main mechanisms. First of all, it consists in offering affordable courses in order to distinguish themselves from competing universities, whether it is the prestigious universities and their high tuition fees24 or the public university and its quasi-freedom. The challenge for these new universities is to find a place between these two models by offering courses that are not free of charge, but much less expensive than the elite universities. Tuition costs are generally in the order of several thousand euros per year.25 This more affordable private training offer is sometimes promoted by universities as one of their educational “values” and “missions”. Thus, the Phoenician University (PU) mentions its intention to “train young people from various social backgrounds”, as does the Lebanese-Canadian University (LCU), which states that it offers “an education accessible to everyone”, while the American University of Science and Technology (AUST) prides itself on keeping its tuition fees to a “minimum level”.26 But is this really the case? All three universities have relatively high tuition fees, ranging from US$2500 per year for LCU to almost US$8000 for AUST. If we take into account the fact that 80–90% of the resources of private universities come from student tuition fees (Melonio & Mezouaghi, 2010), and are therefore based primarily on the financial capacities of families, it is difficult to believe in the scenario of social openness promoted by these institutions. It is the model of “parentocracy” (Brown, 1990), according to a proven formula in the Anglo-Saxon academic world, that resonates in the Lebanese case. This model advocates an educational system that depends mainly on the financial capacities that parents are willing to mobilize for their children. In this system, the families with the most means have a competitive advantage in the education market. It is therefore a solvent clientele that private universities seek above all, which logically cannot correspond to the most disadvantaged categories in Lebanon. The effects of this model have been measured in English-speaking countries (the United States and the United Kingdom in particular) and go more in the direction of increasing inequalities than of democratizing access to higher education for all segments of society (Boliver, 2011; Ball, 1993).  They range from US$10,000 a year at St. Joseph’s University to $30,000 a year at the most expensive Lebanese-American University. At the American University of Beirut, tuition is about $20,000 per year. 25  However, prices vary greatly depending on the course of study (Master’s courses are more expensive) and the field of study chosen at each university. They range from $1000 for the cheapest courses to more than $10,000 a year. 26  Source: Websites of the various private universities created after 1990 and accredited by the Lebanese state in 2016. Out of the twenty-four institutions surveyed, nine refer to a willingness to address a socially diverse public. In this list, three universities could not be counted due to a non-­ functional web address. 24

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Nevertheless, the promised social opening is achieved through another mechanism: financial aid. Indeed, private universities offer scholarships and more frequently financial credits to their students. The MUBS displays the following information on its website The cost of a university education is an issue that worries a significant number of students and the families of those students. MUBS has recognized this issue and as a result has set its tuition fees with the needs of students in mind. The university has instituted a deferral program that allows eligible students to spread their tuition over three installments to ease the financial burden.27

This university also offers a few merit-based scholarships to cover all or part of tuition, as well as the ability for some students to work on campus to pay for their education. Students can also apply for financial aid to help with their tuition. At LIU, students from low-income families can also apply for a reduction in their tuition fees and are given the opportunity to attend classes without having to pay for them right away, with graduation, however, contingent on all fees being paid.28

Moreover, the president of the university has set up a system of scholarships awarded each year to all the municipalities, public and private secondary schools as well as to the political parties in Lebanon who distribute them to the students of their choice.29 Far from being a selfless strategy, this system allows the president to maintain a clientelist network that he can use to consolidate his position as a notable figure in his region. A reduction in tuition fees is also offered specifically to Palestinian students (who benefit from a 50% reduction) and more recently to Syrian students. Some non-governmental organizations used to bring Syrian students to us and take care of their tuition payment, but that is not the case anymore, maybe they don’t have money anymore. (LIU interview, Beirut, October 2018)

One of the major promises of the new universities is that access to education is designated as “international”. This can be seen in the names of many universities that refer to a foreign country: Lebanese-American University, Lebanese-Canadian University, Lebanese-German University (LGU), Lebanese-French University (ULF), etc., all names that immediately recall the dual Lebanese and foreign affiliation of these institutions. If it is not mentioned at first glance, the “international” is then read in the numerous accreditations or “approvals” put forward by the universities in their speeches. These forms of linkage with foreign countries nevertheless reflect contrasting realities.

 Source: MUBS’ official website.  Interview at LIU, Beirut, October 2018. 29  Indeed, Mr. Mrad was a member of parliament on several occasions from 1991 for the Sunni seat of the Eastern Bekaa-Rachaya, then minister in various governments until 2005, including in 1994 as Minister of Vocational and Technical Education and in 2000 as Minister of Education and Higher Education. He returned to the Lebanese Parliament in 2018. 27 28

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3.4.3 International, a Sign of Excellence? Partnerships with foreign institutions figure prominently among the elements promoted by the new private universities, and the vast majority of them use them. Indeed, of the twenty-four private universities surveyed that were created after the war, seventeen have international partnerships, while one university indicates that it is in the process of accreditation and another specifies that it is actively seeking partnerships.30 In total, only five institutions have not developed any international partnerships.31 These links with foreign countries even seem to be at the heart of their development strategy. Obtaining international accreditation thus appears to be a priority for several institutions. It is an “absolute priority” for the Lebanese University of Arts, Sciences and Technology (AUL)32 and one of the “priority actions” for the Holy Family University (USF).33 Established in 2015  in Tripoli, AZM University (AZMU) indicates through a message from its President to seek “international accreditations”, stating that this demanding work is worthwhile as it would allow its university to “count among the elite institutions in Lebanon and the region”.34 MUBS, on the other hand, emphasizes first and foremost the fact that it considers itself an international university, arguing that this is “very important”, that this is how “things develop”. “Our main specificities compared to our competitors are firstly to offer franchised programs with Cardiff University in England and secondly to allow our students to have many exchange opportunities abroad, very few of our competitors have that” explains the dean of the university.35

In these cases, the international dimension, beyond being a classic form of distinction, refers to a certain prestige. It corresponds to a label whose function is to certify the quality of an institution (Cret, 2007). This phenomenon, which is not reducible to Lebanon, follows an undeniable trend in universities that have wanted to be recognized as international institutions for the last twenty years (Knight, 2015: 108). It follows a normative movement, quite general, which makes the international, or more exactly what is not national, systematically valued (Musselin, 2008) and benefits from an aura that often exempts it from providing proof of its effectiveness (Lange & Hénaff, 2015). In the end, we do not know much about the nature of these accreditations. While the curricula set up with England and the student mobility programs developed by MUBS can be traced, this is not the case for all private higher education institutions in Lebanon. The forms of partnerships displayed range from Lebanese and foreign

 Sources: Official websites of the universities.  Of these five establishments, four are located in the southern suburbs of Beirut. 32  Source: https://aul.edu.lb/?page_id=80 (accessed August 21st, 2022). 33  Source: http://www.usf.edu.lb/fr/ (accessed August 21st, 2022). 34  Source: http://www.azmuniversity.edu.lb/about/president-message (accessed August 21st, 2022). 35  Interview in Beirut, October 2017. 30 31

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double degrees to simple “agreements” or “conventions”. In most cases, the nature of these links is not specified and refers to very diverse realities that seem to correspond to very different degrees of internationalization. Since the term “international” is not itself labelled, it authorizes the most diverse pedagogical practices (Wagner, 2020). Since there is no standardized model of the international university, it becomes a confusing catch-all term (Knight op. cit., 2015). The search for educational quality is based here on the prestige associated with internationality, but it seems to take the form of a commercial argument. It is not an absolute quality but a relative one, based on local social criteria. Demonstrating one’s ability to attract foreign institutions would be a guarantee of quality in itself, while at the same time, if institutions invest heavily in marketing to promote these international partnerships, it is above all to gain reputation, recognition and ultimately enrollment (Altbach & Knight, 2007). Private universities in Lebanon, however, are not the only ones to benefit from these practices. The partner countries of these institutions also benefit greatly from this process. Indeed, the most cited countries are, in order of importance, the United States, England, France, Canada and Australia, as well as some southern European countries. This list includes the countries that are identified as the main exporters of educational services in the world and that benefit the most from them (Ibid.). They are an important source of revenue for universities in these countries where public funding has been drastically reduced, as in the United Kingdom (Ibid.).

3.4.4 An “Americanization” of the Lebanese Higher Education System? The United States stands out in particular in the mechanisms of the internationalization of higher education in Lebanon. First of all, they are attached to the names of five universities that present themselves as “American” universities to which they add various qualifiers insisting on specificities related to “technology” such as the American University of Technology (AUT) or “culture and education” for the American University for Culture and Education (AUCE). Beyond this aspect, several universities indicate that they have adopted an “American system of education” (for the AUST and the MUT) by claiming to have adopted bachelor’s degree programs.36 In addition to these elements, the reference to the United States seems to us to encompass an even broader influence for the new Lebanese private universities. The words of the dean of the MUBS help to explain this trend. When asked what it

 A bachelor’s degree or university bachelor’s degree is a degree awarded after the first three or four years of university, completing the first cycle of graduate studies in the United States. 36

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means to her to be a “modern” university,37 she insists that modernity includes “several aspects”: It means first of all being innovative, offering courses in collaboration with the United States and the United Kingdom, it means using the Internet for courses and communication, it means having bold and enterprising teaching staff... for example, we organize the “science festival” by offering prizes to our students (like a trip to Turkey for example), we also organize an event called Young Entrepreneurs, with the support of local companies. It means encouraging our students. Finally, it means being visible, by sponsoring events like the Beirut Marathon.

For her, “American universities around the world” are a model because they prepare students to “be unique to excel, to be innovative”. In another of its branches, MUBS offers students a range of services from movies to yoga to a nutritionist.38 In Aley, southeast of Beirut, The MUBS also runs oral health awareness campaigns and organizes medical visits with dentists for the city’s population.39 These different elements refer, in a general way, to the American university model and its international aspect, but also its entrepreneurial dimension based on private financing, as in the case of the different events organized by MUBS. The tendency to offer services to the inhabitants of the cities where the universities are located is also reminiscent of the idea of “outreach”40 developed by all the American universities, which set up services aimed at local communities in order to be both visible and to enhance their image (Dang Vu, 2014). In the end, these different dimensions refer to the hegemonic movement that tends to generalize the American model to all university systems (Musselin, 2008; Leclerc-Olive et al., 2011), until recently becoming the unique model that condemns other countries to reform their university systems to get closer to this dominant model (Strassel, 2018). In terms of exporting educational services abroad, the United States has been the most active in this area for the past decade (Altbach & Knight, 2007).

3.5 Conclusion The development of private higher education in Lebanon is part of the global acceleration of the process of commodification of higher education (Vinokur, 2012). This country is also a good place to study what this commodification produces in nonhegemonic countries in this “market”. The analyses carried out in the framework of this research have thus made it possible to show that commodification is not a monolithic phenomenon. Even if the logics are the same and are structured around

 In reference to the name of the university (“modern university for business and science”).  Informal (unrecorded) interview with the head of the MUBS office in Aley, February 2018. 39  Observation, Aley, february 2018. 40  Expression that literally means “to reach, to reach out to someone. 37 38

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the deregulation of educational services and the search for profit, the strategies of the institutions are diverse and some are more successful than others in reaping the benefits of a very lucrative market. This article has thus attempted to highlight two main mechanisms around which the “second wave” private universities are articulating their capitalist development strategies until 2019. The first is to offer geographically facilitated access to higher education. This means building new relationships between universities and territories: positioning themselves as close as possible to populations that have been partially excluded from access to higher education in the country’s urban and rural outskirts and that represent a new student market to conquer. They are also often encouraged in their approach by local authorities who see universities as urban amenities with a certain prestige. This logic has led to an increase in the number of universities in the country. Despite a discourse that sometimes denounces the sectarian drifts that have characterized the recent history of universities and Lebanese society in general, these new institutions are nevertheless still based on confessional logics to initiate their development. Subsequently, in order to face the strong competition and the recruitment difficulties that often result from it, these institutions have put in place distinct strategies to widen their student recruitment pool, as shown by the cases of the LIU and the MUBS, which are particularly analyzed in this article. On the one hand, LIU relies on a network of local influence and mobilizes the socio-economic and political resources of its founder to develop a delocalized training offer, first at the national level and then at the regional and international levels, and at low cost. The MUBS, on the other hand, proposes a narrative that emphasizes the international dimension and relies on the “excellence” of its training offer, backed by partnerships with foreign universities. This institution has invested heavily in building international partnerships – largely oriented towards Western countries – in search of the prestige associated with them and the quality of the training that is supposed to result from them. This logic ultimately leads to an education largely inspired by the American university model. While we can now speak of a quantitative increase in the supply of Lebanese higher education, the private institutions of the “second wave” that we have been interested in in this research question the meaning of the term “university” in Lebanon today. In fact, most of these institutions are only interested in the “research” dimension, despite a discourse on the promotion of internationalization, and are content to offer specific training in certain disciplines. Moreover, the question of the quality of education promoted by these institutions remains open, even though its identification remains one of the main drivers of school markets (Felouzis et  al., 2013). The scandal of falsified diplomas sold by AUCE to military and civilians, which broke in 2018 (Al Akhbar, 2018), highlights the need for in-depth investigations to understand what the proliferation of this type of institution is doing to education in countries such as Lebanon.41 This has potential impacts on the

41

 https://al-akhbar.com/Politics/254686 (accessed August 21st, 2022).

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quality of education in Lebanon. This potentially impacts both the quality and type of education offered as well as the socio-demographic composition of the student population. Finally, the many events that the country has experienced since 2019 may well, once again, reconfigure the landscape of higher education in Lebanon. First, the intifada of October 17, 2019, which showed that one of the main reasons that led the working and middle classes, and in particular Lebanese youth, to revolt for many weeks was access to free, quality higher education (Kabbanji, 2021). The student movement is thus one of the main drivers of the revolt. The student movement has thus been one of the main drivers of the revolt in Lebanon since then. Secondly, the economic crisis that has hit the population, the devaluation of the Lebanese pound and, to top it all, the explosion that ravaged Beirut on August 4, 2020, have contributed to the impoverishment of a large part of the middle class – those who previously had the means to send their children to private schools. The future of many private schools seems, at the time of writing, to be in jeopardy (An Nahar, 2020). What happens next will depend on the political and economic choices of the next few years.

References Al Akhbar. (2018). « Dossier de la vente de faux diplômes: enquêtes terminées… et le ministère de l’Éducation réagit » [in arabic], juillet 2018. https://al-­akhbar.com/Politics/254686 Altbach, P., & Knight, J. (2007). The internationalization of higher education: Motivations and realities. Journal of Studies in International Education, 11(3–4), 290–305. https://doi. org/10.1177/1028315307303542 An Nahar. (2020). « La crise de l’enseignement supérieur sera la plus dangereuse pendant des décennies. La baisse du niveau d’apprentissage affecte négativement la croissance économique » [in arabic], 13 mai 2020. https://newspaper.annahar.com/article/1186547%2D%2D ‫­يف‬-‫­سلبا‬-‫­يؤثر‬-‫­التعمل‬-‫­م�ستوى‬-‫­تراجع‬-‫­مقبةل‬-‫­مود‬-‫­لعقود‬-‫ أ­الخطر‬-‫­�ستكون‬-‫­العايل‬-‫­التعلمي‬-‫�أزمة‬ Ball, S. (1993). Education markets, choice and social class: The market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(1), 3–19. https://doi. org/10.1080/0142569930140101 Baumann, H. (2016). Citizen Hariri. Lebanon’s neoliberal reconstruction. Hurst & Co. Beyhum, N. (1994). Université et territoires à Beyrouth. L’histoire d’une fragmentation poussée trop loin. Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, 62–63, 31–38. https://doi.org/10.3406/ aru.1994.1779 Boliver, V. (2011). Expansion, differentiation and the persistence of social class inequalities in British Higher Education. Higher Education, 61(3), 229–242. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10734-­010-­9374-­y Brown, P. (1990). The ‘third wave’: Education and the ideology of parentocracy. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(1), 65–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142569900110105 Cret, B. (2007). Stratégies d’établissement, stratégies d’accréditation. Revue Française de Gestion, 178–179(9), 233–250. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-­8551.12007 Dang Vu, H. (2014). Les grandes universités face aux enjeux de la production urbaine. Espaces et sociétés, 159(4), 17–35. https://doi.org/10.3917/esp.159.0017

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Dang Vu, H., Ratouis, O., Bensoussan, B., & Cordonnier, S. (2015). Universités et métropoles: stratégies croisées ou constructions parallèles. In E. Campagnac-Ascher (dir.), Économie de la connaissance, une dynamique métropolitaine? (pp. 237–262). Le Moniteur. Félouzis, G., Maroy, C., & Van Zanten, A. (2013). Les Marchés scolaires. Presses universitaires de France. https://doi.org/10.3917/puf.felou.2013.01 Harb, M. (2003). La Dâhiye de Beyrouth: parcours d’une stigmatisation urbaine, consolidation d’un territoire politique. Genèses, 51(2), 70–91. https://doi.org/10.3917/gen.051.0070 Harvey, D. (2001). Spaces of capital: Towards a critical geography. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203821695 Herrara, L. (2006). Higher education in the Arab world. In J.  F. Forest & P.  Altbach (Eds.), International handbook of higher education (pp. 409–421). Springer. Jessop, B. (2017). Varieties of academic capitalism and entrepreneurial universities. Higher Education, 6(73), 853–870. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-­017-­0120-­6 Jessop, B. (2018). On academic capitalism. Critical Policy Studies, 1(12), 104–109. https://doi. org/10.1080/19460171.2017.1403342 Kabbanji, J. (2012). Heurs et malheurs du système universitaire libanais à l’heure de l’homogénéisation et de la marchandisation de l’enseignement supérieur. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 131, 127–145. https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.7651 Kabbanji, L. (2021). Audio survey of the first twenty days of the Lebanese intifada of October 2019. Ethnologie Française, 51(2), 239–254. https://doi.org/10.3917/ethn.212.0239 Kabbanji, L., Awada, H., Hasbani, M., El Hachem, E., & Tabar, P. (2019). Studying abroad: A necessary path towards a successful academic career in social sciences in Lebanon. International Review of Sociology, 29(3), 390–408. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2019.1672351 Keucheyan, R. (2013). Hémisphère gauche. Une cartographie des nouvelles pensées critiques. Zones. https://doi.org/10.3917/dec.keuch.2017.01 Knight, J. (2015). International universities: Misunderstandings and emerging models? Journal of Studies in International Education, 19(2), 107–121. https://doi. org/10.1177/1028315315572899 Lange, M.-F., & Henaff, N. (2015). Politiques, acteurs et systèmes éducatifs entre internationalisation et mondialisation. Introduction. Revue Tiers Monde, 223(3), 11–28. https://doi. org/10.3917/rtm.223.0011 Leclerc-Olive, M., Scarfo Ghellab, G., & Wagner, A.-C. (2011). Les Mondes universitaires face au marché. Karthala. Marginson, S. (2008). Vers une hégémonie de l’université globale. Critique internationale, 39(2), 87–107. https://doi.org/10.3917/crii.039.0087 Melonio, T., & Mezouaghi, M. (2010). Le financement de l’enseignement supérieur en Méditerranée. Cas de l’Égypte, du Liban et de la Tunisie. Agence française de développement. Musselin, C. (2008). Vers un marché international de l’enseignement supérieur. Critique internationale, 39(2), 13–24. https://doi.org/10.3917/crii.039.0013 Slaughter, S., & Barret, T. (2015). Higher education, stratification, and workforce development: Competitive advantage in Europe, the US, and Canada. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Strassel, C. (2018). Les enjeux géopolitiques de la mondialisation universitaire. Hérodote, 168(1), 9–38. https://doi.org/10.3917/her.168.0009 Veltz, P. (2014). Mondialisation, villes et territoires. Presses universitaires de France. https://doi. org/10.3917/puf.velt.2014.01 Vinokur, A. (2012). Réflexions sur la place du marché dans l’éducation. Carrefours de l’éducation, 24(2), 15–27. https://doi.org/10.3917/cdle.034.0015 Wagner, A.-C. (2020). La mondialisation des Classes sociales. La Découverte. https://doi. org/10.3917/dec.wagn.2020.01

Part II

Educational Segregation and Injustice

Chapter 4

School as a Tool for Territorial Attractiveness? School Policies and Urban Renewal in Marseille Gwenaëlle Audren

Abstract  In a context of increasing globalisation and neoliberalization of public policies in France, the adoption of New Public Management practices affects all areas of society, from town and country planning to education. In the area of education specifically, the more prominent role now played by local and regional authorities, private institutions and parents has contributed to creating ever more competitive school markets, where schools are today seen as just another urban amenity. Based on a case study developed in the French city of Marseille, this chapter examines the mechanisms at play in the production of socio-spatial and educational inequalities at local level in a city centre area undergoing urban renewal. Using a dual methodology that combines a qualitative and quantitative approach, this chapter shows more precisely how using schools as a tool for urban revitalisation can increase the risks of segregation and reinforce local inequalities. Keywords  Private school · School market · Urban renewal · Segregation · Marseille · France

4.1 Introduction In a context of increasing globalisation and neoliberalization in the area of public policies in France, the adoption of New Public Management practices affects all areas of society, from urban planning to education (Jones, 2008).

G. Audren (*) Aix Marseille Univ., CNRS, TELEMME UMR, Aix-en-Provence, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_4

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This ‘neoliberal shift’1 can be seen in the diversification of actors involved in urban and school policies, which has resulted in strengthening the ties between public and private actors and an increasingly permeable boundary between these two traditionally distinct sectors (Mons, 2007; Giband et al., 2020). Focusing on education, the more prominent role now played by local and regional authorities, private institutions and parents has contributed to creating even more competitive school markets (Felouzis et al., 2013). These markets have become an integral part of the local competitive space in cities, where schools are today seen as just another urban amenity (Cucchiara, 2013, Felouzis et  al., 2013; Ayed, 2015). School markets accompany or generate different phenomena, such as city centre gentrification, urban segregation and fragmentation processes in neighbourhoods marked by major inequalities. How does this play out in neighbourhoods that are undergoing redevelopment as part of a public urban renewal policy? To what extent is the education dimension considered as an urban renewal strategy? The aim of this chapter is to analyse the processual dimension and consequences (socio-spatial and educational) of constructing a school market within a specific urban renewal context called the Euroméditerranée project in Marseille. It will begin by looking at how and to what extent schools are becoming a tool for urban renewal and will then examine the effects of this type of strategy on differentiations within the schools offer, the evolution of forms of segregation and the reproduction of inequalities. The study was conducted in France’s second largest city, Marseille, which is characterised by a strong socio-spatial segregation between the more affluent neighbourhoods located in the south of the city, the working-class neighbourhoods in the north and persistent pockets of extreme poverty in the city centre (Fig.  4.1), particularly within one specific city-centre space.2 The Euroméditerranée project can be considered as a symbol of the city’s urban renewal. At national level, it is responding to injunctions to internationalise France’s cities, and, at local level, it is part of an urban ‘reconquest’ approach that fits in with broader policies aimed at redefining Marseille’s working-class city centre. In order to enhance the city’s image and attract a new population, public and private institutional actors from the urban planning and education  Understood here as policy directions that aim to reduce the role of the State in order to promote ‘market’ development in all areas. Hence, competitiveness, profitability and economic values take precedence over human values, and individual interests override collective interests. It is a political shift that leads to a gradual replacement of the public sector with the private sector. 2  This study space is delimited on Figure 1 and will be referred to in this chapter as the ‘zone’ for the sake of readability. While the general reflections presented here apply to the whole Euroméditerranée project, the analyses were focused on three specific IRIS (Ilots Regroupés pour l’Information Statistique  – the geographic units of a municipality as broken down by INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies). These made up one of the project’s two collaborative development zone, (ZAC –an urban planning tool used by municipal authorities to successfully carry out an urban project) that were undergoing the biggest transformations at the time (the three IRIS selected for analysis were Eveché, Peyssonnel and Albrand). 1

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Fig. 4.1  Map of the study context: Income inequalities and precariousness in Marseille city centre

sectors have established new partnerships that raise the question of the logics of commodifying the construction of the city. This chapter will focus specifically on the education dimension of the strategies that have been implemented by these different actors in relation to the urban renewal and territorial attractiveness objectives. It will seek to understand the extent to which local political choices in the field of education have contributed to reinforcing school-based segregation and reproducing inequalities. The chapter is based on fieldwork conducted over a number of years as part of my doctoral (2009–2015) and postdoctoral studies (2016–2017), supplemented by the latest data (2018–2020). Hence, a number of results have already appeared in various reports (Audren, 2015; Audren et al., 2017) and been published in several journals (Audren, 2012; Audren et al., 2016; Audren & Baby-Collin, 2017; Audren, 2020). More precisely, the chapter offers a synthesis of these previous studies but with a particular focus on the links between the actors involved in the construction of a school market and the spillover effects in terms of reproducing local inequalities. Using a mixed methodology, the analysis combines a quantitative and qualitative approach, integrating statistical socioeconomic, demographic (both sourced from INSEE’s national population census3 from 2006–2014) and schools data

 INSEE collects, analyses and disseminates information on the French economy and society.

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(sourced from the Aix-Marseille rectorat databases4) with data drawn from a series of semi-structured interviews conducted between 2011 and 2018 with various institutional actors from the fields of urban policies and education (headteachers, Catholic education diocesan board, representative from France’s ministry of education5). The chapter begins by presenting the issues associated with redefining Marseille’s city centre and, more precisely, the methods of implementing the Euroméditerranée project and the resulting socio-territorial reconfigurations. This is followed by an analysis of the characteristics of the local schools offer and its development from the perspective of territorial attractiveness. Drawing on specific examples of school projects that were underway in the zone at the time, detailing the setting up of a private elementary school, the chapter then presents an analysis of the methods of constructing a localised school market that contributed to increasing school-based segregation and reinforcing inequalities.

4.2 Issues Associated with Redefining the City Centre and the Construction of the Schools Offer 4.2.1 Urban ‘Reconquest’ Methods: Towards Greater Socio-Spatial Fragmentation? A major port city until the mid-twentieth century, Marseille experienced an economic and social crisis from the 1970s onwards that was linked to the decline of its maritime role and deindustrialisation.6 This downturn meant that the city lost its key position among the world’s metropolises and led to the impoverishment of the central districts located in the vicinity of the port. Faced with these socioeconomic changes and at a time of internationalised competition between metropolises, the stakes were high for the city of Marseille in terms of repositioning itself. It aimed to be counted among the world’s most attractive metropolises, to regain its importance at national level and to take up its position in the Euro-Mediterranean space, like the port city of Barcelona in Spain (Bertoncello & Rodrigues-Malta, 2001; Bertoncello et al., 2009).  In France, the decentralised framework means that education services have been devolved to the regions and departments (these are administrative divisions of different sizes. Regions are larger than departments) and are overseen by the ministry of education. At the region level, the rectorat is responsible for implementing the national education policies which are broken down at the finer scale of the school district level (académie) (equivalent to department level). 5  Deputy directors, school district director… 6  The transformation of the port apparatus led to the virtual disappearance of the local industrial apparatus, which included soap factories, oil mills, shipbuilding and repair facilities, food processing factories and metal works, and an impoverishment of the neighbourhoods that depended on these activities. 4

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These issues can be analysed in light of the ongoing internationalisation of cities, which is taking place in the broader context of the neoliberalization of urban policies. This neoliberal approach can be seen through the diffusion of best practices in the field of urban planning and management (Souami, 2003), where public private partnerships (PPPs)7 are widely encouraged as a ‘competitive urban strategy in the global market’ (Smith, 2003, translated from French) to make cities more attractive. A plurality of public and private actors (municipal authority, central government, European Union, private real estate developers and construction firms) was involved in this urban project, whose aims were to revitalise the local economy by attracting business from the tertiary sector, to provide Marseille with a proper central business district and to rehabilitate the old districts by trying to ensure greater social and functional diversity through private investment (Dubois & Olive, 2004). Recognised as a project of national interest8 and jointly funded by the State, the European Union and four local and regional authorities (at the municipal, department and region levels plus latterly the metropolitan area of Marseille Provence, the Euroméditerranée public development agency was created in 1995. The municipal authority created two ZACs covering an area of 311  ha (subsequently extended northwards by almost 170 ha. in 2007). Major private developers collaborated on the development of the site, with each overseeing their own housing construction projects. These partnerships took the form of PPPs, which was the preferred modus operandi in the Euroméditerranée project (Bertoncello et al., 2009) and which illustrates a clear public-private co-defining of an urban planning project (Dubois & Olive, 2004). A major distinctive feature of the project was that it was being rolled out in heterogeneous, run-down areas, most of which were still inhabited. The project area included the disadvantaged urban zone (ZUS – an inner-city area identified as high priority in terms of local policymaking) in the northern central area (Fig. 4.1), which was home to a large proportion of the city’s precarious population. Hence, all of the transformations that were being undertaken as part of this project had major implications for these inhabitants (in relation to employment, access to facilities and housing, etc.) and affected policy choices in terms of ensuring the (functional and social) diversity that had been set out in the official documents. The ‘reconquest of the city centre’ established by the municipal authority as a tool for social diversity necessarily meant the settlement of middle-class and affluent people in these neighbourhoods, and this was evident in the many reconfigurations of facilities and housing. This imposing of a top-down diversity approach therefore raised questions about the modalities of co-presence in this zone, which saw the contrasts between the population that had been targeted within the framework of this project and the original inhabitants become increasingly more marked.  Contractualized method of financing whereby a public authority calls on private service providers to finance and sometimes manage a facility or an urban project. 8  This is a type of urban planning project that is subject to a specific legal regime because of its major importance and that generally involves a public development agency http://outil2amenagement.cerema.fr/operation-d-interet-national-oin-r314.html 7

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The main urban changes were manifested by the large facilities and new buildings created to contribute to the construction of the zone as an international showcase for the city.9 These included the MUCEM, a museum with a European focus and innovative architecture, a new high-end shopping centre, the conversion of a former silo into a concert hall (Le Silo) and the transformation of the docks into a shopping centre.10 In this specific zone, the process of creating housing diversity mainly involved the construction of private houses11 and the creation of new ‘luxury’ residences, which were often enclosed and secure (Dorier et al., 2010). The various forms of enclosure (railings, portals, closed-off former public thoroughfare) generated spatial boundaries between the zone’s inhabitants, reflecting the social divisions between the new and old residents. The existing social diversity of this area was not being experienced locally by the inhabitants, who in fact went about their daily activities in fragmented spaces. The composition of the population had also changed since the project was launched. An analysis of the data from the general population censuses from 2006 to 2014 as well as income data from 2001 to 2014 showed an increase in the population within the zone and revealed significant changes in its demographics, which corresponded to the municipal objectives of attractiveness. The evolution of the population attested the arrival of new households in these neighbourhoods (the population of the Evêché IRIS had increased by more than 34%), a finding that was substantiated by an analysis of the socioeconomic indicators (Table 1). The results showed a significant reduction in the unemployment rate in all three IRIS, a drop in the number of people with no qualifications, a nearly twofold increase in the number of people with a higher education qualification (with an increase from 8% to nearly 40% in the Evêché IRIS) and a substantial rise in the proportion of the population in senior management and high income professions (up nearly 10 percentage points in the Evêché IRIS) in a context of rising median incomes (Fig. 4.1). However, a closer look at the indicators in Table 4.1 reveals that the inequalities between the inhabitants had actually increased, particularly in the Evêché and Albrand IRIS (more than €3000 difference at the level of the first decile of incomes and more than €13,000 difference at the ninth decile in 2014). The Albrand IRIS, which showed a rise in the number of people with no qualifications (nearly 44% of its population in 2014) and a still high unemployment rate (21%), lagged behind in terms of the socioeconomic renewal observed in the rest of the zone (Fig. 4.2). As a result of the household characteristics of the new inhabitants, who were mainly families with young children, the school-age population had increased. Across the whole zone (3 IRIS), there was an overall increase of more than 5% for  This involved the use of renowned architects, including Rudy Riccioti for the museum of European and Mediterranean civilizations (MUCEM) and Zaha Hadid for the CMA CGM Tower. 10  Most of the services developed were intended for a fairly affluent population, as evidenced by the delicatessens, high-end jewellers and luxury brand clothing stores in the new shopping centre. 11  Developers were encouraged to come and build private housing here, notably by facilitating home ownership with the help of a 5.5% VAT rate both in the ZUS and in an extended 500 m area around it. 9

Total population 2141 2796 2876 2443 2846 3036 2023 2008 1999

Population aged 3 to 10 283 324 308 294 256 282 212 240 245

Unemployment rate 39,4 11,1 11,4 28,0 16,4 12,3 33,2 22,6 21,0

Source: INSEE, General Population Census, local data, 2006, 2012, 2014

IRIS/Year Eveche_06 Eveche_2012 Eveche_2014 Peyssonel_06 Peyssonel_2012 Peyssonel_2014 Albrand_2006 Albrand_2012 Albrand_2014

Percentage of senior managers and high-income professionals 7,1 16,0 17,4 3,0 3,8 4,3 2,6 3,3 3,3 Percentage of middle-income professionals 7,5 16,2 16,6 13,3 10,0 7,2 9,7 8,0 7,7

Table 4.1  Evolution of socioeconomic indicators in the study zone between 2006 and 2014 Percentage of people with no qualifications 41,7 21,8 23,1 35,0 33,1 44,9 34,8 36,3 44,3

Percentage of people with a qualification higher a two-year higher education qualification 7,9 40,6 41,6 6,2 17,4 18,9 6,2 14,7 16,4

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68 20000 18000 16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0

G. Audren

2001 Evêché

2004 Albrand

2011 Peyssonel

2014 Marseille

Fig. 4.2  Change in median income per consumption unit in the study zone, 2001–2014

children aged 3 to 10 years and of almost 12% for children aged 6 to 10 years. The demand for schools had therefore increased, especially at elementary school level. More broadly, this raised the question of the already existing local schools offer and its characteristics in the context of an urban undergoing redevelopment.

4.2.2 Schools Offer and the Local Context: School as an Urban Revitalisation Tool? The poor quality of the school infrastructures in Marseille (dilapidated, unfit for purpose) was widely recognised and reported in the national media.12 In addition to the poor state of the infrastructures, there was strong pressure for school places in the city centre,13 and some schools were saturated. This situation had already been analysed and flagged up by some city centre headteachers (Audren et  al., 2017) and was further confirmed by the Marseille urban planning agency,14 which highlighted very high pupil/capacity ratios of above 94% in the city-centre schools.

 This situation, which was first criticised by a teacher in an open letter to education minister in 2015 (https://marsactu.fr/agora/je-nous-accuse/), became a State matter in April 2016 when the education minister and the secretary of state for urban affairs saw for themselves the dilapidated state of Marseille’s schools during a visit to the city. The matter was reported in various press articles in the major national daily newspapers, including Libération and Le Monde. 13  In 2013, the average admission rate per school was much higher in the city centre than the Marseille average of 165 children, with as many as 262 admissions per school in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd arrondissements. 14  AGAM – Agence d’Urbanisme de l’Agglomération Marseillaise. 12

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In the city centre, the schools offer overwhelmingly comprised state-run establishments that came under the category of priority education networks (Réseaux de l’Éducation Prioritaire-REP).15 These networks were defined nationally based on a social index that identified the schools16 with the highest concentration of families experiencing social difficulties REP+ elementary schools represented 87% and 89% of the schools offer in the 2nd and 3rd arrondissements, respectively, both of which fell within the Euroméditerranée area (Rectorat Aix Marseille, AgAM 2015). In this specific zone, the schools offer was mainly composed of state-run schools in the REP+ category. The only exceptions were private elementary school B, which had opened in the Euroméditerranée area in 2007, and private secondary school D (Fig. 4.4). These schools were characterised by a large number of scholarship students, who came from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds and lived in the ZUS. The school population reflects with the majority profile of the general population in these neighbourhoods and contributed to building the schools’ bad reputations among families (Broccolichi & Van Zanten, 1997; Felouzis & Perroton, 2009). Hence, there were some clear discrepancies between the reality of the local schools offer, the schools’ representations and the educational expectations of the new families who were more socioeconomically advantaged. Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of the effects of neighbourhood and school representations on the construction of school choice by families and their activation of different strategies (school patronage, avoidance, recourse to private schools, etc.) (François & Poupeau, 2008; Oberti, 2007; Van Zanten, 2009).17 Hence, in addition to the urban renewal that was underway, it seemed essential for the municipal authority and the departmental council to build a new school offer that responded to the neighbourhood’s development project and anticipated the educational expectations of the incoming population, both at secondary and elementary school levels. I will first mention the secondary school named “A “, then the elementary school named “B” (Fig. 4.3).

 In France, the category of priority education networks reflects the territorialization of education policies, which implements positive discrimination measures in areas experiencing major social and educational difficulties. In these areas, schools are classified according to the scale of the challenges they face, and the highest level of constraints is grouped together under the classification REP+, which signifies an enhanced priority education network. 16  Here, ‘secondary school’ refers to collège (ages 11 to 15) and ‘elementary school’ refers to primary school-école primaire (ages 3 to 10) in the French school system. The primary school in France comprises, kindergarten  – école maternelle (ages 3 to 5) and elementary school (ages 6 to 11). 17  The assignment of students in French schools is done on the model of the school map, as in other countries in Europe, but in France, families have less freedom in the choice of establishments unlike English-speaking countries. Indeed, this policy imposes on families a particular school according to their place of residence. If families do not wish to enroll their child in this school, they must apply for an exemption, which is not always accepted, which explains why, once the exemption has been refused, families turn to private schools. 15

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In order to supplement the secondary schools, offer in the zone, secondary school A was built and became a ‘showcase’ for the departmental council18 and opened its doors in 2006. This secondary school, with its state-of-the-art architecture and equipment (Fig. 4.3), was to offer the selective school courses that the new population of parents would have been familiar with. The diversification of the educational offer provided by this establishment was clearly designed as an attractiveness strategy to appeal to middle- and upper-class families wishing to settle in the zone. However, due to a delay in the real estate construction schedules and therefore in the arrival of the new inhabitants, when the secondary school opened, 86% of its pupils were socioeconomically disadvantaged. As such, it reflected the social composition of a working-class neighbourhood, just like the rest of the local schools. In order not to ‘scare off19’ the new parents, this secondary school was not given the priority education networks classification straight away. However, faced with the social reality of the school’s population and the mobilisation of the educational team, it was classified as REP+ the following year. Secondary school A opened in a local school market context that was marked by considerable issues of distinction between schools. This was illustrated by the various communication and attraction strategies (Felouzis et al., 2013) that guided the secondary school’s headteacher’s approach at the time.20 In order to mobilise dynamics likely to attract new parents, the headteacher developed a communication strategy that centred on the school’s specific educational context, including sound leadership and a distinctive educational offer, with the aim of reassuring parents (Audren, 2015; Audren et al., 2016). Although some newly settled families initially enrolled their children at the secondary school, they experienced difficulties (feelings of social isolation and insecurity). As a result, they developed avoidance strategies and enrolled in schools outside the neighbourhood (Favier, 2009). The headteacher’s proactive approach succeeded in reducing segregation in the secondary school in the early years, with a fall in the percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils from 86% in 2006 to 75% in 2012 and a rise in the percentage of pupils from middle-class backgrounds from 12% to 20%. However, this phenomenon remained fragile. There was evidence in 2017 that the trend was reversing, with an increase of almost 2% in the number of disadvantaged pupils,21 a

 Acting as a communication and public relations tool for the departmental council, this secondary school also had to respond to a proximity policy. To compensate for the lack of sports and cultural facilities in the neighbourhood, the future secondary school was to include sports facilities and an amphitheatre, which would be open to residents in the district outside of school hours. In addition, adopting a sustainable development approach in the form of the high environmental quality (HQE) standards and commissioning a renowned architect to design the establishment was fully in line with the chairman of the departmental council’s communication strategy. 19  This precise term was used in an interview with the headteacher of this secondary school A. 20  Headteachers direct the secondary school, chair the board of directors, control the budget, provide security, administrative and pedagogical management, defined by ministerial and academic instructions. It is in this pedagogical aspect, and in agreement with the Rectorat, that they can be force of proposal in particular on the type of education offered in their establishment. 21  Although the proportion of working-class families remained high at neighbourhood level, secondary school A also accepted disadvantaged pupils from neighbouring districts. 18

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Fig. 4.3  Photography of the new secondary school A. (Author: G. Audren, 2015)

decrease in the number of middle-class pupils of 3% and a below-capacity intake of only 450 pupils. The construction of a new state-run elementary school had been planned for the first stage of the project, but it did not open until 2012. This school could accommodate 120 pupils and was to be classified as REP+ straight away. It acted as a feeder elementary school to neighbouring secondary school A.  The new schools offer, at both elementary and secondary levels, was directly confronted with the local context. Hence, despite the policymakers’ ambitions to socially diversify the pupil populations in the zone’s schools, the schools remained strictly localised, reflecting the predominantly disadvantaged social profile of the neighbourhood’s population. How then could schools move beyond the local characteristics to respond to the educational expectations of the newly settled families? The municipal authority, mindful of the anticipated different expectations of the new arrivals, chose to enter a PPP with the DDEC by negotiating the creation of a new private Catholic elementary school (elementary school B), which would be specifically designed to support the intended development of the zone.22  Support for the private education sector in the city was nothing new. Jean Claude Gaudin, the right-wing mayor of Marseille since 1995 and former teacher at a private lycée in the city, was supported not only by the Euroméditerranée project but also by the school district authorities (particularly the rectorat, which advertised the teaching positions even before construction of the elementary school had started) to bring this project to fruition. 22

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4.3 The Local Construction of a School Market: The Elementary School Caught Between Territorial Attractiveness and the Reproduction of Inequalities Although the establishment of this private elementary school in the zone contributed to reviving local inequalities, the various projects undertaken at the school are illuminating in that they illustrate the different stages in the construction of an increasingly competitive school market in which pupil selection issues shed light on renewed forms of segregation.

4.3.1 Public/Private Construction of the Local Schools Offer: From Selective Admissions to the Implementation of Preserved ‘Circuit of Schooling’ As highlighted by the elementary school’s headteacher in an interview in 2011, the enthusiasm surrounding this project, both from the DDEC and the municipal authority, augured well for the new partnerships: ‘We’re creating a new school and a new action plan, this doesn’t happen very often! (…) The municipal authority has granted us this land, we’ve got a land use agreement with the municipality, which means we don’t pay rent, but they’ve both got something to gain as well, because we’re the ones who’ll be sending them their customers!’.23 In order to ensure elementary school B was up and running as quickly as possible, various forms of support were provided. When it opened in 2007, it had benefited from a land use agreement from the municipality, which allowed it to install prefabricated buildings to accommodate the first pupils. This loan enabled the school to establish itself in the area even before it had any permanent premises and thus to immediately provide schooling for the children of the people working on the Euroméditerranée site. This situation lasted for 4 years until, in 2011, the school was relocated a little further away on land loaned free of charge, this time by the development agency, Euroméditerranée. At the same time, the catholic schools committee purchased part of the first plot ‘at an affordable price’24 and began construction on the school (which until then was prefabricated, not a permanent building). In addition to the land provided by the municipal authority and the development agency, other local political actors showed their support for the

 This excerpt from the interview underlines the local authority’s positioning, in terms of its granting of a plot of rent-free land, in relation to private interests. All extracts from the data have been translated from the French. 24  Interview with the elementary school’s headteacher, 2018. 23

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school by donating money directly to help with the implementation or publicising of the project.25 The new premises finally opened in November 2014. The process of setting up this elementary school can be analysed in parallel with a positive evolution not just in pupil numbers but also in the number of year groups accommodated and teachers recruited. During its first few years (2007–2011), the school offered just one combined kindergarten class and one combined elementary class. While pupil numbers had increased, they remained below 100. The relocation in 2011 coincided with a continued increase in pupil numbers and two additional classes. By the time it had moved into its new premises, the school had one class for each year group from the TPS26 right through to the final year of elementary school and more than 200 pupils. This expansion had been facilitated by the closure of a private Catholic elementary school in the city centre, which meant elementary school B was able to fill 4 teaching positions, increasing the teaching staff from its original 3 to 8. As soon as the school opened, it was faced with the question of pupil selection. It needed to advertise and attract new parents but not just any parents. The headteacher developed several strategies to this effect: ‘We’ve flooded Euroméditerranée with advertising! Flyers, brochures … I went to meet up with parents in their offices, we went canvassing in the CMA CGM Tower’.27 An online marketing strategy was also implemented, where elementary school B was presented as the first local school on the development agency’s website. The communication strategies mobilised were clearly aimed at families who were either newly settled, planning to move to the neighbourhood or already working in the new businesses in the area. This was implicit in the first paragraph of the educational action plan: ‘Catholic education is developing a school on the Euroméditerranée site to help children and their families who are newly arrived in Marseille to adjust. (...) The educational programme takes into account the difficulties of uprooting, moving and arriving in an unfamiliar city’. The target market was especially evident in the specific services offered by the school, which were assumed to meet the expectations of these parents (including a day-care service from 7:30 am to 6 pm, an in-house school catering service and English lessons provided from kindergarten onwards). According to Felouzis et  al. (2013, translated from French), ‘the creation of a private school in a given environment necessarily involves major

 The member of parliament for the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire for Marseille, Valérie Boyer, posted on her blog on 11 October 2013 that a financial contribution of €58,000 had been paid to the elementary school to help with its operating expenses. In addition, the ‘laying of the school’s first stone’ (translated from French) in November 2013 was publicised in the media and attended by key figures such as Jean-Claude Gaudin (mayor of Marseille), Guy Teissier (then chairman of the metropolitan area Marseille Provence) and Monsignor Pontier (archbishop of the diocese of Marseille). 26  It’s a class for children aged of 2. 27  One of the world’s leading shipping groups had set up its headquarters in the Euroméditerranée district. 25

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transformations both in the relations between all the local schools and in the nature of each of their school populations’. Was this the case in the study zone? A number of studies have shown that in the case of local competition (Broccolichi & Van Zanten, 1997), schools can develop ‘overt or covert strategies for screening pupils using various tactics at the point of enrolment’ (Felouzis et al., 2013, translated from French). However, in the case of elementary school B, the admissions procedures were clearly set out by the headteacher and presented in the educational action plan. Because the opening of elementary school B was not allowed to compromise the state-run elementary schools in the area, its admissions policy was very selective. Only the children of new residents or of people working in the new Euroméditerranée business district could enrol at the elementary school. The headteacher’s position was quite clear: ‘We’re not going to enrol children from the neighbourhood! We’re only enrolling children who’ve just arrived in Marseille, who live in the new housing here or whose parents work at Euroméditerranée’. This position was also explicitly stated in the school’s action plan (p.  1): ‘Our mission is to help children and their families who have recently arrived in Marseille to adjust, close to their homes and workplaces’. This admissions policy clearly side-lined the neighbourhood’s original population. Even those that had applied to the elementary school had had their applications refused: ‘We got a lot of requests from them (the original residents) because the neighbourhood schools are oversubscribed, but as all their applications were refused… they didn’t apply again the following year’. Hence, all applications from the original residents, whose children were enrolled at other schools in the neighbourhood, were refused except in the cases of a vacancy. This selective policy was at the root of the creation of an ‘educational niche’ (Felouzis et al., 2013, translated from French), which contributed to segmenting the local school market, where school-based segregation was increasing and where pupil selection issues were evident at both elementary and secondary levels. It seemed unlikely that the pupils from elementary school B would have chosen to go on to the state-run secondary school. When it opened, elementary school B had set up an agreement with a private Catholic secondary school, which facilitated the integration of its pupils into the elite secondary school located in the complex. Set in a well-to-do neighbourhood in the 8th arrondissement and easily accessed by the metro, it guaranteed elementary school B’s pupils the full school trajectory until the end of secondary school (Van Zanten, 2009). This partnership was quite revealing. On the one hand, it illustrated the creation of networks of cooperation and mutual assistance, which were at the heart of the construction of circuits of schooling (Ball et al., 1995; Broccolichi & Van Zanten, 1997). On the other, it encouraged the construction of socially differentiated school trajectories, revealing a plurality of distancings (at the level both of schools and of the neighbourhoods frequented) between the families originally from the neighbourhood and those newly settled as well as between the children from the local schools and those from elementary school B.

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4.3.2 A School-Based Segregation That Revealed Plural Distancings: Between Specific Circuits of Schooling and a Segregative Diversity Although the geography of elementary school B’s catchment area had changed, this development was not accompanied by a social diversification of its population but rather just confirmed the intensification of segregation between the elementary schools in the neighbourhood. Elementary school B’s increased intake capacity, as a result of its additional teaching staff, led to an expansion of its catchment area, which then became structured by two logics, namely a greater concentration of families from the central arrondissements (1st, 2nd and 3rd)28 located close to the school and a greater diversification of places of residence across all the city’s arrondissements, even those furthest away from the school.29 This somewhat unique geography (i.e. very large catchment area) for an elementary school can be explained by the school’s admissions policy, which prioritised the enrolment of new families in the neighbourhood and children whose parents worked in the area but did not necessarily live there. However, the greater concentration of families living in the neighbourhood could also be explained by the recently introduced flexibility regarding applications from families originally from the neighbourhood. In an interview, the elementary school headteacher stressed: ‘Since the school’s capacity has increased, we can accept all applications, provided there are places available of course, because our primary initiative hasn’t changed’. However, she noted that the most disadvantaged families who applied often did not follow up on their initial appointments with the school. Despite this slight change in the school’s admissions policy, there had been no change in the social diversification of its population. The data available in 2018 confirmed the extent of segregation between this private elementary school, which had established itself as an ‘educational niche’ by specialising in a population according to average socioeconomic level in a segmented school market (Felouzis et al., 2013), and the other elementary schools in the zone. Although I was not familiar with the social composition of the state-run elementary schools in the zone, their REP+ classification provided a fairly accurate picture of their population profile. In the state-run REP+ elementary schools in the zone, 67% of pupils came from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds30 as

 The largest increase in enrolments came from families who lived in the city centre. Those from the arrondissements closest to the school represented more than half of its intake (64%). 29  In 2011, the school had few families from the north and south neighbourhoods, but there had been a significant increase in families from the 8th and 14th arrondissements. 30  In France, the Court of Auditors is an independent jurisdiction whose main mission is to ensure the proper use of public money and to inform citizens about it. It produces reports to verify whether the results of a public policy are up to the objectives set, and whether the budgetary resources are used effectively and efficiently. It is within this mission that the cited report was published (2018). 28

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compared with less than 2% in the new private elementary school. This private school was therefore highly sought after (over 35% of its pupils came from very high-­income households, 40% came from high income households and 21% came from middle income households) within a broader schools offer that was largely disadvantaged. Segregation was particularly marked in the zone’s state-run secondary school offer. The secondary schools were all classified as REP+. At the two state-run secondary schools located closest to elementary school B, that is secondary school C and secondary school A (Fig. 4.4), approximately 80% of pupils came from disadvantaged backgrounds (over 84% at secondary school C) and only 4% came from households in the very high-income category (and this at the lower threshold of the category) (in 2017). The extent of school-based segregation at secondary school level therefore raised questions about the school trajectories of pupils in the final year of elementary school in the zone, particularly those in private elementary school B. Processing data extracts from the secondary school pupil database31 allowed me to analyse the school career trajectories of final-year elementary school pupils in the zone. The secondary school choices of the pupils of private elementary school B and of a neighbouring state-run elementary school revealed different trajectories. The majority of final-year pupils at the private elementary school avoided opting to continue their education at the state-run secondary schools in the zone. Most selected the private secondary schools (the agreement with the private secondary school in the affluent neighbourhoods ran until 2014), and some chose state-run secondary schools located outside the zone in more socially advantaged neighbourhoods (approximately 50% of pupils in 2014). Conversely, the majority of pupils from the state-run elementary school conformed to school mapping and enrolled at the disadvantaged state-run secondary schools in the zone. Less than a third of the state-­ school pupils opted for a private secondary school, and a very small minority chose to enrol at the more advantaged secondary schools outside the zone (less than 10% in 2014). Although the analysis was not repeated for all the state-run elementary schools in the zone, the trends observed were likely to have been similar given they were all classified as REP+ and all had a large proportion of disadvantaged families, who are known to be less inclined to develop school strategies and who therefore generally enrol their children in the local state-run elementary schools (Van Zanten, 2001, 2009; Lehman-Frisch, 2009; Oberti et al., 2012). A comparative analysis of these trajectories confirmed the existence of specific circuits of schooling according to the elementary school attended and the social profiles of the parents. These circuits, which are known to be at the root of the renewal of educational inequalities in schools (Ball et al., 1995), fulfilled a social screening function linked to school placement in the various schools (Courratier

 Anonymised excerpts from SCORED for the years 2011, 2013 and 2015, obtained as part of a research collaboration agreement with the Aix Marseille rectorat. 31

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Fig. 4.4  Map of the local schools offer

et al., 2006). Hence, the private elementary school pupils were incorporated into the preserved circuits of schooling outside the zone, while the pupils from the state-run elementary schools continued their schooling in the zone. These educational trajectories shed light on a two-tier school system that increased social differences (Audren, 2012; Audren et al., 2016). More broadly, these practices revealed a plurality of distancings.

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The practices of new families in the study zone who had enrolled their children in private elementary school B revealed first and foremost an ‘educational distancing’ between their children and those from the other elementary schools as well as a more general ‘socio-spatial distancing’ from the neighbourhoods in their pursuit of schools outside the zone in more socially advantaged environments. The daily activities of these children and their families, because they were carried out in a ‘closed circuit’ (within the preserved/specific context of the private elementary school or secondary school either inside or outside the zone), did not foster opportunities for meeting and exchanging with other children or families in the zone and thus did not contribute to the construction of a real social diversity. The withdrawal of these families’ activities within the zone was replicated in the residential space because they often moved into new residences that were sealed off from the rest of the neighbourhood. The interviews conducted in 2009 by Elsa Favier32 with residents of new ‘luxury’ residences, confirmed a strong social self-segregation and limited local sociability (Favier, 2009).33 These families’ educational, social and residential self-segregation revealed a distanced relationship to the zone. Diversity may have existed in numbers on a spreadsheet, and there was certainly some ‘arithmetic diversity’ (Felouzis et  al., 2013) visible in the recent changes in population structure (Table 1), but this was not a lived diversity. It was not a day-to-day experience for the parents and their children. All their activities (social, residential, school) ultimately revealed plural distancings that contributed less to the social diversity presented in the development agency’s advertising brochures than to the implementation of a segregative diversity (Roncayolo, 2001)34 and the renewal of local inequalities (Launay et al., 2016).

4.3.3 Enhancing Territorial Attractiveness by Diversifying the Schools Offer: School Admissions Issues and the Reproduction of Inequalities? To meet their objectives of territorial attractiveness, the various local actors once again mobilised around a number of school projects that would contribute to a greater diversification of the offer in the zone (especially at secondary level) and  A doctoral student in sociology in the Centre Maurice Halbwachs, Elsa Favier completed her Master 1 dissertation in 2009, It was entitled: ‘the secondary school of the future is classed as a ZEP [Zone d’Education Prioritaire]: sociology of the creation of a secondary school in a working-­ class district of Marseille undergoing development’. 33  One resident lamented the difficulties she was experiencing establishing links and relationships with other people in the neighbourhood, even including the parents of her children’s friends, who were attending the newly opened state-run secondary school in Euroméditerranée at the time. 34  According to Roncayolo (2001), the issues of segregation and diversity are in a way like an ‘accordion’ insofar as some things get scooped up and others get squeezed out. This leads to alliances and coexistences that are not of the same nature in terms of time and space. 32

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thus encourage the settlement of new, more socioeconomically advantaged families, by responding to their educational expectations. The municipal authority and the development agency called on the DDEC to open a private secondary school in the zone to offer educational continuity from private elementary school B and to anchor these families in the neighbourhood on a more permanent basis. However, as indicated in several of the interviews conducted in 2009,35 the plan to open this secondary school seemed to have been thwarted by the conflicting objectives of the different actors involved. There was a notable wrangle between the diocese, which aimed to increase the social diversity of the zone’s inhabitants within the educational programme of this future secondary school, and the municipal authority and development agency, who both wanted to ‘open an elite secondary school in the northern district’.36 Strengthening the links already forged (in the context of the opening of elementary school B) between the development agency and the DDEC, a local land reserve had already been earmarked for the site of the future secondary school, but tensions were crystallising around the secondary school’s image and the composition of its future pupil population. To date, the project is yet to be completed, and discussions are still ongoing. On the public sector side, a new form of partnership in the field of school planning and construction was taking shape, strengthening the links between the municipal authority and the development agency, who had been entrusted with the direct project management of a new state-run elementary school in the Euroméditerranée area.37 This elementary school was to ‘strengthen the local educational offer for the current inhabitants of the district’ and ‘facilitate the arrival of new residents’, who would then have to be persuaded to enrol. Obliged by the school mapping policy,38 the municipal authority had already introduced a modification of the catchment areas around the proposed new elementary school in line with the urban and housing development plans put forward for the zone’s new middle-class and affluent inhabitants. This ‘à la carte’ redefining of the proposed new elementary school’s catchment area, which limited the original inhabitants’ access to the school, once again reflected socio-educational side-lining and distancing attempts between inhabitants of the same neighbourhood, thus encouraging the reproduction of school-based segregation in the neighbourhood. Finally, the most ambitious plan for the zone was the creation of an international school complex,39 a project jointly supported by the municipal authority, the  Interviews conducted with a number of actors from the DDEC in Marseille between 2009 and 2012 as part of my doctoral research (Audren, 2015). 36  Interview conducted in July 2018 with the DDEC’s director. 37  Normally, the construction of state-run schools is a municipal responsibility, but here a bi-partite agreement had been signed between the Euroméditerranée development agency and the municipal authority. 38  In France, the school mapping policy (which has existed since 1963) defines the school catchment areas and assigns pupils a school according to their residential address. 39  A school complex offering schooling in the same establishment from elementary school until the end of high school. 35

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department and the region in close collaboration with the Euroméditerranée development agency and the rectorat. While there was a genuine convergence of interests here, the different actors were nevertheless all pursuing different objectives: ‘All the stakeholders met up but they’ve got different ways of looking at the project, the regional authority and municipal authority are trying to attract a certain type of family, and aiming at economic and territorial attractiveness, and the recteur wants to broaden the international schools offer, which is currently inadequate in Marseille, and to guarantee pupil diversity’.40 This international school complex project was elaborated and designed first-­ hand by these partners as a territorial attractiveness feature aimed at strengthening the zone’s positioning and, more broadly, the metropolis’s influence: ‘The emergence of the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, its attractiveness, its cosmopolitan character and the internationalisation of its economy all point to an opportunity to create an international school complex in Marseille in order to develop a suitable educational offer’ (AGAM, 2018, translated from French). With a view to assessing the potential interest in a bilingual school from families and pupils and to reflecting on the future educational offer, the rectorat and the development agency commissioned a study from AGAM in 2018. Its results supported the creation of this type of structure on the grounds that there was a fairly large ‘target’ public (families who may be interested in this type of establishment) and a very enthusiastic local economic community, who saw this future establishment as an ‘added value’ that would enhance the area’s attractiveness. However, fundamental to all these elements was the crucial question of pupil selection. If admission to the school complex was to be based on the same criteria as those used for the international school sections in secondary schools, where selection was based not on school mapping but on application (with good academic results and a good level of foreign language expected) and on tests developed by the school district’s inspectorate, this selective admissions policy would run the risk of increasing school-based segregation and reproducing inequalities. Hence, to counter this effect and to try to broaden the school complex’s future admissions profile, the school district had launched a programme to develop immersion schools in the surrounding neighbourhoods and was planning to open several international school sections in the local state-run secondary schools. This objective was also echoed by one of the education officials from the departmental council, who mentioned the possibility of opening up half the classes in the city’s secondary schools to all children through the school mapping admissions policy.41 The international school complex project is currently still a work in progress, but the potential challenges and implications around pupil selection for this future establishment have already been set out.

40 41

 The words of a school district official in charge of the project, July 2018.  Interviews conducted in July 2018.

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4.4 Conclusion This cross analysis of urban renewal and the construction of the schools’ offer has highlighted the increasingly close integration of school and urban policies, which is in keeping with contemporary trends for the neoliberalization of public policies. This chapter highlights the way in which the school, or the educational dimension more broadly, becomes an essential aspect in the orientation of urban renewal projects. New (PPP-type) partnerships were being established between the municipal authority, the development agency and the public and private education sectors, illustrating the public/private co-defining of schools planning and construction. The school was thus seen and mobilised as a service just like any other. It had become an ‘urban’ amenity, responding first and foremost to policy ambitions of attractiveness. All the projects analysed in this chapter illustrate the processual dimension of the construction of a segmented local school market, which therefore depended on local agreements, in which pre-existing institutional dynamics played a key role (Felouzis et al., 2013). The effects of school markets are ambivalent. Studies have shown that they do not reduce inequalities (Felouzis et al., 2013; Ayed, 2015). This chapter highlights the fact that the way in which the school market was constructed in this zone in Marseille contributed to increasing segregation and strengthened the hierarchisation of the schools offer. More particularly, these cases raise questions not only about the competitive interdependence between schools, which crystallised around the issue of pupil selection, but also about the modalities of access to the schools offer. A number of studies (Oberti et al., 2012) have stressed the need for public regulation, particularly where pupil placement policies are concerned. Hence, in a renewed reflection on the school mapping policy in France, it would be relevant to construct a territorial pupil placement policy that reconciles the public and private education sectors. Insofar as private schools under contract with the State benefit from some public funding (teachers’ pay, municipal flat rate) and private schools generally are firmly embedded in the territorial schooling logics, it may be possible to integrate the private education sector with the objectives of social diversity in schools (as mentioned with a member of DDEC in an interview relayed in this case study), as advocated by the school mapping policy within state-run schools. From this perspective, future research would allow us to decipher the processes involved in schooling logics and to identify the issues relating to social and school diversity in different areas. Going forward, this research can thus be seen as a framework for reflection that is aimed at improving the links between school and urban policies and that could support the implementation of an ambitious and renewed national policy to combat inequalities in education in France.

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References AGAM. (2018). ‘Références’, Activity report, May 2018, 56p. Audren, G. (2012). Dynamiques scolaires et recompositions socio-territoriales: quels impacts sur la ségrégation à Marseille ? Géographie, Économie, Société, 14(2), 147–168. Audren, G. (2015). Géographie de la fragmentation urbaine et territoires scolaires à Marseille, PhD dissertation (geography), Aix Marseille Université. Audren, G. (2020). L’école privée au service de l’attractivité territoriale ? Politiques scolaires et renouvellement urbain à Marseille. Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, 19, 21–51. Audren, G., Baby-Collin V. (2017). Ségrégation socio-spatiale et ethnicisation des territoires scolaires à Marseille, Belgeo, Revue belge de géographie, 2–3, http://belgeo.revues.org/18726 Audren, G., Baby-Collin V., & Dorier, E. (2016). Quelles mixités dans une ville fragmentée? Une approche par les dynamiques locales de l’espace scolaire à Marseille. Lien social et Politique, 77, 38–61. Audren, G., Jeanmougin, H., & Valcin, M. (2017). L’école un lieu d’ancrage dans la ville. In F. Bouillon (Éd.), Ville ordinaire, citadins précaires: transition ou disparation programmée des quartiers tremplin? Research report for PUCA (pp. 268–302), Plan Urbanisme Construction Architecture. Ayed, C.  B. (2015). Le nouvel ordre éducatif local: mixité, disparités, luttes locales. Presses Universitaires de France. Ball, S., Bowe, R., & Gewirtz, S. (1995). Circuits of schooling: A sociological exploration of parental choice of school in social class contexts. The Sociological Review, 43(1), 52–77. Bertoncello, B., & Rodrigues-Malta, R. (2001). Euroméditerranée: les échelles d’un grand projet de régénération urbaine’. In A. Donzel (Ed.), Métropolisation, gouvernance et citoyenneté dans la région marseillaise (pp. 405–420). Maisonneuve et Larose. Bertoncello, B., Dubois, J., & Rodrigues-Malta, R. (2009). Opération Euroméditerranée, une affaire d’état. POPSU, EPAU. Broccolichi, S., & Van Zanten, A. (1997). Espaces de concurrence et circuits de scolarisation: L’évitement des collèges publics d’un district de la banlieue parisienne. Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, 75, 5–17. Courratier, E., François, J.-C., & Poupeau, F. (2006). Différenciation socio-spatiale des circuits de scolarisation. Enquête sur les pratiques de placements scolaire en contexte de gentrification. Regards sociologiques, 31, 55–90. Cucchiara, M.  B. (2013). Marketing schools, marketing cities: Who wins and who loses when schools become urban amenities. University of Chicago Press. Dorier E., Berry-Chikhaoui I., Bridier S., Baby-Collin V., Audren G., & Garniaux J. (2010). La diffusion des ensembles résidentiels fermés à Marseille. Les urbanités d’une ville fragmentée. Research report for PUCA, Plan Urbanisme Construction Architecture. Dubois, J., & Olive, M. (2004). Euroméditerranée, négociations à tous les étages. État, promoteurs et propriétaires dans une ville en crise. Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, 97, 103–111. Favier E. (2009). Le collège du futur est classé en ZEP. La création du collège Jean Claude Izzo à Marseille – La Joliette, Master’s dissertation, ed. Masclet O., Université de Paris 5. Felouzis, G., & Perroton, J. (2009). Grandir entre pairs à l’école. Ségrégation ethnique et reproduction sociale dans le système éducatif français. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 180(5), 92–100. Felouzis, G., Maroy, C., & Van Zanten, A. (2013). Les marchés scolaires. Sociologie d’une politique publique d’éducation. Presses Universitaires de France, Coll. ‘Education et société’. François J.-C. & Poupeau F. (2008). Le sens du placement. Ségrégation résidentielle et ségrégation scolaire, , Raisons d’agir.

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Giband, D., Mary, K., & Nafaa, N. (2020). Éducation, privatisation, ségrégation: regards croisés Nord/Sud. De l’importance de la dimension spatiale des dynamiques éducatives. Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, 19, 7–20. Jones, K., Hatcher, R., Hirtt, N., Innes, R., Josua, S., Klausenitzer, J., & The Colectivo Baltasar Gracián. (2008). Schooling in Western Europe: The new order and its adversaries. Palgrave Macmillan. Launay, L., Collet, A., & Ter Minassian, H. (2016). La gentrification: une affaire d’images et de représentations. In M. Chabrol, A. Collet, M. Giroud, L. Launay, M. Rousseau, & H. Ter Minassian (Dir.), Gentrifications (pp. 193–224). Lehman-Frisch, S. (2009). La ségrégation: une injustice spatiale? Questions de recherche. Annales de Géographie, 665–666, 94–115. Mons, N. (2007). Les nouvelles politiques éducatives: La France fait-elle les bons choix ? Presses universitaires de France, coll. ‘Éducation et société’. Oberti, M. (2007). L’école dans la ville: ségrégation, mixité carte scolaire. Presses de Sciences Politiques. Oberti, M., Preteceille, E., & Rivière, C. (2012). Les effets de l’assouplissement de la carte scolaire dans la banlieue parisienne. Interim report HALDE/DEPP, Paris, Sciences Po-OSC. Roncayolo, M. (2001). Mixité sociale et ségrégation: la dimension historique. Habitat supplement, Paris, IAURIF, 29. Smith, N. (2003). La gentrification généralisée: d’une anomalie locale à la régénération urbaine comme stratégie urbaine globale. In C. Bidou Zachariasen (Ed.), Retours en ville, Paris, Descartes et Cie (pp. 45–72). Souami, T. (2003). Mondialisation et cultures urbanistiques. In A. Osmont & C. Goldblum (Eds.), Villes et citadins dans la mondialisation, Paris, Khartala (pp. 263–282). Van Zanten, A. (2001). L’école de la périphérie: scolarité et ségrégation en banlieue. Presses Universitaire de France. Van Zanten, A. (2009). Choisir son école. Stratégies familiales et médiation locales. Presses Universitaire de France, coll. ‘Le lien social’.

Chapter 5

Privatization Trends in French Public Universities: Challenging the Geographies of a Public Service Camille Vergnaud

Abstract  This chapter aims to analyze how some recent privatization trends in French Higher Education and Research system are transforming the geographies of universities at different levels. A succession of reforms implemented since mid-2000’s to conform to globalized scripts of international attractivity has fostered dynamics of privatization, in a general context of decreasing recurrent public funding and transformation of the State involvement. Certain trends towards corporatization, marketization and entrepreneurialism have an impact on the landscape and organization of public universities. It calls into question the publicness of the French public university model, and its spatial dimensions. The hierarchization of the university system, the competition through selective public call for funding, and the diversification of the public and private universities’ resources by local involvement challenge some spatial dimensions of what has been considered as the public character of French universities: the uniformity of institutions and their members, the equivalence of study and working conditions, and a balanced distribution of sites over the national territory.

5.1 Introduction In commenting on reforms of the Higher Education and Research (HER) system in France, Christine Musselin emphasizes the fact that these decisions are always justified in official discourses by the transformations carried out in other countries. As a sociologist of organizations, expert of university governance in France and Germany, she underlines the worldwide dissemination of “scripts”, which are defined as “normative prescriptions that circulate in the institutional environment of universities and set out the legitimate propositions, norms, standards that institutions and governments must adopt if they are to appear rational and effective.” (2008b, p. 15). C. Vergnaud (*) University Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sciences Po Grenoble, Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_5

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Those “scripts” highlight the links between globalization and privatization, promoting the development of an internationalized market of higher education and the multiplication of private education institutions, with national variations. The interweaving of private and public actors and the industry commitment are also promoted for scientific innovation (Gibbons et  al., 1994; Nowotny et  al., 2003); an analysis whose normative perspective and adequacy to reality have been discussed (Lamy & Shinn, 2006; Shinn, 2010). As main higher education and research institutions, universities are part of that perspective advocating forms of privatization, regarding to their financing, their relationship with the State, and their management. In that context, this paper focuses on French universities and aims at studying forms of privatization, not considered stricto sensu as a growing number of private institutions, but as a dynamic of leaning away from what could be considered as a publicness of the French university system. The French university system is heavily supported by public funds, which is not in itself a specificity, since nine European countries finance higher education more than 80% from public funds, and 13 other European countries more than 60%, including France at the rate of 78% (Calviac, 2019, p. 55). However, other features of what has been theorized as the Napoleonic model,1 strongly combine a sense of publicness, the role of the State and territorial unity (Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2013). Indeed, the historical construction of French universities (Charle & Verger, 2012; Musselin, 2001; Renaut, 1995), particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries has resulted to a HER system considered as a public service “marked by a triple unity of diplomas, institutions and [professional academic] statutes” (Aust & Crespy, 2009, p. 930). The public character of French universities thus relies on public funding but also on a territorial vision supported by the State. As Guy Neave summarizes it, in the Napoleonic model, the central administration exercises “close control over the financing of the institution and appointments” and is accompanied by “legislation guaranteeing an equitable distribution of national resources throughout the country” (1998, p. 21). This dimension of equality – as a principle organizing the French public service of university system – is spatially translated into equivalence and territorial uniformity. It means that the conditions of study and teaching are supposed to be of the same quality everywhere on the national territory, that a diploma has the same equivalence accredited by the Ministry,2 regardless of the university where it is obtained, and that the academics have the same work conditions: professors or

 Which has been called the Napoleonic model of universities in France started with the French Revolution and the suppression of the universities in 1793, when all corporations (including academic ones) were abolished (Charle & Verger, 2012; Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2013). Then, at the beginning of nineteenth century, different faculties have been re-created, and gathered by Napoleon as one entity covering the whole country: The Imperial University. Major specificities of French academic system started there, especially a strong emphasis on publicness in the objectives and operating principles of institutions (Charle & Verger, 2012; Neave, 1998). 2  “The French ministry every four (now five) years accredits each training program so that a bachelor in Law all over France is considered as equivalent to any other bachelor in Law, whatever the university that delivers it.” (Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2013, p. 8). 1

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administrators, most of them civil servants, with the same seniority and same echelon receive the same salary. This paper first proposes to analyze how the recent reforms of French public universities, implemented by State policies, aim at conforming to the tendencies carried by the globalization of the HER, especially the valorization of international visibility and the construction of universities as strategic actors with managerial autonomy embedded in a national and international competition. A second part will show to what extend these reforms foster a privatization of public universities as a deviation from specific French publicness, by implementing logics of corporatization and marketization; diversification and privatization of funding and stakeholders  – with a focus on the growing part of philanthropic foundations -; and a reconfiguration of the role of the State, leading to foster an entrepreneurial university mindset. Finally, we will see that this deviation from publicness lies in the transformations of the territorialization of the university system, since those reforms change what is expected and endorsed by universities toward their surrounding environment, and put into question the spatial dimensions of equivalence and balance as core principles of public service of French Higher Education and Research. The empirical data used in this chapter comes from a qualitative fieldwork conducted from 2013 to 2018 as part of doctoral research (Vergnaud, 2018), supplemented by some additional interviews from 2020 to 2022. The PhD dissertation proposed an international comparison between the United States and France, studying the territorial involvement of two universities and their academic members. The analysis is based on institutional data (from archives, communication supports, websites), direct and participative observation of academic projects (research and/ or teaching collaborative projects with nonacademic local partners), and 146 interviews with university leaders, administrative staff and academic members (n = 120). Only the French case is developed here, with the case study of the University of Paris Nanterre. Founded in 1964 to respond to the growing student population in the Paris region, the University of Paris Nanterre gathers nowadays more than 34,000 students, 1300 academics and 1000 staff on a 33-hectare campus located in the western suburbs of Paris. The case of the University of Paris Nanterre (UPN) is particularly interesting to study in a period of reform and restructuring of the French higher education system, because it presents a median situation that may be impacted by the current hierarchization. Unlike small universities in medium-sized cities that did not feel concerned by the national competitive calls for projects (such as the Excellence Initiative program, see below), UPN leaders wanted to rely on those selective fundings to promote its specificities as a humanities and social sciences center, and to build a distinctive territorial identity. The objective was to emphasize the role of UPN as a university anchored in a socially diversified territory undergoing profound economic and urban changes, asserting its peripherical position in the competition with other universities of the metropolitan area. The university leader then claimed a strong societal role and even promoted a dedication to public service as a Third Mission of the university through social, cultural and economic involvement. But in the same time, the university organization was going through intense

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transformations in order to comply with the national governance reforms and to be able to apply to the calls for projects to finance this institutional strategy. Studying the University Paris Nanterre case at that time with in-deep interviews (from 1 to 4 hours) allowed to analyze the possible tensions between a certain sense of public mission claimed by different actors in the university and the managerial and financial transformations opening up to forms of privatization.

5.2 Reforming French Universities to Conform to Global Scripts Since the mid-2000’s, French universities experienced reforms that aimed at conforming them to a certain number of scripts (Musselin, 2008b; Musselin & Dif-­ Pradalier, 2014) circulating on a global scale (Aust et  al., 2018), and promoted through European objectives (such as Lisbon Strategy3 and then Horizon 20204). According to the growing “leitmotiv” (Musselin, 2009, p. 73) of the “knowledge society economy” (Ravinet, 2009, p. 361), academic institutions and activities are more and more supposed to contribute to economic growth, metropolitan dynamics and national attractiveness. To develop innovation and increase the visibility of the Higher Education and Research system, French public policies have decided to prioritize the development of a few academic clusters with international recognition. The stated objectives are to achieve a threshold effect that is supposed to reinforce scientific productivity, to encourage partnerships with economic actors for the transfer of innovation, and to direct funding towards the institutions considered to be the most efficient (Gozlan, 2016a, b; Soler, 2021). In order to achieve those objectives, three main transformations had been implemented by State public policies (see Table 5.1).

5.2.1 University Mergers for International Visibility A first reform consists in encouraging universities to merge or regroup with other universities and academic institutions to develop inter-institutional cooperation at the local or regional level. The 2006 Research Program Act and then the 2013 Higher Education and Research Act created the possibility and then the obligation for universities to gather in a meta-structure, with a new legal status, new name and a new layer of governance body, at the scale of Higher Education and Research

 European Union development plan from 2000 to 2020, putting innovation and learning at the center of a competitiveness strategy based on the knowledge economy. 4  Funding program created by the European Union to support and encourage research and innovation in order to support the economic competitiveness, running from 2014 to 2020. 3

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Table 5.1  A chronological summary of Higher Education and Research Reforms in France 2000

2001

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009 – 2017 2010

2013

Reform European Union Lisbon Strategy (Stratégie de Lisbonne) Organic law regarding finance legislation (LOLF) implemented in 2006 Creation of a National Agency for Research (ANR) Creation of the Regional clusters for innovation (Pôles de compétitivité) Research Program Act (LOPRI)

Description European Union development plan from 2000 to 2020, putting innovation and learning at the center of a competitiveness strategy based on the knowledge economy. New Public Management Principles: accountability and performance as criteria, including for public universities.

Generalization of calls for project to fund research. Main research strategies defined by the State and European Union. Support to applied research and public-private partnerships

Possibilities for HER institutions to regroup on a territorial basis to be more visible, as merged or clustered institutions. Creation of a new agency (AERES, now HCERES), from the fusion of two previous committees, reinforcing the evaluation of academics and universities. Partial budgetary and management autonomy: universities Liberties and are in charge of an overall State funding, with the Responsibilities of responsibility and the possibility to choose at a local level Universities Act (Loi Relative aux libertés where to allocate it, especially for total payroll. Obligation to negotiate a contact between the university and et responsabilités des the State (Ministry) for this funding. Universités – LRU) Governance reform with more nonacademic stakeholders participating to the board of trustees. Campus Program Selective funding targeted to twelve merged or clustered institutions, for campus construction or renovation. Main objectives are international visibility and dualization of universities. Informatic measurement and allocation of public funding Sympa System to for universities, with performance criteria (20% of the measure and allocate funding in 2010) resources Four phases of calls for projects between 2010 and 2021, to Excellence Initiative finance endowments or grants, directed to research (Labex), Programs (Politiques d’Excellence) launched. teaching (EUR, CNU), campus investment (Plan Campus), universities (Idex, Isite), or innovation transfer to industry (SATT, CVT). Funded with State debt leverage called National Plan for Investment (PIA) Obligation for universities to merge or regroup with other Higher Education and universities and HER institutions. Research Act Universities’ mergers have to develop "scientific and (Loi Relative à innovation partnerships with socio-economic stakeholders l’Enseignement and local authorities” (“politique de site”). Supérieur et à la Partnerships with nonacademic stakeholders are mandatory Recherche) to obtain some funding from the E.U. (FEDER) or the Regions (regional public authorities). (continued)

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Table 5.1 (continued) 2014

2018

2019 2020

Reform Horizon 2020 from 2014–2020 (followed by Horizon Europe until 2027) Student Orientation and Success Act (Loi ORE) Welcome to France (Bienvenue en France) Research Budget Act (Loi de Programmation de la Recherche – LPR)

Description Research and innovation funding program created by the European Union to support research and innovation, with economic competitiveness and technology transfer as main target. Orientation of first-year students through a state-regulated selection process, operated by the universities (criteria chosen by disciplinary departments). Fees for international students increased up to 7 times Formalization and development of tenure-track positions (previously derogatory). Reinforcement of local decisions for evaluation, recruitment and career evolution. Less decisions from national committees.

A special thanks to Renaud Le Goix and Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch for our discussions and for sharing their own synthesis and translations of the recent French HER reforms (Le Goix et al., 2022)

Clusters.5 Those legal incentives were enhanced by two large national call for proposals funding initiatives6 (Campus Program launched in 2008 and the ­ Excellence Initiative Program in 2010). In both cases, selection criteria (highly debated in the academic community, see Gozlan, 2016a) “favored projects implementing a reinforcement of inter-institutional cooperation or a merger” (Barrier & Musselin, 2016, p. 363). The objective was to choose a short list of research teams (for the LABEX funding) or merged or clustered institutions (for the IDEX or ISITE funding) that would be considered as “excellent” and would receive important amount of financial resources7 and symbolic recognition (Soler, 2021). The stated objective of the Excellence Initiative Program is to “create 5 to 10 multidisciplinary clusters of excellence in higher education and research in France that are worldclass ranked8”. This concentration of material and symbolic public resources on a limited number of institutions (9 IDEX9 and 8 ISITE10 in 2022 for the overall country) by a competitive bidding process aims at reinforcing a hierarchization of the HER French system (Aust et al., 2018; Musselin, 2017).  Those clusters are named « Communautés d’Universités et d’Etablissements (COMUE) », i.e. Communities of Universities and Higher Education Institutions. 6  Both are funded by a State program called “Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir” (PIA). 7  IDEX funding is an endowment from 500 to 950 million of euros, which only the interests upon capital are allowed to be used (Soler, 2021). ISITE funding represent an endowment from 200 to 500 million. 8  Excerpt from the call for projects Excellence Initiative Program managed by the National Agency for Research (ANR) in 2010, p. 5, available here: https://anr.fr/fr/detail/call/initiatives-­dexcellence-­ idex-appel-a-projets-vague-1-2010/ (accessed on July 2022). 9  Four university mergers are located in the Paris metropolitan region and five in metropolitan areas in the overall France (Grenoble, Aix-Montpellier, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Nice-Côte d’Azur). 10  Montpellier, Lille, Lorraine, Clermont-Auvergne, Nantes, Cergy, Marne-la-Vallée et Pau 5

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5.2.2 Competition and Evaluation: The Main Logics to Allocate Public Funds At the same time, allocation of public funding is more and more organized by a competitive bidding process. Project-based selective funding had been existing before 2000’s (Aust, 2014b), but it has been strongly reinforced since mid-2000’s: a National Agency for Research11 (ANR) was created to manage and generalize the calls for projects as a way to allocate public funding to research projects, but also directly to universities which is new. Universities continue to receive an annual grant from the State for “public service charges” to cover operating costs, in particular salaries. But, this allocation does not keep up with the sharp increase in the number of students (+26% of students in universities between 2012 and 201812) resulting in a recent decrease (over the last 6 years) in public spending per student and in the ratio of academic staff per student (Calviac, 2019, p. 61–62). Moreover, this recurrent funding does not cover investment needs, pedagogical or research innovations (such as the integration of digital technology into academic work), or the extra cost necessary to respond to call for projects (academic work time, management positions). These items of expenditure are now supposed to be financed by non-recurring private or public funding through specific calls for projects. Indeed, the French government launched in 2010 a series of funding plans for innovation and employment (the 4th in 2021) called National Plan for Investment (Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir -PIA). Part of the funding went to the universities, but only through selective and competitive calls for projects: towards research with the Excellence Initiative Programs (LABEX, IDEX, ISITE), towards construction and renovation on campus with the Campus Program, and also towards teaching activities, for example with the program University School for Research (EUR) launched in 2017 to promote the model of Graduate School in France. This way of allocating public funding though competitive and selective process is thus increasing and generalizing to all the universities’ necessities. According to new public management principles, the State is no longer providing resources according to the needs in teaching and research, but organizing the evaluation and selection processes (Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2012). This trend leads to commensuration and commodification dynamics by creating indicators in order to be able to measure and compare institutions, labs and individuals; to bureaucratic processes by producing enough data to prove or announce a performance, and to the reinforcement of agencies in order to organize the evaluation and funding distribution.

 “In 2005–2006 the government created a new agency, the ANR (l’Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, e.g. French national research council). Its role is to organize calls for proposals of research projects presented by academics, to select and fund them on a competitive basis and after peer-review evaluations. The budget dedicated to the ANR strongly increased.” (Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2013, p. 4). 12  (Harari-Kermadec et al., 2020, p. 80) 11

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5.2.3 Managerial Autonomy and Accountability If French public universities are more and more expected to prove their efficiency and have to compete to obtain public funding, they are also increasingly transformed to be accountable for their management and therefore for their success or failure in the competition (Dang Vu, 2011, p.  326; Vinokur, 2008). Through legislative reforms (in particular the Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities Act – LRU, 2007; and the Research Budget Act – LPR, 2020), the State delegated to them different competencies, decisions or responsibilities. Public universities are now required to manage all of their resources (public annual grants, own resources, calls for projects) and budget, including their payroll, in accordance with a multi-year contract signed with the State. They have the possibility to recruit employees, with distinctive salary rates via specific positions (junior professorships, for example) or individual bonuses and allowances (Baudet-­ Michel et  al., 2020). They are strengthening their leadership, rationalizing their activities, developing management and communication skills, gaining organizational competencies (Musselin, 2001, 2008a; Whitley, 2011) as “integrated entities” (Brunsson & Sahlin-Andersson, 2000) and strategic actors, strengthening as an intermediary level between the State and the academic profession (Musselin, 2017). Progressively, financial management, promotion and communication offices have been expanded and transformed (Barrier & Musselin, 2016; Musselin, 2017, p. 135) in order to compete in an increasingly competitive and ranked system. The major transformations of the French higher education and research system over the last two decades are not totally new. The objective of creating a dozen or so internationally visible clusters was discussed as early as the 1960’s (Aust, 2014a), and some organizational construction had been started by contracting State-­ universities funding relations in the 1990’s (Musselin, 1997). Nevertheless, the succession of reforms (see Table  5.1) during beginning of the twenty-first century marks a strong turning point regarding the principles and modes of organization of university governance, the financing and evaluation of scientific activities, and the management of the academic profession. They challenge what has been considered as the main principles and logics of the French public HER, leading to move away from some features of publicness.

5.3 Privatizations as Deviations from University Publicness In an internationalized and competitive context, French public universities aim to strengthen their attractiveness on academic markets. They have to compete for public funding allocated by calls for projects and are responsible for their budgetary and managerial development. Thus, they increasingly act as strategic actors to get public funds but also to diversify their sources of income, leading to different dynamics of privatization of public universities as corporatization and entrepreneurial mindset, but also more strictly marketization and financialization; all over fostered by State incentives.

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5.3.1 Privatization as Logics of Corporatization and Entrepreneurialism French public universities are facing a global decrease of the public investment per student: the slight increase in public funding in quantitative numbers does not compensate for the strong increase in the number of students, which results in a decrease per student (Calviac, 2019), particularly in universities (compared to the Grandes Ecoles). Similarly, the staffing ratio (i.e. the number of jobs per university per 100 students) has been decreasing since 2013, revealing a situation of “under-­budgeting” (Calviac, 2019, p. 61–62). At the same time, funding targets a few research or teaching units, and does not fund all the university’s activities, which create a general tension and a differentiation of the working and studying conditions within the institutions. Depending on the type of funding and its amount, the budget balance may be under pressure. This was emphasized by the president of Nanterre University in 2018 in a letter to its academic members: “As far as Paris Nanterre is concerned, the calls for projects that we have won (…) obviously cannot compensate for the shortfall in recurrent funding that has accumulated over the years.” (Vergnaud, 2018). More generally, the combination of a selective allocation of resources in a competitive context and the managerial autonomy of universities leads institutions and individuals to feel responsible to seek new ways – financial, human, logistical – to preserve or gain an advantageous position in the academic competition. Universities, but also research and teaching teams, are therefore developing entrepreneurial mindset, looking for funding to ensure by themselves the conditions of their existence. Beyond the strict meaning of business creation, the term, as used here, refers to the acceptance of competitive logics, adaptation to the needs of potential funders (companies, foundations, the State and local authorities, students), and organizational transformation to be more efficient in searching funding and making profit (Masseys-Bertonèche, 2011; Ravinet, 2012, p.  133). For the French universities, this entrepreneurial mindset is particularly visible in their attempts to increase their revenues (universities use the term “own resources”) by diversifying their sources of incomes, public or private, in addition to the public annual grants allocated by the State for “public service charges”, as explained above. Financing totally or partially research projects – and sometimes teaching – with non-recurrent public funding is not new. But the turning point relies in the fact that not only research teams are concerned, but the whole university has to finance its activities with additional funding streams; that large amounts of State money13 are now available only to a few

 The amounts announced are those of the endowments, which do not correspond to the public funding available to universities or academic clusters. For example, the appendix to the 2016 finance law lists 115 projects agreed upon within Idex and Labex throughout France as of June 2015, which represents: 7 billion in non-consumable funding, 2 billion in disbursable funding over 10 years (i.e., 200 million per year for all projects accredited in France) and 156 million in immediately consumable funding (URL accessed on July 2022: https://www.budget.gouv.fr/sites/performance_publique/files/farandole/ressources/2016/pap/pdf/jaunes/jaune2016_investissements_ avenir.pdf) 13

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universities, and that fund-raising money from private sector to finance public universities is an idea more and more legitimate throughout the academic sphere. We can therefore observe a form of privatization as corporatization of universities management, with the introduction of managerial practices coming from private firms (Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2013; Giband et al., 2020, p. 5) to respond to public calls for project, to formalize partnerships and foster clusters with nonacademic stakeholders, and to be more efficient in commercializing some products, academic ones’ or not. To commercialize academic work or to explicitly declare as an objective to make profit is not usual in French public universities, and the following quote from a new employee (previously working as a private lawyer) in the Office of Research Support and Transfer14 at Nanterre University in 2016 was quite unforeseen until recently: “So the idea is to exploit, to commercialize and to bring money into the university, that is the objective (…). So valorization, here valorization is no longer inventing, valorization is: commercialization, exploitation.” (Vergnaud, 2018). If the idea is gaining ground throughout the university leaders and staff, it implies a strong increase in competence and plays a part in turning universities from institutions into organizations (Brunsson & Sahlin-Andersson, 2000; Gumport, 2000) and strategic actors (Krücken & Meier, 2006). This organizational building process (Musselin, 2001) is described by the head of staff in 2016: “What we need to do is to create a network of partners, and then respond to calls for projects that may allow us to complete the grants that we may receive (…) today we do it in a very scattered way, not necessarily very professional. (…) until now we have not really been able to do it because we were not operational to do it. So now, the person in question [new employee in sponsored program] can accompany us in order to succeed in … obtaining funding from other ministries.” (Vergnaud, 2018, p. 395–396). The number of employees in the research support and development teams is increasing and includes more and more employees from the private sector. Moreover, response to calls for projects (especially the Excellence Initiative Program ones’) and strategic decisions to develop their own resources are now undertaken directly by the universities and the universities’ clusters. This contributes to strengthen the authority of decision-making bodies (presidential team, ad hoc coordinating committee) at the university management level (Dobbins et al., 2011, p. 676), and to experimenting new modes of management or governance, which is one of the specific trait of entrepreneurial mindset (Clark 2007 in Dang Vu, 2011, p. 274). Thus, the pressure to diversify funding in a competitive system whose logic has been accepted and even reinforced by the compliance or active support of part of the academic community (Gozlan, 2019; Musselin, 2017; Musselin & Dif-Pradalier, 2014; Topalov, 2020) results in implementing logics of privatization such as corporatization, entrepreneurial mindset and more broadly marketization. In an international comparison of ideologies and principles of governance schemes, we could

 « Service de soutien et valorisation de la recherche ».

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summarize these corporatization and privatization as the development of market-­ oriented university model throughout the French state-ruled university one (Dobbins et al., 2011; Neave, 1998; Paradeise et al., 2009), as it is defined by (Dobbins et al., 2011, p.  676): “In essence, market-based systems integrate entrepreneurial and investment culture into funding measures”. Direct public funding continues to be the most important source of income for French public universities, representing, on average, 81% of all university resources in 2017 (Calviac, 2019, p. 54). It is difficult to measure the extent to which these recent on-going logics of corporatization and diversification of funds are implemented: universities and mergers differ greatly, the deciphering of institutional budgets is difficult to trace, and moreover these logics also apply to public funds. Nevertheless, these dynamics of corporatization and marketization introduce forms of privatization in the strict sense, i.e. a growing number of private funds and actors in the French universities.

5.3.2 Privatization as Increasing Private Stakeholders and Funding Finding additional funding streams in order to complete the public annual grants allocated by the State for “public service charges” is seen as a necessity by public university leaders to remain competitive. Diversification of university’s sources of income by private ones rely on different possibilities, not all of which can be analyzed here: tuition fees for students and paying-based formation for adults, private companies funding, commercialization of intellectual property (Dobbins et  al., 2011, p. 676), philanthropic fund-raising, sell and financialization of non-academic products. A first trend is to raise tuition fees for students. Even if tuition fees in public universities are regulated in France, various attempts have been made to introduce some differentiation: some universities ask complementary costs in addition to tuition fees or offer facultative but fee-based training; the government gave the possibility to the universities to rise significatively tuition fees for foreign students since 2019. In addition to this marketization of Higher Education, another way for universities to increase and diversify their revenues is to make profit by selling non-­ academic products, such as renting classroom spaces or building, or selling derived products. These attempts may not be so remunerating, or used by the universities. To date, the French situation is far removed from the real estate activities of private (or sometimes public) universities in other countries (Dang Vu, 2011, 2013, 2014; Vergnaud, 2018). Those dynamics are quite recent in France, but reveal new logics of commercialization. Another recent mean to diversify their revenues for the universities is to look toward private funds as philanthropic donations. Inspired in part by foreign examples (notably private and public universities in the United States), these sources of

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funding consist in rising money from individuals such as alumni, private companies or private foundations. Some philanthropic fundings are targeted to punctual and specific projects, but one specific type of philanthropic funding is the creation of an endowment whose only the financial interests, managed by a foundation, are used. In the US context, Carole Masseys-Bertonèche even speaks about a “philanthropic capitalism” defined “as the existence of a privately supported and managed funding system which has helped, throughout American history, to create and sustain a network of nonprofit institutions, the strongest of which are research universities, either to compensate for the weakness of the state or to counterbalance the power of the state” (2016, p. 1). The French context appears radically different from the US one. The latter is characterized by an historic, legitimate and important role of private funders for nonprofit private universities; an economic, cultural and political ideology promoting philanthropic sponsorship; a more ancient (1980–1990) diminution of state appropriations for public universities than in France, leading them to use the same financial arrangements than private ones (Masseys-Bertonèche, 2016). But she considers that European universities are going to adhere to philanthropic capitalism in order to complement the decrease of public funding. In France, sponsorship and foundations had been legally defined and regulated in the late 1980, and both the European Commission and the French government have encouraged its development in the Higher Education and Research Sector, through Think Tank, lobbying and legislative authorizations and incentives (de Barbarin, 2010). Four types of foundations are currently available or dedicated to universities15 (Observatoire de la Philanthropie, 2019). The latter one, “Endowmend Fund” (200816), creates a new status applicable to all foundations. It is inspired by the US endowment funds but it is even more flexible, since it consists in a nonprofit private entity, with or without capital, managing an endowment or cashflow (but only private), making profit or not, financing others entities upon declaration of general interest. This status, used by some universities, is analyzed as a turning point regarding the control and definition of general interest as a public one by the State, and propose a “more radically liberal vision of the general interest, consequently, its break with a secular French practice of control by the public authorities” (Observatoire de la Philanthropie, 2019, p.  61). In 2018, there are 90 foundations specialized in Higher Education and Research in France,17 for 69 public universities and more or less 140 public higher education and research institutions (universities, Grandes Ecoles and others). We can therefore observe the deployment of two new dynamics, reflecting privatization in French universities: fundraising and financialization. They reinforce a broader tendency to  “Foundation for Scientific Cooperation”, “Foundation for Partnership”, “University Foundation”, “Endowment Fund”. 16  Loi de modernisation de l’économie du 4 août 2008 (Loi n° 2008–776 du 4 août 2008, articles 140 et 141, JO du 5 août 2008). 17  Except the foundation created to manage endowments funds (Observatoire de la Philanthropie, 2019, p. 15–16). 15

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neoliberalization of Higher Education and Research, at a global and national scale, as defined as: “series of reforms at the local and national levels that aim to accentuate the privatization of public services, the deregulation of norms and the delegation of state competences to a range of private operators” (Hackworth, 200718).

5.3.3 Privatization and Neoliberalization: Adaptation to State Incentives In order to diversify their sources of income, public universities are asserting themselves as organizational actors carrying out strategies. They are seizing on incentives offered by the State to collect and leverage private money, and to obtain selective public funds. Strictly speaking, obtaining funds through competitive selection is not the same as privatizing funding. However, the logic of corporatization, entrepreneurialism and marketization to obtain public funds and diversify their own resources, as well as the rise of private funding and private actors in French universities, even if limited compared to other countries, reflect a general dynamic of privatization in the sense of leaning away from publicness. This does not mean a disengagement of the State, to the contrary. In fact, those logics of privatization are not exclusive from public funding (but apply to them) or from the State action (but are initiated and encouraged by the public actors and legislative rules). This is in line with global analyses of dynamics of neoliberalization (Pinson, 2020), and examples of hybridization in Education sectors (Vinokur, 2004, p. 26–27). Regarding university sector, the State has been allowing and supporting forms of financialization of the public and private funding, for example by allowing and assisting universities to take on debt and then repay their loans with savings from other operations (energy saving,19 business operations). Private fund-­ raising through philanthropy is also highly encouraged by the State, by new legislative possibilities (see above) and tax exemptions on donations (de Barbarin, 2010; Vergnaud, 2018, p. 333–334). State action is not vanishing but changing, from an interventionist control attitude to an evaluative State (Neave & van Vught, 1991, in Musselin 2011) developing new policies and instruments, performance oriented. These reforms, inspired by new public management narratives, increase managerial relations and devices,  Hackworth Jason, 2007, The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism, Ithaca, Londres, Cornell University Press, in (Giband et al., 2020). 19  One example is the “Intracting” procedure with Advanced Payment from the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, and reimbursement through savings on energy bills, thanks to a new managing plan for improving the energy efficiency of the campus, with the employment of specialist (from private sector): https://www.parisnanterre.fr/presentation/caisse-des-depots-et-consignationsdispositif-intracting 18

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and create a bureaucratization of academic work (Pacitto & Ahedda, 2016; Soulié et al., 2006). The career of a contract employee at the University of Paris Nanterre between 2008 and 2015 illustrates the process of organizational construction at work within the university (Vergnaud, 2018), in order to meet state requirements and new project-­based funding rules. Recruited just after the vote of the Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities Act (LRU – 2007), this employee carried out a succession of temporary contracts to meet management needs, since these positions did not exist in an official and permanent way before. As she said: “So this [job description] was not predefined because I was absorbing everything that did not already exist in the organization chart. Because the ministry kept making new requests…”. With the LRU Act and the budgetary autonomy, it is the university and no longer the ministry that is in charge of managing a global budget and distributing funds among various research units. The employee was first charged with creating data to measure the research activities in the 40 or 50 research units present in the university. The aim was to better negotiate the amount of the global budget with the ministry, and to be able to present and defend the research activities carried out: “So one thing led to another and there was a constant and growing need… we also had to produce numbers ourselves”. Then, she had to pursue this work of data collection by identifying common themes, gathering research units together and coordinating academic collaboration within the new bigger research units. The objective was to be more visible and attractive, in order to negotiate with the ministry. In parallel and subsequently, she was in charge of organizing meetings within the administration and management team to define the criteria and procedures for redistributing the “financial package” to the different academics and research teams. She was then assigned to the budgeting team in the process of merging with others academic institutions, following the 2013 Research and Higher Education Act asking for bigger gathered universities. And finally, she participated in the response file for the Excellence Initiative call for projects to which the university was applying in 2014. This example highlights the growing work of data collection, research management and negotiation process at work in the university, taking on a growing responsibility, in response to quickly changing procedures from the ministry. For universities, these trends had been theorized as the rise of an “incentivizing” state: “rather than prescribing how things should be done, governments develop rules of the game which require compliant behaviors if one wants access to funding” (Musselin, 2013, p.  1168). Introducing performance indicators incites universities to create data and measure those criteria but also to experiment new funding arrangements or new governance and management rules in order, not only to attain a level, but to be considered as better than others to obtain selective material and symbolic (reputation) resources. Steering instruments used to allocate public funds exercise a high control over universities strategies and academic behaviors, despite and even thanks to their management autonomy.

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5.4 Spatial Implications of Privatization: Challenging the Geographies of French University Public Service These forms of privatization both manifest themselves via and rely on the relations between universities and territories. They call into question the geographical principles of the French model of public service for universities (equivalence of working and study conditions, national territorial balance in the distribution of sites), and accentuate the idea that inequality in the management of ESR can be fair, based on a narrow definition of what would be merit and academic excellence, restricted to management and bibliometric criteria. Thus, we will see that the evolution of the relationship between universities and territories highlights some parts of the current privatization and show some spatial dimensions of this move away from university public service.

5.4.1 Local Territorial Involvement for Competitiveness One effect of the growing pressures on universities to diversify their sources of income is to push them to develop territorial strategies. The territory in which the university is located then becomes an asset for financing and distinction, a set of symbolic, material and partnership resources. Partnerships between research teams or training programs and local authorities or companies are not new, giving rise to local specializations and science-industry partnerships (Grossetti, 1995). Later, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the presence of a campus have been considered as an asset by local actors (Dubet et al., 1994; Filâtre, 1994; Grossetti & Losego, 2003; Levy et al., 2015), especially in small and medium-­ sized cities willing to foster dynamics of metropolization (Aust, 2010, p.  113; Filâtre, 1994, p.  37) Gradually, the leitmotiv of the knowledge economy and the desire for an economic transfer of innovation became stronger in public policies (see above). Universities are supposed to promote and coordinate relations between scientific activities and local stakeholders, private companies but also local authorities. At the same time, and partly in response to this demand, universities have strengthened their management and communication skills for local partnerships. They have become an institutional interlocutor, and enhance territorial strategies (Dang Vu, 2011, 2014; Vergnaud, 2018). The recent reforms (see Fig. 6.1) have reinforced incentives for universities to be locally involved: local partnerships with innovation transfer and diversification of funding are nowadays a requirement to obtain some public funding from the European Union, the State, and the regions. For example, a call for projects funded by the Excellence Initiative Program is named I-SITE i.e. “Initiatives, Science, Innovation, Territories, Economy”. In order to get and keep that label and the

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endowment (from 250 to 500 million of euros for 10 years, with interest rate at 2,5% for the profit to be used), the universities have to prove the quality of their partnerships with economic actors and their projects of innovation transfer. Territorial involvement of public universities is also guided by institutional requirements, such as the obligation to present a “territorial strategy20” aiming at creating partnership between academic institutions with economic stakeholders, in order to diversify and justify the public annual grants from the State. In other words, obtaining public funding for research (ISITE) or for functioning is conditional on finding private capital (companies, philanthropy) or other public support at a local level. More generally, contribution to local innovation, but also campus amenities and territorial identity, became a way for universities to be more attractive and visible in the national and international competition. Classic territorial marketing became a strategy for institutional promotion (Musselin & Dif-Pradalier, 2014; Vergnaud, 2018). Some universities used name branding to be attractive, especially for international students, with the mention of “Paris” or “La Sorbonne” in their names. The surrounding community provides strategic levers to distinguish and differentiate themselves from other competing institutions. For example, the communication’s strategy of Paris Nanterre University underlines the proximity between the campus and the Central Business District of “La Défense”, especially for their formation in economics. Other example: The University of La Sorbonne created a campus in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), for an international visibility, implementing higher tuition fees than French ones.21 Thus, the local territorial commitment reflects forms of strict privatization with the search for private capital, but also the development of private logics as corporatization of the university, using a territory of anchorage in an entrepreneurial aim. For the moment, in France, public universities do not have the fundings and managerial capacities (and willing) to involve in urban renovation, real-estate projects, or community engagement, as many other universities do (Dang Vu, 2014; Vergnaud, 2018). Different reasons which could be analyzed in more detail, explain this difference: since tuition fees remain regulated by the State, the commodification of HE is still limited, reducing the pressure on universities to use or even transform their surrounding territory as an argument of attractiveness (internship, fieldwork, service-learning, student experience…) as it may be the case. Similarly, the French social, cultural, economic and political context and the strong role of the welfare state in France have limited the deployment of corporate and individual philanthropy, including towards education. Finally, although recent reforms are pushing universities to take on non-academic operations in order to fund-raise and make themselves more attractive, they are recent and still limited. But universities’ involvement in their surrounding environment might reflect – in a long term – a step back of public investment: it may result in relationships structured by the search for

 “Politique de site”: incentives and obligation for universities and universities mergers to create territorial partnerships, see figure 6.1. 21  For more information: https://www.sorbonne.ae/fees-and-scholarships/ 20

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funds, distancing the university’s activities from academic tasks, leading to power relationships if the university has to accept or tries to impose some projects in order to maintain or find fundings, and leading to growing dissociation between the academic purposes of the universities and what they take over (Vergnaud, 2018).

5.4.2 Differentiation and Hierarchization Versus Territorial Equivalence As a public service guaranteeing equal access to citizens, French higher education system is supposed to offer the same conditions of teaching and studying, and the same quality of diploma on the national territory.22 This spatial equivalence (same level of quality) of HE system over the country may suppose measures for territorial equity, for example to provide more public resources in order to face difficulties due to socio-spatial specificities at different scales. The strong relation between publicness and equivalence is a characteristic of public service in France, and French universities (Charle & Verger, 2012; Grossetti & Losego, 2003). But the reforms led since mid-2000’s (see above and Fig. 6.1) encourage differentiation both between individuals and academic units (either universities, schools or research labs). Fostering local territorial involvement to find partnerships – and thus topics- of research and formation, and to get private funds accentuate this differentiation. As underline by Jérome Aust and Cécile Crespy (2009, p. 926): “The dynamics at work are giving rise to sub-national sectoral spaces, understood as geographically delimited areas, defined in a decentralized manner, but whose internal coherence, objectives and constituent project are aimed solely at sectoral issues. The emergence of these spaces calls into question the image of a uniform and egalitarian national model that had been the basis for the constitution of the French university system”. In this way, new public funding procedures by selection and concentration, and pressures for diversification of sources of income formalize – in their territorial consequences – the decrease role of the State as a redistributive actor in public service of Higher Education. It also challenges the geographical part of French university model as equivalent service public whole over the country. Using performance as a legitimate criterion and measuring this performance, became usual in order to choose how to allocate competitive and selective funding. This leads to the assumption that it is normal not to fund some units and to concentrate funding on others, based on performance as sign of merit. Fundings have to go to those who “deserve” it, which is a way to consider as fair a conception of equality not by equity and equivalence, but through meritocratic principles. The reforms enhance the idea that financing universities on the basis of merit is certainly not

 “The French ministry every four (now five) years accredits each training program so that a bachelor in Law all over France is considered as equivalent to any other bachelor in Law, whatever the university that delivers it” (Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2013, p. 8). 22

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equal between each university and territory, but is nevertheless fair. The competition would then reward the so-called “excellent” universities, selected after a “Darwinian” process, as the president of the National Center for Scientific Research, claimed it while defending a recent legislative Act: “An ambitious, unequal – yes, unequal – law, a virtuous and Darwinian law, which encourages the most performant scientists, teams, laboratories, institutions on an international scale, a law that mobilizes energy23”. In the same vein, the President of the Republic in 2017 said, regarding the winners of the Excellence Initiative projects: “I express all our pride to the winners who had to go through all these steps, even all the obstacles, to reach this consecration24”. However, this logic can be defeated in many ways: first of all, to measure and to finance Higher Education and Research upon performance implies a consensus regarding what is expected, who decide of what has to be expected, and how to measure it – if it has to be measured. As the literature has shown it, this measure – and commodification – is a way to marketisation and capitalist trend in academia (Harari-Kermadec, 2019); the way of defining what is excellence in science is also highly debated (in particular with a criticism of bibliometric measures). The philosophical logic of rewarding merit can also be strongly discussed, regarding its definition and its measurement, or its relevance for a public service. This “closer relation between performance and rewards […] modifies the principle for equality”(Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2013, p. 8). Then, even if we accept this logic of merit for research activities, it turns out that the selective and competitive operation set up by the State does not select universities on scientific quality, but rather on their ability to comply with the expectations of the mechanisms and to demonstrate their managerial capacity to respond to the calls. Moreover, the criteria of governance (especially merging or regrouping) were of primary importance in obtaining the first the Excellence Initiative calls for projects (Musselin, 2019 Chap. 6), and in some cases, political criteria (lobbying) determined the winners (Musselin, 2019 Chap. 3). Finally, even if one accepts the concentration of funding on those individuals and universities considered to be the most scientifically efficient, it turns out that these ways of allocating public money to French universities also apply to teaching and campus maintenance or building (Campus Program described above). This is a breach in the principles of equivalence of study (and work) conditions for citizens and academics on the national territory. The fact that these conditions were not equal before does not ratify the fact of choosing to organize the financing of the HER sector to reinforce this differentiation, which is the case today. A recent reform (Research Budget Act, 202025) accentuated this differentiation by changing the academic status of employment: universities have now the right to choose to affect their public funding to employ academics with higher retribution, less teaching load, and

 Comment on the Research Budget Act, November 2019.  More information here: https://www.gouvernement.fr/idex-isite, (accessed on July 2022). 25  Loi de Programmation de la Recherche 23 24

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higher research funding. This promotes marketization of universities, not from the students’ part but from the academics one; differentiation between and inside ­universities instead of equivalence; increase of private fund-raising to co-finance those jobs; and possible precariousness for others teachers and researchers. As Stéphanie Chatelain-Ponroy and her colleagues (2013, p.  8) explain it: “French universities developed as public services and most of their staff – either administrative or academic  – are civil servants. (…) This theoretical equivalence between higher education institutions also works for academics: professors or administrators with the same seniority and same echelon receive the same salary”. Ultimately, the conditions of study and employment would be more and more differentiated, leading to a breach to equal rights for Higher Education, enshrined in the Education Code26 and the French Constitution.

5.4.3 Concentration Versus Territorial Balance of Public Facilities A specific feature of French universities as a public service is their role in territorial planning, to foster economic growth and to achieve territorial balance of public equipment. Especially during the second half of twentieth century, the State has considered the creation of campuses to meet the growing needs due to the massification and democratization of higher education, and to propose a balanced distribution on the national territory. The goal was to rebalance the public service offer through choices of location that were sometimes negotiated with local actors (and sometimes contested) but aimed at reducing territorial disparities. It was also a question of considering university sites as levers for economic development, making it possible to stimulate scientific activities in areas in difficulty. Three main principles guiding university planning in this post-war period could be summarized as: “a balanced location of higher education and research centers, assistance for the reconversion of economically depressed areas, and a democratization of access to university education” (Levy et al., 2015). The principle of concentration (administrative and financial ones) leans away from the objective of territorial balance, and from the framework of national territory as “space for construction, integration and legitimation of public policies in HER sector” (Aust & Crespy, 2009, p. 926). Some authors even mention a risk of “desertification” of HE public service given the concentration of funding in metropolitan areas (Baudet-Michel et al., 2020; Grasland et al., 2020). Finally, let’s note that the concentration of funding and people at one place as an effective way to increase scientific productivity or quality productivity have not yet been proven: the  Article L111–5 du Code de l’Education: « « L’Etat est le garant de l’égalité devant le service public de l’enseignement supérieur sur l’ensemble du territoire. » https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/ codes/section_lc/LEGITEXT000006071191/LEGISCTA000006151327/, accessed on November 2022. 26

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threshold effect has not been demonstrated (Maisonobe et al., 2016; Zimmer et al., 2020). To the contrary network cooperation and medium-sized cities production remain central and increasing in scientific productivity in France (Grasland et al., 2020).

5.5 Conclusion Considering the transformations of French universities through the prism of their spatial dimensions helps to understand part of their privatization, in the sense of deviation from the publicness of the French public university model. The public character of the HER system, as it was created and promoted until the end of the 1990’s, is based on the uniformity of institutions and their members, the equivalence of study and working conditions, and a balanced distribution of sites over the national territory. The succession of reforms put in place since mid-2000’s to comply with globalized scripts of international attractivity impels dynamics of corporatization and marketization, entrepreneurialism and territorial involvement, by putting institutions and individuals in competition with each other and selecting them to access resources in a general context of decreasing recurrent public funding. A more detailed analysis of the effects of these reforms on academic practices would be necessary, but the logic of differentiation and hierarchization of the university system, and the diversification of universities’ own resources already mark a turning point for the French system. They depart from previous principles and change the relationship between universities and territories at different scales, encouraging institutions to group together at the local or regional level in the name of national or international competitiveness and to become involved in their environment in order to obtain public and private funds and to distinguish themselves through a territorial identity. These dynamics of spatialized differentiation and hierarchization rely on the legitimization of performance and merit criteria to select institutions and individuals, justifying inequality as fair, leaning away from territorial equity. These transformations then question the equality of work conditions and access to a public education service (“is it fair?”), and the relevance of concentration as an effective principle for the quality of science (“is it useful?”), both activities undertaken by the public universities.

References Aust, J. (2010). Quand l’université s’ancre au territoire. Collaborations académiques et territoriales à Lyon (1958–2009). Le Mouvement Social, 233(4), 107–125. Aust, J. (2014a). Seuil critique, spécialisation, équilibre territorial. Le plan et la structuration de la carte scientifique française (1964–1965). Les Annales de la Recherche Urbaine, 109(1), 6–17. https://doi.org/10.3406/aru.2014.3144

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Gozlan, C. (2016b). Réinventer le jugement scientifique: L’évaluation de la recherche en sciences humaines et sociales à l’AERES [These de doctorat, Paris, Institut d’études politiques]. https:// www.theses.fr/2016IEPP0020 Gozlan, C. (2019). Ce qu’évaluer veut dire: Les réformes de l’évaluation scientifique entre logiques universitaires et logiques néo-managériales (2007–2011). Revue francaise d’administration publique, 169(1), 121–136. Grasland, C., Maisonobe, M., & Baudet-Michel, S. (2020). Comment la loi de programmation de la recherche aggrave les inégalités entre territoires en France. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/comment-­la-­loi-­de-­programmation-­de-­la-­recherche-­aggrave-­les-­inegalites-­ entre-­territoires-­en-­france-­146114 Grossetti, M. (1995). Science, industrie et territoire. Presses universitaires du Mirail. Grossetti, M., & Losego, P. (Éds.). (2003). La territorialisation de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche: France, Espagne et Portugal. Gumport, P. J. (2000). Academic restructuring: Organizational change and institutional imperatives. Higher Education, 39(1), 67–91. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1003859026301 Harari-Kermadec, H. (2019). Le classement de Shanghai. L’université marchandisée. https://www. decitre.fr/livres/le-­classement-­de-­shanghai-­9782356876805.html Harari-Kermadec, H., Sargeac, M., & Noûs, C. (2020). Université: La fin d’un système? Revue francaise de pedagogie, 207(2), 79–86. Krücken, G., & Meier, F. (2006). Turning the university into an organizational actor (pp. 241–257). Lamy, E., & Shinn, T. (2006). L’autonomie scientifique face à la mercantilisation, Abstract, Zusammenfassung, Resumen. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 164(4), 23–50. Le Goix, R., Houssay-Holzschuch, M., & Noûs, C. (2022). Multiple binds and forbidden pleasures: Writing as poaching at French universities. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 54, 1475–1485. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X221116114 Levy, R., Soldano, C., & Cuntigh, P. (2015). L’université et ses territoires: Dynamismes des villes moyennes et particularités de sites (Vol. 1). Presses universitaires de Grenoble. Maisonobe, M., Grossetti, M., Milard, B., Eckert, D., & Jégou, L. (2016). The global evolution of scientific collaboration networks between cities: Multiple scales. Revue francaise de sociologie, 57(3), 417–441. Masseys-Bertonèche, C. (2011). La commercialisation des universités américaines: Exemplarité pour l’Europe? Pédagogies en développement, 1re éd., 129–144. Masseys-Bertonèche, C. (2016). Philanthropic capitalism and the American funding model of higher education: An example for Europe? Revue LISA/LISA e-Journal. Littératures, Histoire Des Idées, Images, Sociétés Du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-Speaking World, vol. XIV-n°1. https://doi.org/10.4000/lisa.8846 Musselin, C. (1997). Les universités à l’épreuve du changement: Préparation et mise en oeuvre des contrats d’établissement. Sociétés contemporaines, 28(1), 79–101. Musselin, C. (2001). La longue marche des universités françaises. Presses universitaires de France. Musselin, C. (2008a). Towards A sociology of academic work. In A.  Amaral, I.  Bleiklie, & C. Musselin (Eds.), From governance to identity: A festschrift for Mary Henkel (pp. 47–56). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­1-­4020-­8994-­7_5 Musselin, C. (2008b). Vers un marché international de l’enseignement supérieur? Critique internationale, 39(2), 13–24. Musselin, C. (2009). Les réformes des universités en Europe: Des orientations comparables, mais des déclinaisons nationales. Revue du MAUSS, 33(1), 69–91. Musselin, C. (2013). How peer review empowers the academic profession and university managers : Changes in relationships between the state, universities and the professoriate. Research Policy, 42(5), 1165–1173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.02.002 Musselin, C. (2017). La grande course des universités (Vol. 1). Sciences Po, les presses. Musselin, C. (2019). Propositions d’une chercheuse pour l’Université. Presses de Sciences Po.

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Chapter 6

Educational Cities, Introducing a Neoliberal Order in Priority Educational Areas? David Giband

Abstract  In the global landscape of privatization of education, the Education Priority Areas are among the common targets of neoliberal policies. Within the European Union, France is one of the last countries to tackle the reform of priority education and its scheduled disappearance. Until 2019, the neoliberal attacks on priority education have been low intensity, limited to a rhetoric of failure. The launch in 2019 of the national program Educational cities is a singular change. Inspired by similar programs in the EU, the EC program is part of a low noise process of neoliberalization of education. This involves a concomitant set of limited but repeated reforms that focus on the commodification of education, the disassembling of the status of teachers, the competition between schools and the slow dismantling of priority education. Focusing on the example of Perpignan, this paper discusses the nature and the diverse forms of the neoliberalization process leaded in one the worst French “educational ghetto”. Our hypothesis is that we are witnessing less a neoliberalization of priority education, but rather the affirmation of a neoliberal rhetoric that relies on a series of low-key changes, limited by the institutional, bureaucratic and territorial complexity of the priority education spaces. Keywords  Priority education areas · Educational cities · Perpignan · Poverty · Educational ghetto In the global landscape of privatization of education, the Education Priority Areas (EPAs, in French: ‘zones d’éducation prioritaire’, ZEP) are among the common targets of neoliberal policies. In most European countries, the priority education model has almost disappeared under the impact of neoliberal reforms launched since the beginning of the 2000s (Smith et al., 2007). While EPAs were conceived at the turn of the 1970s as mechanisms for “giving more to those who have less”, from the 1990s onwards, they have been the target of attacks questioning their D. Giband (*) ART-DEV Institute, University of Perpignan, Perpignan, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_6

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failure and their inability to ensure quality education and describing these schools as run-down areas. Within the European Union, France is one of the last countries to tackle the reform of priority education and its scheduled disappearance (Rochex, 2012). This delay is due, on the one hand, to the nature of the French educational system in which the priority education policy functions as a major national system regulated by a set of standards and injunctions (Heurdier, 2017). It affects the territorial organization of education in poor neighborhoods as well as teaching methods (pedagogical and financial supports). On the other hand, with 1.7 million children enrolled in EPAs schools (20% of French pupils), the issue is sensitive. It raises the spectrum of riots in the “French banlieue”1 (Giband, 2018) and is part of a political minefield with the issue of immigration and the social integration of disadvantaged neighborhoods as an underlying theme. Until 2019, the neoliberal attacks on priority education have been low intensity, limited to a rhetoric of failure and regular decreases in the resources allocated. The launch in 2019 of the national program “Cité éducative” (Educational cities, EC) is a singular change. Inspired by similar programs in the UK and in the EU, the EC program is part of a low noise process of neoliberalization of education in France. This involves a concomitant set of limited but repeated reforms that focus on the commodification of education, the disassembling of the status of teachers, the competition between schools and the slow dismantling of priority education. Introducing new partners (local authorities, firms, neighborhood communities, local associations, cultural institutions, …), in the name of the “great educative alliance” and valuating a project-based approach of the funding now granted in EPAS, this program deeply intend to change the nature and the face of public education in these deprived neighborhoods. It also introduces new forms of territorial governance, aiming to reposition the State on the local arena, and behind new partnerships it tends to experiment a neoliberal order in the French public educational system. Focusing on the example of the city of Perpignan, this paper aims to discuss the nature and the diverse forms of the neoliberalization process leaded in one the worst “educational ghetto”2 in the country. Indeed, ranked as one of the three poorest French cities, the degraded context of education in Perpignan makes it as much a laboratory as a privileged observation post of the changes in progress within the French EPAs. Regarding the Perpignan experience, our hypothesis is that with the implementation of the EC program, we are witnessing less a neoliberalization of priority education, but rather the affirmation of a neoliberal rhetoric that relies on a series of low-key changes, themselves limited by the institutional, bureaucratic and territorial complexity of the priority education spaces. Behind the self-promotion of a rhetoric of change, we are in fact witnessing a strengthening of the institutional complexity of priority education and transformations at the margins.  La banlieue refers to the outlying urban areas mainly composed of large social housing complexes.  According to an official in charge of the family allowance fund in Perpignan, interviewed by the author, March 2022. 1 2

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6.1 Targeting EPAs: Neoliberal Rhetoric and Strategies Targeting EPAs is not a new phenomenon. The process is embedded in the larger process of neoliberalization of education for which EPAs represents a symbolic and strategic issue and challenge.

6.1.1 Neoliberalizing EPAs: A Sociospatial Challenge Embedded in the Agenda of Urban Regeneration As many scholars have noted, neoliberalization of education is a global phenomenon that takes many forms (Verger et al., 2016). It is not limited to the commodification and privatization of education and is highly dependent on the local contexts in which it unfolds. Just as Ball and Youdell (2008) have highlighted regarding privatization of education, the same can be said of its neoliberalization. The latter is characterized both by exogenous forms (neoliberalization of education), including the privatization of public education services, and by endogenous forms (neoliberalization in education), which involves the importation of norms, practices, managerial techniques and rhetoric into public education services. It does not only manifest itself in the adaptation of institutions and, more broadly, of public education systems to the norms of New Public Management, as noticed by scholars in public services such as health, social housing or transport. On the contrary, the scientific literature underlined that the neoliberalization of education is co-constitutive of the process of urban restructuring (Gulson & Pedroni, 2016). This is particularly the case for EPAs and deprived neighborhoods in which the dismantling of EPAs joins urban regeneration agendas focusing on the development of residential and school gentrification, the closure of failing schools, the demolition of social and/or substandard housing, the restructuring of the housing stock, the closure of public services, etc. (Lipman, 2013). In the United States, as in Europe, the deprived neighborhoods of the EPAs are priority targets. They are strategic in the neoliberalization of education for many reasons. Symbolically, the introduction of a regime centered on accountability and project-based approaches for the funding of schools marks a clear break with what is described as the archetypal symbol of the failure of the public education system. The transformation of these educational spaces in crisis participates more broadly in the politics of neoliberal urban imaginaries. These policies aim to change the social imaginary of cities and urban educational life and to reconstruct urban and educational imaginary references compatible with the neoliberal ideology. This one is about urban attractivity, cosmopolitan cities, in which the boundaries between public and private are blurred to promote the rise of an educational alliance that would bring together all the educational actors in poor neighborhoods and would bring education out of the clutches of failing EPAs.

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This transformation is made possible by the adoption of new forms of school managerial governance, by the implementation of “school accountability regimes” centered on high-stakes testing and the marketization of schools (Lipman, 2013). Secondly, it is strategic because priority education is historically intertwined in the racialized spatialization of inequality, especially in post-colonial France (Be Ayed, 2019). In the Global North, residential segregation is the main source of racially segregated schooling “and schools are a primary selling point to market housing in specific neighborhood” (Lipman, 2013, p.  59). Obviously, the policies of urban regeneration of deprived neighborhoods and those of dismantling the EPAs are both articulated in a common vision of urban reconquest. This one relies on a discourse on the obsolescence of public services, urban pathologies, the mistrust of families/ inhabitants, the need for social and educational diversity, or the presence of so-­ called “educational ghettos”. This leads to the commonly accepted idea that there would be no other alternative than to jointly reform urban spaces and EPAs through the introduction of neoliberal standards.

6.1.2 Reforming EPAs: A European Perspective At the end of the 1970s, priority education schemes were set up in Europe in order to answer the challenges of educational inequalities in poor neighborhoods. While the EPAs spread throughout Europe, the Thatcher government in the United Kingdom reformed the system in 1977 and replaced it with standards based on the individual performance of pupils and schools. From 1987 onwards, a series of reforms finished dismantling the EPAs. The election of the New Labor party in 1997 signaled an important change. Emphasis was placed on “area-based initiatives” and the inclusion of the educational issue in the agenda of urban regeneration policies. This change was accompanied by the dissemination of a discursive apparatus promoting “capacity building”, the right social environment, parenthood and the empowerment of parents, individual skills, strong self-sufficient neighborhoods, and so on. New educational programs were thus implemented within the EPAs, including the “Excellence in cities” program (EIC). EIC promotes individual educational success and educational excellence by setting up an educational alliance between the different actors in poor neighborhoods. Almost everywhere in Europe, priority education is undergoing similar developments. From 2000 to 2010, most of the European Union countries implemented policies to reform priority education, often inspired by the British model. A gradual shift occurred from educational policies linked to the Welfare State with its egalitarian and compensatory rhetoric to a neoliberal ideology that values individual success and pedagogical efficiency. This goes hand in hand with approaches to priority education that are now less social and more technical and managerial.

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6.1.3 The Difficult Reform of Priority Education in France: “There Is no Alternative!” In France, the importance of priority education and its spatial location in peripheral urban areas make it a particularly difficult mechanism to reform and to neo-­ liberalize. Indeed, the priority education system is anchored in a complex way in the French educational landscape. The system was set up when the left-wing government (the Mitterand administration, 1981–1989) came to power. In 1981, the Minister of Education Alain Savary launched the ZEP3 policy (EPAs) with the objective of democratizing the educational system so that children from working-­ class backgrounds, often grouped together in the same geographical areas, could achieve the same academic success as others. The EPAs quickly spread throughout the country, enrolling about 20% of the students in nearly 6700 primary schools and 1200 medium schools. The principle adopted is that of a geographical zoning grouping “distressed schools” within socially disadvantaged areas for which priority education provides extra-teachers and financial support. The idea of reforming priority education emerged at the beginning of the 1990s when the results were far from the initial ambitions (Fig. 6.1). In 1990, the first plan to revive the EPAs refocused the priority education policy on the objectives of academic success, reducing the initial ambitions for social development, and set up a steering structure linked to urban policy. New measures (RAR and RRS,4 Fig. 6.1) change the objectives of the EPAs announcing the end of the egalitarian and social justice objectives. Other measures (ECLAIR5) reallocate part of the resources and introduce forms of deregulation (in the methods of teacher recruitment). From 1999 onwards, official reports and the media criticized the ineffectiveness of priority education schemes, accompanied by neoliberal rhetoric. The discourse on priority education evolved from promoting collective emancipation to valuating individual success. A whole new vocabulary is promoted in these reports as well as in the speeches of educational authorities: excellence, ambition, success, selectivity. All of this legitimizes occasional but repeated reforms, often with little fanfare, which introduce the idea of a necessary threefold refocusing of public action: (1) geographical first, it is a question of reducing the number of EPAs and schools concerned in order to concentrate the means on a limited number (the most in difficulty) (2) social secondly, towards individuals more than communities, the objective consists in valuing individual success and (3) pedagogical thirdly, the redesign of priority education intends to refocus the actions on fundamental teachings (reading, writing, counting) at the expense of other fields.  Zone d’éducation prioritaire.  RAR: Réseau Ambition Réussite (Ambition Success Network), RRS: Réseau Réussite Scolaire (School Success Network). 5  ÉCLAIR: Ecoles, Collèges et Lycées pour l’Ambition, l’Innovation et la Réussite (Schools, Middle and High schools for Ambition, Innovation and Success). 3 4

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200 Educational Cities

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126 Educational Cities

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80 Educational Cities Educational Cities Program Report Azema-Mathiot Report France Stratégie Report Borloo Report Cour des comptes

2019 2018 2017

Abandonment of social mix experiment in schools First experimentation in Grigny

2015

Questioning label EPA’s

2014

Overhaul of Priority Education ECLAIR Program

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Recovery Plan

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Educational Excellence Poles Educational Success Agreements

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2nd relaunch of the EPA’s (ZEP)

1990

First relaunch of theEPA’s (ZEP).

A challenged policy

1999

A neoliberal rhetoric

2011

A neoliberal educational order ?

Fig. 6.1  The evolution of priority education policies in France (1981–2022)

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A national policy

1981

Creation of EPA’S (ZEP)

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In 2005, the questioning of the principles of school catchment areas contributed to reducing the social mix in the EPAs, while reports produced by think tanks and public authorities (Fig. 6.1) suggested to abandon the imperative of social mix. The various stimulus plans and other recovery plans, launched with media coverage, hardly contribute to curb the deterioration of the EPAs, as these reforms are carried out with constant budgetary means. From 2015 onwards, a strategy of gradual replacement of the EPAs by a new system, initially experimental, was put in place. This strategy operates in three stages. It first begins with an initial pilot experiment conducted in Grigny (a Parisian suburb) in 2017. Presented as the opening of a new cycle in the life of the EPAs, this experimental project intends to fight against school and spatial segregation by promoting the idea of an “educational city”. It is a matter of “making a city” by bringing together the actors of the educational alliance present in the deprived neighborhoods around educational and social issues and thus getting the EPAs out of their status of “zones of poor education” (Lena, 2018). The objective is to increase the connection between the city and the school system, and therefore make the Grigny EC a laboratory for pedagogical innovation by strengthening the place of stakeholders other than those traditionally attached to the school (teachers, educators). The Grigny EC is based on 4 pillars: (1) the “great educational alliance” (all the actors involved in education: parents, teachers, educators, local communities, companies, etc.); (2) the empowerment of a wide range of stakeholders; (3) a project-based approach and (4) the notion of a learning territory (the districts are considered as educational resources that can be mobilized by the actors and that feed formal and informal education, Fig. 6.2). Finally, several reports, while stressing the need to unlabel the EPAs, urge to get out of the PEA impasse and to develop another approach: partnership-based (open to associations and businesses), contractual (project-based approach) and more locally-driven. These recommendations and first experiments will lead in 2019 to the launch of the national program of EC. This one is being disseminated rapidly and according to a top-down logic, from the State to local actors, with some denouncing it as a “forced walk”.6 In less than 3 years, 200 educational cities were set up across the country. The deployment of this program was accompanied by measures such as the opening of the EPAs to private schools, the experimentation in three academies of derogatory measures (contracting with schools according to results and accountability norms) and the abandonment of the national steering of the EPAs. Criticized as the last step in the process of neo-liberalization of education in France,7 the setting on the national agenda of the EC shakes up the functioning and the policies deployed locally within the EPAS. Implemented very quickly in the fall of 2019, the deployment of educational cities is immediately characterized by its uncertainty. On the one hand, for many actors, it is a top-down measure that was imposed suddenly and without consultation in  local educational landscapes

 Source: Interview with City representatives in Perpignan, april 2021.  Specially by unions of teachers, https://31.snuipp.fr/IMG/pdf/Cites_educatives_analyse_du_ SNUipp-­FSU_mai_2019.pdf 6 7

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Fig. 6.2  The great educative alliance. (Source: French ministry of national education, 2020)

characterized by a high degree of territorial and administrative complexity. On the other hand, the EC program appears to be a vague policy based on major injunctions (educational success, the educational alliance) and great imprecision as to their local application.

6.2 Making an “Educational City” in the One of the Poorest Cities in France: The Example of Perpignan In Perpignan, one of the French poorest cities, the implementation of the EC in 2019 is immediately confronted with a triple difficulty: geopolitical, socio-ethnic and territorial. These difficulties reveal three broader challenges facing EC. First, they have to deal with a social and political reality that is locally intertwined with highly territorialized public action mechanisms within poor neighborhoods, but also with political resistance. Secondly, far from fitting into the neoliberal mold, the EC

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comes up against the resistance of educational territories caught up in the complexity of the French territorial and administrative “mille-feuille” (layer-cake). Finally, a transformation of local educational action is taking place that highlights the omnipotence of the local State, the ‘pedagogization’ of extracurricular education and a blurred mode of governance characterized by the exercise of discretionary power and the increased role of the intermediary bureaucracy.

6.2.1 The EC in Perpignan, a Double Challenge for the Neoliberal State The implementation of the EC in Perpignan is far from being just the local variation of a national program. 6.2.1.1 Perpignan Educational City, a Complex Issue For the central state, which has converted to neoliberalism in the conduct of urban policies (Pinson, 2020), the challenge in Perpignan is twofold. On the one hand, it is a question of showing that the new neoliberal mode of action carried out by the EC program is capable of responding to the major educational problems that the city of Perpignan faced for more than 20 years: massive school dropout, ethnicization of schools, poor school results, poverty of the school-going population, and the flight of the middle classes to private schools.8 On the other hand, the issue is also geopolitical. The election in 2020 of Louis Aliot as mayor, number 2 and emblematic figure of the Rassemblement National party,9 reshuffles the cards. The Rassemblement National, which constantly denounces the ethnicization of poor neighborhoods and public schools, and the failure of national education policies that are viewed as too liberal, is far from considering the EC as a priority. Moreover, it is also the new balance of power that is being played out locally between the State and a far-right municipality. In the background, the stakes are national and are obviously expressed in the electoral field. The presidential and legislative elections of 2022 coincide with the launch of the EC program in Perpignan. The obsession of the State and its representatives in Perpignan (the ‘local State’: prefecture and decentralized services of the State) is not to offer L. Aliot a national media cover and not to give him the opportunity to pose as a victim of the action of the neoliberal State.

 In 2021, 40% of pupils in Perpignan were enrolled in private schools, (20% in France).  Rassemblement National is a far-right party, previously labeled as Front National. Louis Aliot is the number 2 leader of the party and former spouse of Marine Le Pen (leader of the party and daughter of Jean-Marie LePen, cofounder of the RN). 8 9

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6.2.1.2 An “Educational Ghetto” For many observers, the city of Perpignan is an “educational ghetto”. Ranked as the third poorest city in France for nearly 20 years by the national statistics institute, the city has a long history of social and educational issues. Four of the six public middle schools in the city are classified as priority education schools and the other two, although not classified as priority education schools, fit well with all the indicators of EPAs.10 In the city as a whole, the poverty rate is 32% in 2019, reaching 89% in poor neighborhoods. This is quite unique in France for a city of this size (120,000 inhabitants in the city and 250,000 in the urban area). Other indicators testify to this strong precariousness: unemployment (13%, 8.1% in France), share of single-­parent households (27%), average income per household (13,939 euros against 26,000 euros in France, 2020), etc. The school zones selected to be part of the Perpignan EC combine all kinds of social and educational difficulties. Three major school sectors make up the EC: the old center sector, the Vernet diagonal (a group of social housing units in the northern part of the city) and a sector recently added to the EC (March 2022), the Saint-Assicle sector (Fig. 6.3). As highlighted in Table 6.1, these three sectors are distinguished by very high rates of poverty and educational issues. The EC covers more than half of the city surface and enrolled two thirds of the pupils (Table 6.1). The city center sector is the one with the most difficulties. This situation is due to the long-standing concentration of two formerly marginalized populations in the dilapidated neighborhoods of the center: Gypsies and North Africans. This ethno-­ racial dimension plays a major role in the avoidance of schooling by other social and ethnic groups, but also in the accumulation of difficulties within the schools that accommodate them. The school in the gypsy neighborhood (La Miranda) is characterized by a 100% gypsy student population, a record absenteeism rate (65%), and academic delays that are unheard of elsewhere in France (80% of the students leaving primary schools do not master reading and writing or numeracy). The average income of the households in this dilapidated neighborhood is 2400 euros per year (excluding social assistance) for an unemployment rate of 98%. In addition to this paroxysmal situation, there are other difficult situations in the city center, but also in the social housing neighborhoods in the northern part of the city (the Diagonal of Vernet). Like other so-called ‘banlieue’ neighborhoods, these social housing complexes have been accumulating school delays, violence at school, school dropouts, etc. For more than 20 years, this has fueled strategies to avoid the schools in these neighborhoods by the middle and upper classes, as well as by an upper fringe of the working classes, essentially towards the private schools and secondarily towards public schools in the urban periphery. The national education services estimate that at the end of elementary school more than 40% of students flee to the private sector. This figure rises to more than 65% for the downtown school sectors.

 In France, Superintendents and school administrators can choose not to be labeled as EPA in order to avoid further stigmatization. 10

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Diagonale du Vernet Sébastien Pons Middle School EPA Diagonale du Vernet, Marcel Pagnol Middle School EPA.

Center City, Jean Moulin Middle School EPA.

St-Assiscle, Jean Macé Middle School EPA Champ de Mars, Albert Camus Middle School EPA

School districts part of Cité édcuative

5 Middle schools 34 primary schools and kindergardens 10758 pupils

Since 2019 Since 2022

Fig. 6.3  School zones in Perpignan Educational City (2022) Table 6.1  A few indicators by EPAs in the Cité educative of Perpignan EC School sectors (In %) Poverty rate Pupils in academic delay, end of middle school Pupils in academic delay, end of high school Unenrolled pupils (16–25) (2021, source: INSEE 2022)

Gare / St Assiscle 45,9 21,4

Center city 53,2 42,1

Diagonale du Vernet 64,9 33,3

Champ de Mars 67,8 25

City of Perpignan 35 17,7

43,8

35,7

60,4

27

20,9

34,4

43,7

54,3

41,5

29,5

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This has led many local actors to describe the city of Perpignan as “the largest educational ghetto in France”. This term, commonly used in local educational and administrative circles, serves both to describe a challenging social reality and to alert local elected officials who were previously reluctant to address the issue. For many actors, the characterization of an educational ghetto in Perpignan must be used to support a policy of increasing the attractiveness of deprived schools. A consensus has thus been established for several years, mainly among education stakeholders and administrations in charge of education and the fight against poverty, in favor of implementing a strong policy that would lead to a shock of attractiveness for these deprived schools. 6.2.1.3 Hostilities and Resistances: Local Educational Geopolitics in Time of Austerity The EC program should have been an opportunity for these actors in priority education to implement a tool that, at least in words, opens up the possibility of a profound change. Indeed, on a national scale, the EC program (2019–2022) has a substantial budget: 100 million euros. However, a large part of the actors involved in priority education expressed their hostility. Locally, the EC scheme was, from the start, only supported by local state representatives (prefecture and national education representatives). The latter see it as an opportunity to take charge of the treatment of the ‘educational ghetto’, considering the city as being little inclined to intervene and to change the situation. One can also see in it the feeling of what Rochex (2012) qualifies as the “omnipotence of national education (French ministry of education)” which, despite decentralization, considers that education remains its only field of expertise. The EC was thus built in three stages. In the first stage, in 2019, representatives of the prefecture and the national education authorities set up an EC proposal that focuses on the educational success of children aged 2 to 12 in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods: the city center and the Diagonal du Vernet. However, the national program requires that EC proposal be co-constructed with the city to form what the State calls a “troika” (a tripartite governance). In a second phase, the project opened up to the city, but not without tension. The mayor of the time and predecessor of L. Aliot, J.-M. Pujol (2009–2020), opposed the participation of the city in the educational city, not wanting to spend a penny more on priority education neighborhoods. This very conservative position aroused a great deal of tension within the municipal majority. In the end, the deputy mayor for education obtained a participation of the city in the EC but under the condition of a low financial participation. Finally, in a third step, the departmental council of the Pyrénées-Orientales, which is responsible for the middle schools in France, asked to join the EC. After months of refusal by local representatives of the national education, the departmental council joined it. The tensions surrounding the constitution of the EC project and its governance in Perpignan reveal small local educational geopolitics underlining two distinct levels of tension and resistance.

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First, at the institutional level, these tensions reflect what can be defined as small local educational geopolitics opposing local State to territorial authorities. This small local educational geopolitics is similar to a tectonic of the plates since the decentralization laws of 1982 and 1983, which granted educational competence for primary education to the cities and for secondary education to the departments. This tectonics of the plates is based on a fragile equilibrium that has been marked for more than 10 years by the financial disengagement of the State (particularly in the priority education zones) and the gradual introduction of neoliberal standards and injunctions (Fig. 6.1). With the EC, this balance and the rules governing it are being called into question. In Perpignan, as elsewhere, local authorities are concerned about the risk of the State taking control of the EC. The troika, the main decision-­ making and governance body of the EC, is obviously controlled by local State representatives, in contradiction with the principle of the “great educational alliance” federating all the actors of priority education (Fig. 6.2). Similarly, a form of remote governance of the EC is being implemented at the national level. This form of governance must both meet national standards and injunctions and is also placed under the control of a control agency (the national agency for territorial cohesion). A process of remote governance of local priority education territories is taking place. Power relations concerning educational issues are no longer contractual via a dialogue between the local State and the territorial authorities. They take now more the form of an ad hoc administrative structure (the Troika that pilots the EC) that meets the standards and controls of an agency independent of the State (Comité National des Cités éducattives). “The State has exempted itself from previous deals with the city in order to reallocate credits by relying on the Troika (in fact, mainly the State services) and the city. This contrasts with the educational component of the contrat de ville, where the steering was communal. We got rid of the pre-existing mechanisms to develop a mechanism (the cité éducative) where the national education system has more direct control, a more precise view of the breakdown of credits and the breakdown of financing”.11 This also explains the reluctance of municipal services in charge of education. “At the beginning, we had the impression that the Cité éducative was the State giving resources to the State to carry out actions for which it had not found the means to do so elsewhere. It’s a way of bypassing other measures that are too rigid and too partnership-based for the State. It is a choice to be exempted from the constraints of other existing systems and therefore for the State to take control of certain numbers of actions to focus on certain number of school actions”.12 Moreover, this transformation of public action is taking place in a context of budgetary austerity, which for many appears paradoxical. Indeed, under “the Cahors agreement’s” (2018), local authorities are called upon to respect the 3% debt limit set by the European Union and to contribute to reducing public spending. However,

 Interview with the head of the Education and youth department, city of Perpignan, January, 11TH, 2021. 12  Ibid idem. 11

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in order to participate in the troika and therefore in the educational city, they are asked to participate financially to the level of the State’s investments, if not immediately, at least from 2023. Secondly, these tensions are part of what is perceived (by educators working in priority education zones) as the possibility for the Ministry of National Education to extend its field of competence from school time to extracurricular time. The great educational alliance is thus denounced by community organizations present in these neighborhoods as a “pedagogicalization” of their work by the Ministry of National Education. The latter would impose, via EC, its own schedule of calls for projects, its own standards and objectives. Moreover, for teachers’ unions, the great educational alliance, by calling for a broad partnership including private companies, means a creeping form of privatization of priority education. The introduction of financing by calls for projects, the establishment of a competitive logic between schools, the invitation to include private partners in educational projects raise the hostility of teachers’ unions. For the main teachers’ union: “The Ministry is aiming at a systemic destruction of priority education, accompanied by a risk of deregulation of the functioning of the medium schools and of the status of the personnel within the framework of the educational cities. The “cités éducatives“ are part of the neoliberal ideology of the “learning territories“ which decrees that one can learn and train anywhere other than at school, which contributes to diluting the importance of a quality public education service”.13

6.2.2 New Rules of the Game: Neoliberal Rationality Put to the Test of Priority Education Territories Far from giving way to a process of neo-liberalization of EPAs, the EC in Perpignan is more a reflection of the difficult application of new rules of the game.

6.2.3 The New Rules of the Game: Low-Key Transformations One of the main changes inaugurated by the Perpignan EC is the establishment of new rules of the game in terms of financing, governance and educational partnerships. With an annual financial envelope of nearly 500,000 euros, the EC is reshuffling the cards of local educational action. This substantial envelope, which is divided between a majority allocation from the State (400,000 euros) and a smaller contribution from local authorities (50,000 euros each per year for both authorities), is managed according to new rules. Unlike EPAs previous arrangements, a tripartite

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governance decides on the strategic orientations and the allocation of funds. The idea is to disseminate a neoliberal rationality through good management practices. These are based on the competition of projects submitted by schools, associations, companies, etc., which are invited to collaborate and to register their project within the topics defined annually. The key words for public educational action are: educational partnership, transversality, pedagogical innovation and decompartmentalization of educational action. To achieve this, a system of governance has been put in place, linking a decision-making arena (the Troika, which brings together the national education authorities, the prefecture, the city and the departmental council) with a technical committee that ensures the relay of information, the monitoring of projects and their coordination. Behind this system  – which promotes neoliberal rationality to replace the supposed inefficiency of previous priority education systems  – is a radical change in the way priority education territories operate. The former contracting of public action between the State and the city is giving way to a mode of territorial governance extended to other actors and according to unprecedented methods (competitive bidding, public-private partnerships, evaluation of results and measures by external agencies). These transformations are taking place in the background of discussions between the main local institutional actors. If these discussions are not without tensions, they exclude the other actors of priority education: cultural institutions, local communities, educational action associations, companies, teachers’ unions, parents’ associations. Unaware of the EC, they discovered the new system and its rules at an information meeting and without any consultation. However, it quickly became apparent that this liberal rationality came up against the reality of local educational territories. The EC system does not replace or cancel the previous and pre-existing systems. Under these conditions, EC is called upon to operate in a particularly complex administrative and territorial context. The latter, described in the scientific literature and in the media as the French administrative layer-cake,14 accumulates various measures in favor of local educational action: priority education network, network of parenthood, educational success measure, extracurricular support measures and so on. These schemes are most often controlled by a set of local and national public actors: municipal services, family allowance fund, departmental social services, state services, etc. This makes it difficult for the EC to be visible. For example, it is difficult for the EC to position itself in relation to other public policies that intervene in poor neighborhoods, such as the City Contract (Contrat de ville). The city contract, a contractual arrangement between the state and the city, brings together a set of measures in terms of social cohesion and solidarity for disadvantaged neighborhoods. Its scope of action combines urban renewal programs with educational and social action. EC and the city contract are partly managed by the same actors, which makes it difficult to understand the place of EC for local actors. All the more so, their respective fields of competence intersect: homework assistance, fight against dropping out of school,

14

 « Mille-feuille territorial ».

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parental support, literacy training for allophone populations, etc. This example is not the only one. Indeed, the EC has difficulty in positioning itself within an administrative patchwork where the measures in favor of educational success are legion: educational success measures, territorial educational project, etc. In addition to the difficulty of readability of the EC in the local administrative and educational landscape, this lack of positioning generates institutional tensions. Two examples can be cited. On the one hand, by targeting support for parenthood as one of its objectives, the Perpignan EC came up against the opposition of the Caisse d’allocation familiale (family allowance fund), for which parenthood is a permanent mission. Beyond the overlapping of competing measures in favor of parenthood, the question of who is in charge arises. Thus, the family allowance fund, refusing to lose its leadership, is reluctant to integrate the governance of the EC. The absence of this major player, the main national funder of actions in favor of parenthood and very present in the poor neighborhoods of Perpignan thanks to a dense network of social workers, is problematic. On the other hand, the EC is also struggling to assert itself in the field of educational success program, which is central to it. In Perpignan, as in most of the large cities of the country, educational success is already the subject of a partnership between various institutional actors: the DRE (Dispositif Réussite Educative). The DRE is a national program, managed locally, which aims at fighting against the school dropout of students in great difficulty. The DRE, piloted by the city, sees the EC as a competing mechanism that is far removed from the reality of the field. This generates other tensions with several city departments in charge of education and social action. In need of authority and leadership, the EC appears, for many actors, just as another funding window. In this territorial mosaic, many actors (associations, local communities, but also schools) are developing fine-tuned strategies for adapting and obtaining funding from multiple donors. This is the case of certain community organizations (such as popular education federations15) which see the EC less as a leader centralizing educational action in the EPAs than as a potential funder. The difficulty in positioning and asserting the leadership of the EC is not only due to this administrative layer-cake. It is also due to the positioning of national education within the EC and to the emergence of a discretionary power of the intermediary bureaucracy in charge of the EC. 6.2.3.1 Repositioning of the Local State and Discretionary Power of the Intermediary Bureaucracy Less than a neoliberalization of priority education, we are witnessing a repositioning of the local state within the priority educational territories. Obviously, the local representatives of the Ministry of National Education are taking advantage of the  Popular education federations are associations that seek to promote, outside the traditional teaching structures and institutional education systems, an education aimed at improving the social system. They work more broadly for individual and community social development. 15

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EC to regain control. This extension of power manifests itself in two ways. On the one hand, under the principle of ‘funder pays’, the local representatives of the National Education impose their agenda, themes and working methods on the other stakeholders. On the other hand, behind the will to act on the three times of education (school time, extracurricular time and out-of-school time), the EC imposes the standards of the national education on the associative and institutional stakeholders in charge of the educational actions in the extracurricular time (sports and cultural activities out of school time). Some of them denounce the “pedagogization” of out-­ of-­school activities by an omnipresent national education system. We are witnessing an extension of the power of National Education, a paradoxical extension at a time when the neoliberal state is constantly promoting decentralization and the autonomy of local actors. This repositioning of the local state, made possible by the EC, has two other effects. Firstly, it leads to a reconfiguration of the relationship between local community organizations and the local state. The system of calls for projects generates a system of financial dependence and increases competition between actors, particularly community organizations involved in priority education or culture. After 3 years, a first sorting out takes place between small local organizations which, due to a lack of qualified administrative staff, are unable to adapt to the complex logic and administrative constraints of the calls for projects. For many actors, management by calls for projects requires mastery of administrative and financial engineering that small local associations do not have. This in turn favors the large national organizations acting in community education. These national organizations have local relays and managerial and financial skills. This system obviously hinders the diversity of the actors involved and in return favors a homogenization of responses to calls for projects which, from one EC to another in France, tend to resemble each other and appear to respond poorly to local educational issues. For these large national organizations, the challenge of the Educational Cities lies above all in the financial windfall offered. This allows them to perpetuate their staff and budgets. This explains why these large organizations, originally critical of Educational Cities, quickly adapted to the standards and openly positioned themselves as partners of them. Secondly, the ECs are characterized by the deployment of a vague mode of governance which favors the development of an intermediary bureaucracy. This is a major cog in the wheel that plays a central role between the governance system of the EC (the Troika), often far from the realities on the ground, and local organizations, communities, teachers, parents and schools. The relatively vague and uncertain context of the national EC policy eases the rise of an intermediary bureaucracy made up of a small number of executives and administrative personnel representing the local state (prefecture and National Education) but also the two territorial authorities (city and department). This bureaucracy, which manages the day-to-day running of the EC (communication, project management, relations with local actors, financial management, management of calls for tender) is relatively autonomous. Moreover, it has considerable power, since it is the members of this intermediary bureaucracy who, in daily contact with the EC’s local actors, make decisions, send

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files back to them, and determine the operating criteria and budget breakdown. For several observers, the role of this intermediary bureaucracy has evolved. Until now, in the framework of the city contract (Contrat de ville), its role was limited to the simple administrative management of funds allocated by the local state to communities and local organizations. But in the framework of the EC, this bureaucracy is placed at the heart of the system of evaluation, management, sorting and control of projects. Upstream, the intermediary bureaucracy defines the administrative and management criteria, sorts out the actors to be informed and implements communication circuits. Downstream, the actors in this intermediary bureaucracy sort out the communities’ proposals and projects before they are examined by the Troika. These communities organizations’ projects are examined within the framework of ad hoc technical commissions or even within informal discussions whose scope fluctuates according to the issues at stake. This sorting takes the form of a prior classification, the terms of which are regulated according to criteria that are often not very transparent and sometimes random depending on the actors concerned. Far from the claimed rationality of public action, we observe complex modes of governance on a daily basis, which are often difficult to understand, and which are characterized by a significant degree of randomness, amateurism, resourcefulness and sometimes cunning. Thus, the operational management of the project is very little in the hands of the institutional governance system (the Troika and its steering committees and technical committees often play the role of simple recording chambers) but more in the hands of the representatives of the educational community (intermediary bureaucracy).

6.3 Conclusion: When the Neoliberal Model Fails: Towards a New Local Educational Order? The example of the Educational City of Perpignan is rich in lessons. It shows the limits of a neoliberal policy conducted at a distance and based more on a discursive apparatus than on an operational approach. It also highlights the difficulties and resistances that these neoliberal policies encounter. The limits and difficulties are to be found first of all, in a model of remote governance which takes the form of an off-the-ground policy, cut off from the complexity of local situations and the educational, social but also political issues in which it intervenes. The uncertainty that governs the implementation of EC results in a diluted, complex public action that struggles to find its place in an administrative and institutional puzzle already well marked out by a host of public policies. Although the objectives are laudable and aim to promote educational success by relying on an approach anchored in the territories of priority education and based on the concerted intervention of a plurality of actors, the reality is quite different (Ayed, 2019). These good intentions do not hide the difficulties in understanding the mechanism of ECs within public education policies, nor the ambiguities they

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carry. These ambiguities are due to their status. Indeed, it is a territorial approach which is still poorly identified and which is neither really a well-defined policy nor a zoning but rather an approach with imprecise contours. Secondly, they are to be found in the methods of application and in the concerns that they raise. Based on territorial governance which gives pride of place to representatives of the local state and on the practice of putting local actors (schools, associations, popular education federations, etc.) in competition with each other, the educational cities seem to favor the emergence of a new local educational order within the EPAs (Be Ayed, 2019). This emerging educational order generates tensions between actors and feeds the suspicion of a totalizing action of the national education system on the educational competences of local authorities and associations present within the EPAs. The ECs thus seem to be at the root of a new local educational order that presupposes a reconfiguration of the role of the State through a governance shared with local authorities but under control and already at work in other educational fields (Barnaudy & Giband, 2021). Behind the implementation of territorial partnerships and their project-based logic, is there not an explicit hierarchy emerging between priority education actors, who are now assessed on the basis of their differentiated capacity to open up to the outside world and to produce educational innovation? This injunction to open up schools leads to questions about the adoption of standards, rhetoric and entrepreneurial practices within the territories of priority education and its actors (schools, associations, educational coordinators, etc.). Finally, does the injunction to create an “great educational alliance” not seal the abandonment of the initial philosophy of priority education which, in the 1980s, aimed to give more to those who had less?

References Ball, S., & Youdell, D. (2008). Hidden privatisation. Education International. Barnaudy, C. & Giband, D. (2021). Les politiques éducatives et de formation de la région Occitanie, In E. Negrier et V. Simoulin (Eds.), Fusion des régions, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, Grenoble, 209–228. Be Ayed, C. B. (2019). Des territoires de l’école aux territoires éducatifs: menace ou opportunité pour l’école? Administration Education, 162(2), 33–40. Giband, D. (2018). Housing the Banlieue in global times. French public housing policies and spaces between neo-liberalization and hybridization. In A.  Jonas, B.  Miller, K.  Ward, & D. Wilson (Eds.), Spaces of urban politics (pp. 217–228). Routledge. Gulson, K. N., & Pedroni, T. C. (Eds.). (2016). Neoliberalism, cities and education in the global south and north. Routledge. Heurdier, L. (2017). Des collèges ZEP face à une offre scolaire plurielle et à une régulation administrative aléatoire. Sociologie, 8, 181–198. https://doi.org/10.3917/socio.082.0181 Lena, V. (2018). Des “cités éducatives” pour arrimer les cités à la République. Diversité, 8, 77–82. Lipman, P. (2013). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. Routledge. Pinson, G. (2020). La ville néolibérale. Presses Universitaires de France.

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Rochex, J.-Y. (2012). 25 ans d’éducation prioritaire en France: une spécificité incertaine et des résultats décevants. In M.  Demeuse, D.  Frandji, D.  Greger, & J.-Y.  Rochex (dir.), Les politiques d’éducation prioritaire en Europe. Tome II. Quel devenir pour l’égalité scolaire ? ENS Éditions, 424 p. Smith, G., Smith, T., & Smith, T. (2007). Whatever happened to EPAs? Part 2: Educational priority areas – 40 years on. Forum, 49(1), 141–155. Verger, A., Fontedevila, C., & Zancajo, A. (2016). The privatization of education: A political economy of global education reform. Teachers College Press, NYC.

Part III

Resistances, Oppositions and Alternatives

Chapter 7

The Way Out Is Also in: Educators Committed to Transformative Learning and Care Ethics as a Means of Resisting Neoliberal Policies (Hautes-Alpes, France) Clément Barniaudy Abstract  Neoliberal policies in education are not only the source of privatization, segregation, and spatial injustice, but they also interfere with the construction of subjectivity. As they progress through their schooling, learners gradually integrate neoliberal norms and values (competitiveness, efficiency, flexibility, independence, etc.), generating the need to adapt to globalization and enhancing the sense of socio-­ spatial inequalities. In this paper, we will investigate the effects of ultraliberal and neoliberal policies on rural areas in southeastern France (Hautes-Alpes department), but also the resistance enacted by educators that can be placed in opposition to neoliberal values and norms. More specifically, we will consider transformative learning and care ethics that can be capable of recognizing how these values live within learners and how to transform them, to thus take care of ourselves, others, and the Earth. Keywords  Education · Neoliberal policies · Care ethics · Transformative learning · Rural areas · France

7.1 Introduction Neoliberalism has succeeded in becoming a dominant narrative in our societies. This narrative not only constitutes an ideology or a set of discourses, but can also be considered as a practice, a way of proceeding or a method, conditioning the exercise of government and affecting all dimensions of social life (Foucault, 2004). In education, as in health or other sectors, neoliberal policies create new forms of governance, starting with a new form of self-governance. Our point here is to understand C. Barniaudy (*) Faculty of Education, Member of Laboratory LIRDEF EA3749, University of Montpellier, Montpellier Cedex 5, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_7

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how neoliberal rationales are embedded into the very processes of subjectivation, in the becoming-subject of a person. Several studies have shown that neoliberal reforms, developed since the 1980s at the national or local levels, have increased socio-spatial segregation, partly due to the emergence of private educational actors (Giband et al., 2020). These spatial injustices are the cause of suffering placed under the sign of exclusion. But it seems to us that it is only one part of the picture. The violence of neoliberalism also and primarily comes from the fact that young people gradually internalize neoliberal injunctions to the point where their feelings, desires and aspirations are shaped by these injunctions, creating an undeniable and conformist ethos (Fabre in Marsollier 2015). It is important here to clarify what we mean by neoliberalism. Neoliberal thinking is far from homogenous and there are significant divergences, for example between the Chicago school, the Austrian school and German ordoliberalism (Audier, 2012). However, recent works in political philosophy (Dardot & Laval, 2016, Stiegler, 2019), inspired by Michel Foucault’s thinking (2004), have contributed to reviewing the meaning of neoliberalism. According to these authors, neoliberal thinking must be distinguished from ultraliberalism (minimal State, privatization of public services, delegation of state powers to private operators) and from financial capitalism (deregulation of markets and norms, financialization of the economy). What is new in neo-liberalism, compared to the liberalism developed since the eighteenth century, is a break with the “laissez-faire” approach. Neoliberalism no longer seeks to reduce “too much government” intervention that would impede market forces. From this perspective, neoliberalism can paradoxically be considered interventionism, the return of an invasive State in the entire social sphere, aiming to enhance a competitive society. In continuity with liberalism, the competition between individuals, conceived as independent agents, remains the engine driving both the economy and the evolution of societies. Barbara Stiegler (2019) shows how the utilitarian anthropology of liberalism (plurality of interests, need for struggle and competition to move and innovate) continues in Walter Lippmann’s neoliberal thinking, while integrating a new narrative. Henceforth, the purpose is no longer to let market forces operate in order to naturally produce an economic optimum, but to create the conditions for adapting societies to their new environment, that is, a large, globalized society based on selection, specialization, performance, and competition. By reinterpreting Darwin’s theories, Lippmann naturalizes liberalism on evolutionary roots. As a result, neoliberal interventionism leads to a package of reforms and apparatuses which are indented to ensure fair-play and civilized competition between individuals transformed into “subject-company”. Education obviously occupies an important position in this re-adaptation of populations to their new environment. School and educational facilities can become strategic places, where neoliberal norms and values may interfere in the interior disposition of young people. The issue is to register the neoliberal imperative of “we need to adapt” in their minds to induce new modes of self-government, that is, a new life ethic. As Margaret Thatcher said: “Economics are the method. The object is to change the soul1”.  Interview for Sunday Times, 3 May 1981.

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In this sense, our chapter examines how neoliberal policies transform both educational territories (school-map, educational actors, the means and purposes of educational institutions) and the subjectivation of learners. More specifically, we will first consider the effects of ultraliberal and neoliberal policies (trying to distinguish between them, even though they are often linked) on a particular educational context, which is the Hautes-Alpes department (France), a rural area often described as a territory of relegation compared to metropolitan territories anchored to globalization. Secondly, we aim to understand what kind of resistance can oppose these neoliberal policies, in particular concerning the construction of subjectivities. We will thus focus our attention on the actions of educators committed to deactivating the embodiment of neoliberal values into the subjective territories of these rural young people. Our research is mainly based on a qualitative survey conducted in 2020, involving semi-structured interviews (n = 8), immersion experiences, and participant observations (Olivier De Sardan, 2008), combined with analysis of institutional texts and statistical data.

7.2 Ultraliberal Policies “Mitigated” in the Educational Territories of the Hautes-Alpes The Hautes-Alpes department is a French territorial community located in southeastern France (Fig.  7.1). It is a sparsely populated area (25 inhabitant per km2, 140,349 inhabitants for 5549 km2, according to INSEE, 2021), primarily rural, composed largely of small villages and mountain townships, except for two medium-­ sized cities (Gap and Briançon). After a significant rural exodus during the nineteenth century, the department experienced slow and regular demographic growth after 1945 (around 1% per year), a trend that has nevertheless stagnated since 2015, partly due to ageing populations, and a corresponding slight decrease in the student population (see Table 7.1). The poverty rate has been about 14% for the past several years, and many areas belong to the category of “remote rural” and have undergone a marginalization process for decades (loss of public services and activities, demographic decline). At the educational level, the Hautes-Alpes are also part of the Provence-Alpes-Côte-D’Azur region (decentralized State service) and more importantly part of the Aix-Marseille Academy (devolved State services) in which the department is structured by two networks “schools, middle schools, high schools”: Les Ecrins and Porte des Alpes (with the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department). Analyzing the data provided by the Aix-Marseille academy2 highlights a decline in the number of pupils since 2017, particularly in kindergarten, primary school and  Each year, the academy publishes a reference document collecting the main data for pupil populations. These data have been available online since 2017: https://www.ac-aix-marseille.fr/ publications-­et-statistiques-121703 [accessed 24 February 2022]. For more historical research, there are the archives of the School Inspection Office in Hautes-Alpes which traces the evolution in educational structures with a long-term vision (1908–2013): https://archives.hautes-alpes.fr/ archive/fonds/FRAD005_Inspection_academique 2

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HAUTS DE FRANCE

NORMANDIE

ÎLE-DEFRANCE

GRAND-EST

BRETAGNE

PAYS DE LA LOIRE

CENTREVAL-DE-LOIRE

BOURGOGNEFRANCHE-COMTÉ

N

NOUVELLE-AQUITAINE

AUVERGNE-RHÔNE-ALPES

100 km

OCCITANIE

Hautes-Alpes Department

PROVENCE-ALPESCÔTE D’AZUR

LEGEND : OCCITANIE

Région Aix-Marseille Academy Conception : Clément Barniaudy ; Map Creation : David Giband, Kevin Mary and Nora Nafaa, 2023.

Fig. 7.1  Localization of the Hautes-Alpes department in France and the Aix-Marseille academy

to a lesser extent middle and high schools. This trend justified the decision to reduce the number of teachers made by the successive rectors of the academy (see below). We note that this reduction in the number of teaching staff, although low, is higher than the decline in the pupil population, thus creating an increase of the teacher/student ratio. Another remarkable fact in the statistical data provided by the academy is the relatively small and stable number of learners enrolled in private schools (around 9% in primary and secondary level since 2017). Continuing a cultural tradition that values public schooling, the educational establishments in the Hautes-Alpes are not (yet) fully involved in the process of privatization (unlike many other rural areas around the world, see in this book). However, beyond numbers, the lived experience of the educators that we met in our survey (Table 7.2),

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Table 7.1  Evolution in the numbers of learners and teachers in the Hautes-Alpes (2017–2021) Population Leaners at primary level

Teachers at primary level Learners at secondary level

Teachers at secondary level

2017– 18 4456 7735 79 12270 776

2018– 19 4360 7784 83 12227 771

2019– 20 4302 7709 99 12106 761

2020– 21 4164 7638 109 11911 750

Middle schools 6310 Specialized M. schools 159 General and technology 3117 high school Vocational high school 1400 Apprenticeship 400 Total 11391 Middle schools 909 High schools 187 Private 146 Total 1242

6270 147 3062

6326 158 3076

6246 167 2998

1431 433 11343 894 183 147 1224

1469 457 11486 892 179 148 1219

1499 445 11323 884 182 141 1207

Level Kindergarten Primary school Specialized school Total Total

Evolution 2017–2021 −6.5% −1.25% +38% −2.9% −3.35% −1% +5% −3.8% +7% +11.25% −0.6% −2.75% −2.7% −3.4% −2.8%

Source: Rectorat de l’académie d’Aix-Marseille, 2017-2021: https://www.ac-­aix-­marseille.fr/ publications-­et-­statistiques-­121703

Table 7.2  Profile of the educators interviewed by the author

Chris.

Profession Cultural mediator

Tho.

High school teacher (philosophy) Mary-L. Primary school teacher Mary-C. High school headmaster

Municip. (area) Chorges (center) Gap (center) Laragne-Montéglin (southern) Saint-Jean-Saint-­ Nicolas (western)

Math.

Chief education adviser

Saint-Jean-Saint-­ Nicolas (western)

Ann.

Primary school teacher & teacher trainer Primary school teacher & academic adviser Middle school teacher & academic trade union official

Montgenèvre, Briançon (northern) Montgenèvre, Briançon, (northern) Apt (Vaucluse, another dep.)

Gill. Ben.

Structure Public primary school Public general high school Public primary school Private vocational high school Private vocational high school Public primary school Public primary school Public middle school

Years of experience 10 years 20 years 30 years 5 years

10 years

30 years 40 years 20 years

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informs us in a very different way of how ultraliberal logic impacts the educational worlds of the Hautes-Alpes. One of the key points raised by educators was the organizational change operated progressively since the 1990s. While a bottom-up logic based on “needs” had previously prevailed (from the ground to institutions), it is now a top-down logic based on “objectives” (imposed by the French state department for national education) which tends to gradually dominate, even in a department like the Hautes-Alpes, long preserved from the drastic measures implemented in the name of equity and the defense of rural life. This logic makes it possible to drop the general provision of hours (dotation générale horaire) attributed to schools and to reduce the number of full-time jobs, while asserting that the objectives defined have been properly fulfilled (80% of learners in a generation successfully obtaining their high school diploma since 2018, compared to 30% in 19853). According to the interviewees committed at the teacher union level, this logic, which is referred to as ultraliberal here, causes well-known effects on public services in education: an increase in maximum class size, especially in secondary education (the quota of 30 learners in middle school and 35 in high school may be exceeded), reduction in the number of tenured teachers, closure of smaller primary schools (particularly those with single classes), schools clustered to lower the operating costs (building maintenance, land costs…), thus increasing the time spent by children in transport. As in many western European countries and regions, a certain standardization has been implemented (systemic closure of classes with less than 20 pupils, for example), generating a profound transformation in the school-map, despite the resistance of local elected officials wishing to maintain their school in a context of territorial decline. For example, in the high-mountain land around La Meije (northern department), there were still 4 schools, 6 classes for 100 pupils in 1978. Today, there is only one modern school with 3 classes for 60 pupils. These effects of ultraliberal policies described by grounded educators in the Hautes-Alpes are part of a general movement of territorial recomposition in the French educational context, initiated in the early 1980s (Lelièvre, 2008). This recomposition consists of a progressive disengagement of the central State for the benefit of devolution and decentralization of educational public service. A “new educational order” (Ben Ayed, 2009) is developing, more local and “territorialized”, playing a part in neutralizing conflicts and contradictions in a very unequal society, giving the illusion of a new local autonomy. But, in fact, decentralization remains very partial, and local government at different scales is often used to impose top-­ down reforms which tend to “relax” spatial sectors on the school-map and deregulate access to public schools. In a country like France, these ultraliberal reforms  See the report of the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies: INSEE References, 19/11/2019: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/4238409 (accessed 14 July 2022). 3

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progress discreetly, and successive governments refute the idea that they are commoditizing the school system (Laval, 2004). In reality, their policies create greater competition between schools in what looks increasingly like education markets (Félouzis et al., 2013). Furthermore, discreet but real reductions in teaching staff and the closure of small classes and schools in the Hautes-Alpes refer to the New Public Management, theorized in the early 1990s, gradually expanding from Anglo-Saxon countries to other western countries such as France (Laval et al., 2011). In education, this new management contributes to introducing a result-based culture that transfers performance standards and accountability norms from the private to the public sector. The official reason for this transfer is a lack of efficiency in public service. But it is also a means of reducing the tax burden for the richest (Curnier, 2021). According to our contacts, new public management, imposed by the State department and relayed by rectorates, leads to “saving” hours wherever possible, by pooling lessons, decreasing optional courses, or putting subjects into competition with each other so that teachers struggle for whatever crumbs are left. Competition does not simply exist between educational establishments but also within them. At the same time, ultraliberalism also means externalizing certain tasks to private operators (in our survey, for example: school catering, academic support, dance and sport options). Nevertheless, in Hautes-Alpes education, the effect of ultraliberal policies is still relatively moderate and watered down (compared with other territories). Defending the specific needs of rural territories, local governments have partly succeeded in maintaining small schools and classes, as we can see in the statistical data. In fact, the major change for educators in the Hautes-Alpes does not arise from ultraliberal policies (privatization of education, the withdrawal of the State) but from new apparatuses of control and evaluation which come from neoliberal thinking.

7.3 Neoliberalism, the Apparatus of Control and Education in the Hautes-Alpes Although neoliberal policies have accelerated since the 2000s (with fluctuations depending on the governments in power), other subtler devices, qualified here as neoliberal, have established themselves, according to the evidence given by the educators in the Hautes-Alpes. These devices or “apparatuses” (dispositifs in the terms of Foucault) are anchored in a new way of considering control and evaluation which furthermore strengthens the ultraliberal reforms that aim to “trim down” public schools.

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7.3.1 Towards a New Government of Experts in Educational Territories At the secondary level, the most recent reform, called the “Loi de Transformation de la Fonction Publique4”, gives increased power to the headteachers of middle and high schools, increasingly making them the only decision-makers on various subjects: budget allocation, hiring non-teaching staff, the possibility of imposing some overtime on teachers, the schedule for internal meetings or appointments of educational advisers replacing the previous elected members of the school board. These school leaders also tend to stay less time at the same school (3–4 years) while they are now recruited on mission orders by the rectorate, with defined objectives which remain opaque to the rest of the educational community. They are also increasingly assessed on short term numerical goals and on changing watchwords posted by the French Secretary of State for national education (“homework complete”, “school dropout”, “inclusive education”, “secularism”, etc.). They are constantly accountable to the rectorate of Academy, especially on what they do to “improve the quality of their education provision” in a context where competition is fierce for recruiting the best students in new specialized “divisions of excellence”. Rationales for monitoring and control are also reflected in the need for headteachers to evaluate the performance of their personnel and to manage them with the goal of effectiveness. New power relations develop within educational communities. At another level, joint committees in the education sector, forming the connection between staff representatives and those of the institutions at different levels (department, academy), have seen their role decrease in recent years while global indicators (such as “H/E”: hours of teaching per pupil) are no longer provided in a transparent manner. These tendencies, described by several Hautes-Alpes educators, are the sign of neoliberal thinking that discredits collective intelligence and democratic bodies in favor of a government of experts (Stiegler, 2019). If we follow neoliberal thinkers, the average citizen is unable to understand the dynamics of this global society and adapt to it. So, a new type of expert (economists, psychologists…) needs to give political elites pertinent indicators and measures to drive the amorphous, heterogeneous masses in the right direction. Neoliberal thinking relies on minimalist democracy and hierarchical exercise of government between those who lead experimentation and those who are targeted by it. The goal is to control individuals transformed into replaceable units, and thus avoid getting behind in the face of the accelerated tempo of the global market. This is why this kind of government can be qualified as quantophrenia (obsessional thinking to quantify all realities: Sarr, 2017), expressing the need for numbers and figures that continuously evaluate school performances, as well as promoting middle managers themselves subjected to imposed standards.

 Law n° 2019-828, 6 August 2019: https://www.fonction-publique.gouv.fr/loi-de-transformation-­ de-la-fonction-publique; https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000038889182/ (accessed 24 February 2022). 4

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7.3.2 Teachers and Students Increasingly Controlled Controlling and monitoring does not solely concern the relationship between schooling senior executives and teachers, but also the pedagogical relation between teachers and learners. The educators interviewed complain about the emergence of ongoing assessment that has been transforming the very nature of their profession for several years. In high school, the baccalauréat (secondary end-of-cycle examination) has been partly replaced by a system of continuous monitoring, creating many adverse effects: permanent cramming, loss of pedagogical freedom, standardization of tests and thus of preparation courses (selected works, themes). Teachers themselves feel increasingly controlled while the logic behind assessment is also the result of new pressures from the parents of pupils who want their children to be prepared for entering the best higher education institutions. In primary school, skills assessment booklets and international tests such as PISA were introduced in the early 2000s, creating a tendency to standardize learning methods on the basis of a top-down model. Teachers see this controlling process as a means of transforming their creative profession into that of technicians, feeling that they have become merely links in a chain, programmed to transmit knowledge and methods decided upstream. In the face of these injunctions, no organized resistance has developed in educational communities. From our observations of the participants, the prevailing impression in collective teachers’ rooms is a growing sense of fragmentation. Most teachers witness the intrusion of neoliberal policies with resignation and frustration. They try to survive in a context where their missions are multiplied and our general ways of experiencing time are accelerating, generating stress and overwork. They play catch-up with school programs to be on time when common assessments arrive. As a result, they are forced to cut back on projects and hours where their pedagogical freedom could be given greater amplitude. Consequently, their teaching, following the objectives of academic performance, seems more conformists, less personalized, and less adjusted to the needs of the learners. At the same time, institutional texts are full of seductive ideas, using smoke and mirrors on different subjects (more autonomy for teachers, less of a vertical relationship between students and the school board, encouragement for interdisciplinary projects, openness to differentiated instruction, school based on trust). These contradictions further increase a sense of suffering in the face of a school system whose goal is none other than to participate in the creation of obedient consumers, capable of incorporating neoliberal values without realizing it. On another issue, in-service training for teachers has been reduced over the years. It was still possible in the 1980–90s to do a 3-month training course for primary teachers with a wide choice of themes (arts, sports, sciences, cooperative pedagogy, reading methods, among others), so that teachers could really become familiar with new pedagogical practices or didactic approaches, and integrate them into their daily professional lives. But now, the in-service training is reduced to a “sprinkling” of a few hours or days per year, with reduced thematic choices (mainly

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teaching the fundamentals (math, French) and digital learning). Moreover, financing funds from the State for rural schools (called FIDAR) have been removed. These funds have enabled landlocked schools in the Hautes-Alpes to set up cultural school trips and artistic projects. They are partly compensated for by the actions of territorial communities (municipalities for the primary level, the department and region for the secondary level) with a clear decrease in means in general although not everywhere, further enhancing school inequality. From the point of view of learners, several recent reforms confirm the shift towards a more rigid framework and exacerbated social control. The implementation of a digital platform called Parcoursup to apply for higher education is proof of these new means of control. Based on quantitative selection criteria, the orientation of students is governed by algorithms, handled by some experts but with no transparency. The continuous monitoring changes the students’ experience, especially in high school. They have to perform all day, guided by utilitarian aspirations. This result-oriented culture creates anxiety and weakens those who do not benefit from a supportive family environment. Despite this, students do not question the purposes of their role as learners and the logic behind it: Tho.: For me, my feeling is that we are in a kind of collective astonishment and subjugation… a little anecdote… last year, the only time I saw them (the students) mobilized was for calculations of their average that might count for the bac (diploma), for matters of 0.1 point… For this, they were ready to go on strike… I find that they are completely stunned, and also, they have a wide-ranging form of docility and kindness… somewhere, they still want to trust this world. And it is as if they apply themselves with even more zeal to adapt to what is asked of them.

7.3.3 Societies of Control and Transformation of Educational Finalities Through analysis of these testimonies, we can perceive what Gilles Deleuze qualified, in one of his last texts (1992), as a passage from disciplinary societies (from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century) to societies of control: In societies of control […] what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password, while on the other hand the disciplinary societies are regulated by watchwords (as much from the point of view of integration as from that of resistance). The numerical language of control is made of codes that mark access to information, or reject it. We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become “dividuals,” and masses, samples, data, markets, or “banks”. (Deleuze, 1992: 5)

In a society of control, the issue is no longer to discipline individuals through norms and examinations that are imposed on them at certain moments and in close surroundings (school, hospital…), but to constrain them through ongoing assessments and reporting systems. Deleuze’s friend, Félix Guattari (1989) evoked in this sense a deterioration in human lifestyles under the effect of these controlling processes

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which generate an impoverished relationship between the subject and its exteriority. Subjects who are children and pupils find it increasingly difficult to build and individualize themselves, as they are subjected to permanent norms and pressures, as well as being innovative, responsible, invested, in a good mood and good shape, like a competitive player facing the problems of existence and capable of solving them (Teillet, 2019). This “subject-company”, which is also the tireless and successful “subject-­ project” of neoliberal thinking, is indeed the result of choices made by actors imposing new standards. Among these actors, beyond the political elites themselves, we note the role of parents, sometimes grouped into associations, carrying individualistic and utilitarian values. Through their influence, the school tends to become an agency at the service of individuals seeking to maximize their interests. In the same logic, steering systems by figures (PISA) set up by major international organizations (OECD, WB, WTO, European Commission) also play a part in strengthening the race for good rankings between schools, which has become an educational finality in itself (Laval, 2004). The very nature of knowledge and teaching content is being transformed, giving precedence to skills defined as useful, i.e. transferable into the professional world, to the detriment of complex knowledge and ethical reflection (Curnier, 2021). Through our investigations, as well as the theoretical reflections developed on this subject, it is no exaggeration to say that, far from producing emancipated and critical subjects as it claims, the turn taken by education in France, composed of competitiveness-driven reforms and productivity-centered management, reinforces an economic endpoint for education that aims above all to produce employable resources capable of integrating a deteriorated labor market. If we say “reinforce”, it is because not everything can be blamed on neoliberalism. This tendency is more generally part of a culture of modernity, made up, among other things, of a distancing of the subject/object in school subjects and an organization of school time and space that supports the factory for creating obedient and docile subjects (Sterling, 2010–11).

7.4 Resistance to Neoliberalism: Educators Committed to Transformative and Care Ethics that Supports Learners’ Subjectivation Process Faced with neoliberal reforms, the educators we met proposed strategies for resistance that are different from the actions commonly opposed to neoliberalism – i.e. political representation, activism, demonstrations in the public space or even adult training – which certainly have their value when it comes to resisting neoliberalism (Nafaa, 2021). But clearly these actions are no longer the means used by these educators to resist (although they can still engage in this way occasionally). Firstly, because most of them have tried to engage in these modes of resistance and have

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been worn down in recent years by their lack of effectiveness in the face of indifference, and France’s governments – both on the right or the left – forcing their decisions through. Secondly, because a groundswell of fatalism and resignation seems to affect most teachers,5 making this form of commitment increasingly for a minority, doomed to helplessness. This is not to say that these educators are among those who are resigned. On the contrary, what they had in common was a form of commitment based on values that are the opposite of neoliberal values (although neoliberal semantics are very skilled at appropriating these same values and rendering them meaningless): concern for the fulfilment and well-being of learners (vs performance), respect for their rhythm and differences (vs elitism and standardization), a supportive attitude (vs the attitude of an evaluator), a relationship based on listening, concern and caring (vs a distant relationship of domination), cooperative arrangements (vs competition), and priority given to the meaning of learning (vs transmission and passive application). It is all these elements that make these educators committed to transformative learning,6 i.e. learning capable of producing in the subject movement towards greater awareness that transforms individual and collective perceptual structures, inherited from society or developed uncritically over the course of existence (Mezirow, 2000; Taylor & Cranton, 2012). And it is now the convergences in the practices and devices implemented by committed educators as a means of resisting neoliberal injunctions that we will try to uncover.

7.4.1 Taking Care of Learners in the Face of Dehumanization: Care Ethics in Action A first axis that emerges is the importance of considering learners in every aspect of their being and singularity. In other words, it is a question of moving away from a vision of learners “without quality”, “without history”, that teachers “fill” and “shape” by essentially addressing their intellectual faculties. On the contrary, in the vision of the teachers encountered, there can only be transformative and emancipatory learning by including, in addition to the cognitive dimension, the affective, sensitive, and ethical dimensions within the pedagogical relationship. This is  In this sense, many recent press surveys show a massive increase in teacher resignations in France. See for example: Le Monde, 22/11/2021: https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2021/11/22/les-­demissions-­d-enseignants-un-phenomene-en-expansion_6103110_3224.html (accessed 14 July 2022). 6  Initiated in the 1970s by Jack Mezirow for adult education, the field of transformative learning is defined as a “process” aimed at constructing and appropriating a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of lived experience (Mezirow, 2000). It is thus a question of transforming ways of perceiving, knowing, thinking, feeling, and acting as well as the principles and values that condition them. According to O’Sullivan (1999), this work of transformative critique complements a reformative critique (focused on institutions) to radically restructure the assumptions of the dominant culture (paternalism, competition, etc.). 5

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particularly important in a school context where, most of the time, learners respond to external expectations but rarely position themselves as subjects capable of enacting their own world: –– Mary-L.: Of course, knowing how to read, write and count is important, these are tools... but they are used to serve something else... for me, school should be a place of emancipation, that is, school as a place that will enable young people to forge their own points of view, based on solid knowledge [...] but also on sensitive aspects... we really need to work on both. –– Ann.: Rather than me lecturing, they (the pupils) would give presentations on the book they had read the day before and then we would discuss it... so I was more of a companion, a facilitator to their learning [...] a child may be good at geometry but not at numbers, or have difficulty with grammar and spelling but be at ease with poetry and written expression... My job is to make them feel confident, above all... and then listen to them and believe in themselves. That’s why I liked my job because there were lots of ways to make the child feel good at school. –– Chris.: One of the activities we were able to do was workshop-debates where we re-did a radio show... each child had a role... and I played a listener who asked a cross-cutting question [...] I tend to think that children at school, their daily task, is to say to themselves: ‘what is the right answer?’, ‘what is expected of me?’. On the other hand, to position oneself in relation to one’s own ideas and to rework them... of course, this is actually done to some extent, but I think quite little... so the idea here, with this project and these workshops, is to work on our ideas with others, tweak them, and learn to position oneself in a debate, in front of a group. –– Mary-C. & Math.: There, we set up an action for preventing addictions with the Champsaur-Valgaudemar center... They asked us and another school in the area... and it was funny because for the other school, everything was already planned, we’re going to do this, this, this and this... but we don’t work like that at all... First, we present the project to our students, then see with them what form to give the project. And then we have a graphic artist who will accompany them for the project... So, we try to work with this active, cooperative pedagogy [...] And when it is done well, pedagogy is such an incredible vehicle for more than just teaching. In each of the testimonies presented here, we can see a particular attention to avoid a relationship of domination towards pupils that would turn them into objects. We also note a desire to accompany them in their process of subjectivation.7 Where

 What we call here the process of subjectivation is the primary work on the Self that leads subjects to know themselves, to care about themselves, and to bring about a mode of attention to their own experience. This attention to oneself is a fundamental gesture for becoming a fully autonomous and sovereign subject (Fleury, 2015), capable of resisting all possible forms of subjugation (entertainment, alienation, voluntary servitude, guilt). Far from producing an egocentric narcissism, on the contrary, the process of subjectivation opens up to relational concerns to deep understanding of our interdependence, well summed up by Yves Citton inspired by Arn Naess: “entities do not exist outside the relations that constitute them” (2014: 165). 7

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neoliberalism never ceases to break the subject down into objectifiable, calibrated and evaluated items, losing the meaning of its action which is broken down into tasks, the teacher can work to give learners new impetus, empowering them so they can invent an ethos free of this logic based on control, and construct a narrative in which they can rediscover the value of their irreplaceable singularity. The educators we met testify to the need for care ethics (Gilligan, 1982, Noddings, 1984, Tronto, 1993) which value attention to oneself and others (caring about), feelings of solicitude (caring to) and gestures of care (taking care of) to ontologically help students in the making of their being (Mortari, 2021). In institutions that emphasize the ability to distinguish oneself from others through results, they are instead committed to putting the relationship to oneself and others at the center of the classroom. This commitment is first and foremost based on a particular posture. Refusing to reduce their attention to academic performance alone, they adopt a more complete educator’s posture, attentive not only to the students’ academic difficulties but also to their well-being and the development of their person as a whole. Their commitment thus translates into an ability to make themselves available, to offer a quality of presence and listening adapted to the needs of the student (Marsollier, 2020). As Gill sums up very well in his words: “always remain very humble and act with tact”. Two qualities which, far from ready-made recipes, allow teachers to adjust their speech and gestures to the situation of both each child and the group as a whole. Their posture is also intended to help learners develop their inner language, recognize and express their emotions as well as their needs, which is essential work to avoid becoming captive to mechanisms that are a source of violence (Favre, 2007). Basically, it is a matter of trying to make the classroom a space of co-presence. In this space, each learner is constantly constructing his subjectivity by attention to proximity, through infinitesimal but decisive affective and cognitive adjustments. In this way, a process of self-formation is reinforced, whereby the being becomes aware of what forms it (the environment, others) and opens up to a plurality of knowledge that encourages the emergence of meaning within its own experience (Galvani, 2020).

7.4.2 Putting Ethical Reflections at the Center of Teaching: The Example of Earth Ethics In line with this posture of care ethics, educators also choose to address ethical issues directly in counterpoint to the strategies of avoidance and denial so common in the superficial and conformist teachings promoted by school curricula. A good example of this in our survey concerns issues of Earth ethics (Callicott, 2013). While 5 of the 9 planetary limits have now been exceeded, no real change of trajectory is on the agenda in schools, either in the 1st or 2nd level. Curricula almost systematically avoid issues related to socio-environmental degradation in favor of a “cream pie of education for sustainable development” in Thomas’ words. In the

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absence of clarity from the institution, teachers often adopt timid and distanced postures, having neither the space to speak nor the training to address the ethical issues of the living. The effect on students is that of a status quo; they find themselves completely caught up in a logic of “we have to adapt”, making every effort to maximize their grades and profile so as not to be left behind, whatever the state of the world. The commitment of the educators we met aims to challenge this business as usual: –– Chris.: My initial intention was to work on the notion of commitment, with drawing workshops. And we were able to tackle the paradox between our immediate desires, our passions, and more praiseworthy intentions to protect the planet. Many children drew a hyper-connected house, with four cars in the garage... but also solar panels and trees to protect the planet... we see the parents’ desires behind the children... The idea is not to make them feel guilty, but to understand the effects of their practices, to explore their desires. –– Tho.: In my classes, I realized that we had a notion called ‘the living’ and that I had been dealing with it since the beginning of my career, in a hyper-academic way... I was talking about mechanism, finalism […] but now, yes, I try to address the questions of Earth ethics and of the consideration of all living beings. It’s a guiding thread in all my courses. –– Mary-L.: I’ve been using philosophy workshops for quite a long time now, I’ve had training in them... and it works, it’s great, I like it a lot, the children like it too... we do them on different subjects... I’m very much into “animal ethics” because I co-founded an association on that subject, so we work a lot on questions of the relationship with the Earth and the living, but not only that. For these teachers, going beyond education for sustainable development means going beyond a superficial modification of teaching content limited to certain disciplines (geography, life and earth sciences) and to the cognitive dimension alone. Indeed, it is impossible to understand current ecological problems without an epistemology of complexity and an interdisciplinary approach that gives coherence to learning (Morin, 2001). The educators thus use strategies composed of a series of diverse activities (games, sensitive experiences in nature, narrative writing, philosophy workshops) to make students aware of the reciprocal relationships they have with non-human worlds (Barniaudy, 2020, Biancofiore, 2020). In relation to recent contributions from environmental humanities, it is a question of vivifying the stories of connection within the community of the living (Rose, 2019), of making visible the other “ways of being alive” (Morizot, 2020), that co-habit the Earth with us, making it suitable for life, in particular through a sensitive experience of immersion that reactivates our participation and sensuous perception of the living world (Abram, 1996). The ethical work of the educator thus consists of trying to confront this awareness, these stories and this “knowledge from” (vs “knowledge of or on”: Escobar, 2018) with the students’ other actions and daily attitudes that are the result of other less virtuous intentions (egocentrism, discriminating views, dogmatism, among

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others). This confrontation is the basis for the development of ethical know-how (Varela, 1999), which comes from a deep understanding of how we belong to the web of life and is the foundation of a new commitment (Macy & Johnstone, 2012). The value of ethical skills embodied by self-sculpting work is that they do not result from moral deliberation, generating planned decisions, but rather help us act spontaneously with wisdom in the face of life’s events.

7.4.3 Project-Based Pedagogy as a Transformative Sharing of Experiences To actualize care ethics extended to the living, and to enhance the process of subjectivation of students against neoliberal alienation, committed educators tell us the value of project-based pedagogy where students become actors in their learning, and where the pedagogical relationship goes beyond the framework of a transmission of knowledge from the “knowing teacher” to the “ignorant student”: –– Mary-L.: I do one big project a year, last year on the oceans, the year before on the great apes, and this year a local project on wild animals [...] The advantage of being a school teacher is that there’s no ringing of the bell to say “science is over, let’s move on”, no, the kids go off on something, we take our time, I give myself real freedom and now that I’m ‘old’ in the profession, I want us to really get down to essentials... –– Ann.: I used a lot of children’s albums, because there are things that help them to grow up, to mature... an author like Claude Ponti, there are extraordinary things about difference, about accepting others... children who are going through divorce, mourning, it’s so rich, it can really help them, they identify with the characters... and afterwards, we make hyper-links... I’ll give you the example of the album Le voyage d’Oregon by Rascal, it’s the story of a bear who returns to the forests of Oregon because he doesn’t want to belong to a circus... well, I can work on it for a month because there’s everything... you can work on the animal in science, the United States in geography, French of course, but also math... so it’s multi-disciplinary and it allows you to have a common thread, to give meaning to the learning. –– Chris.: During the spring 2020 lockdown, we did this theatre project with the CM2 class (5th grade), proposed by the teacher, based on the text Aïssata, mon amour. It’s a text about the question of otherness. We had a lot of time to work on the play but also on extras… workshops on emotions, oral expression, lighter moments [...] And doing strong projects like that, which last 50–60 hours, helps to restore coherence. Pupils rarely have access to coherence between the different subjects, although it may exist at the top, at the level of the State department. But here, everything we did made sense, for the project... And a cultural project is difficult, it’s heavy, but at the end, we remember it, we can tell the story.

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Here again, several recurrences appear in the comments made by the educators involved in transformative learning and care ethics. The first concerns time and the ability of an educator to free themselves from the perpetual pressure put in place by the institution, which transforms the teacher into a simple executor who has to “finish” all the programs, carry out a list of pre-established tasks and comply with hierarchical prescriptions. Taking the time to stop, to extend certain unplanned activities, to make things explicit in order to clarify certain points, are all conditions that are necessary for an education with a vocation to be ethical and emancipating. What is at stake in these projects is a vision of education as a sharing of experiences capable of opening up understanding of oneself, others and the world through a taskscape (Dewey, 2004(1916)). In other words, the active participation of students in these projects allows them to develop capacities that are no longer merely abstract and cold knowledge about a world that can be objectified, but rather an experience that consists of knowing from the inside as a means of giving meaning to life. Educating in this sense means participating together, growing together, experiencing a joint mode of attention with others and the world, and activating a transformation of oneself that gives others a place and responds to their presence (Ingold, 2018). The teacher in these projects has nothing to transmit, no representation to correct or fixed knowledge to acquire. Rather, the teacher’s task is to provide a way of becoming attentive, to create a nurturing environment where the children learn to see what is happening in their own experience, and to imagine what the other is feeling, thus developing empathy. It is therefore no coincidence that cultural projects in the humanities (theatre, literature), which have often been cut back in recent years in favor of scientific and technical subjects, are chosen as a means of activating this openness and attentiveness to lived experience. The humanities help reinforce the quality of consideration of others, to perceive from inside their emotions as well as their thoughts, to understand their experience and to adopt their point of view in a fictional way (Hétier in Derycke & Foray, 2018). These qualities are, according to Martha Nussbaum (2010), the very basis for maintaining life in society and for citizenship with integrity within decent democratic institutions.

7.4.4 Forming an Alliance to Resist the Fragmentation Produced by Neoliberal Policies This way of teaching is not always well received by peers or the hierarchical superiors of these teachers (inspectors, headmasters). However, what makes it possible to pursue this type of transformative learning, going beyond neoliberal injunctions, is the ability to form an alliance, to rally a supporting group, an empowering environment that dares to stand up to the alienating forms of education:

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–– Tho.: This desire to teach differently matured over many years... it was apparent in my teaching but in a very mild way... a lot of modesty on my part... and I remember that one day, I said to myself, I still have to do something in my job... it’s also linked to the discovery of this collective, EPLP (Teachers for the Planet), which allowed me to get my foot in the door... I said to myself, I’m going to try to set up things at school... and that’s when I tried to launch these first fora days and the project Ecolab. –– Gill.: As soon as we started teaching, we saw that there were limits in French national education. And that’s why we started training right away, with courses, and training days through the Freinet movement... we didn’t want anything too head-on... we worked a lot with the ICEM Hautes-Alpes, there were about fifteen of us... we did conferences, courses during our holidays... These movements gave children another place in the classroom... we didn’t apply Freinet to the fullest, but it allowed us to create another relationship with the learners. –– Mary-L.: The fact that there are several groups working on this form of education that seeks to transform our relationship with ourselves and the Earth is what gives us strength. We are criticized for being a kind of clique, but sometimes we need to be in a group where we don’t need to convince, to argue... if we didn’t have this we would stop. –– Chris.: We were a small, very complementary group of adults, men and women, a facilitator, a teacher, an educational assistant, and we found a lot of common ground in terms of cultural references, shared values,... in particular how we create an atmosphere in the classroom, by paying attention to them... and then our presence with the children is clear, assertive... in terms of equality, we’re in favor of everyone feeling good, but at the same time, as far as domination is concerned, we’re trying to be soft, and to justify what we’re setting up. While all the educators insist on the support provided by affiliation to a group as a means of engaging in ethical and transformative learning, most of them also specify the need to belong to a small structure based on inter-knowledge and the absence of too strong a distinction between the members of an educational community. The pedagogy they embody, which is based on attention and care for learners, cannot be developed without a certain proximity, without a familiar and serene climate where everyone can learn to debate, to confront others and to find their own voice. They willingly validate Ernst Schumacher’s expression (1974): Small is beautiful. The idea for these educators is not so much to create a world apart, in a niche preserved from the violence and processes of domination exacerbated in the urban environment, but rather to retain a certain flexibility and freedom in carrying out educational actions that make sense in terms of a territorial context, capable of not allowing themselves to be confined by restrictive standards. Ivan Illich (1970) showed perfectly how institutions (schools, hospitals), when they exceed a certain threshold, see their original purpose weakened, altered to the point of reversal: the hospital makes people sick, the school leads to unlearning.

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7.5 Conclusion Our survey led us to observe that neoliberal policies have left their mark on schools in the Hautes-Alpes over the past thirty years, particularly through the application of a top-down logic of objectives that gradually diminish the material resources and personnel of educational services. However, the commitment of local elected representatives in the name of territorial equity and the defense of public services in a context of reorganization of educational policies has (still) protected most of these rural areas from the harshest ultraliberal logic (privatization, commodification, withdrawal of the State). On the other hand, the educational territories of Haute-­Alpes are subjected to neoliberal policies with great violence; masked in the form of the logic of control and evaluation, neoliberal thinking is becoming more and more present in Haute-Alpes education, provoking inter- and intra-school competition and a transformation of educational finalities, reduced to the production of a subject-company capable of adapting to the globalized economic world. Placed under the egis of a new government of experts and figures, students and teachers find themselves increasingly subjected to neoliberal values (competition, performance) which create a certain malaise by weakening their process of subjectivation and their pedagogical relationship. Faced with this, the committed educators we met are not resigned, opting instead for strategies of resistance specific to transformative learning and care ethics. Through their postures, their gestures, the projects and alliances they set up, or the questions they address, these educators aim to deconstruct the pre-emption of neoliberalism within the very bodies-minds of the learners (mode of attention, affects, desires, thoughts) in order to relaunch their individuation, returning them to a self-generating capacity that is indispensable for connecting with others and inhabiting the world. Far from being won once and for all, this educational effort encounters many obstacles and issues at the collective level that merit in-depth reflection. It is obvious that these modes of resistance, which take the side of care ethics and transformative learning, cannot have their full effect without being part of a school system marked by greater socio-spatial justice. Teachers in the classroom cannot stand alone in the face of neoliberal logic; they need a community of care to continue and intensify their educational engagement. A more in-depth study is undoubtedly necessary in this sense in order to understand how school and educational facilities can participate in a global ethical project capable of stopping the production of captive and docile subjects in the face of neoliberal logic, as well as of generating attention and care of oneself, others, and the environment.

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References Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous. Vintage. Audier, S. (2012). Néo-libéralisme(s): une archéologie intellectuelle. B. Grasset. Barniaudy, C. (2020). Prendre soin du milieu, préserver la Terre: le care au service d’une éthique de l’action. Notos, 5. https://doi.org/10.34745/numerev_122. Accessed 24 Feb 2022. Ben Ayed, C. (2009). Le nouvel ordre éducatif local. Mixité, disparités, luttes locales. Presses Universitaires de France. Biancofiore, A. (2020). Care et éducation: pour une transformation de l’esprit. Notos, 5. https://doi. org/10.34745/numerev_118. Accessed 24 Feb 2022. Callicott, J.  B. (2013). Thinking like a planet: The land ethic and the earth ethic. Oxford University Press. Citton, Y. (2014). Pour une écologie de l’attention. Seuil. Curnier, D. (2021). Vers une école éco-logique. Le Bord de l’eau. Dardot, P., & Laval, C. (2016). Ce cauchemar qui n’en finit pas: comment le néolibéralisme défait la démocratie. La Découverte. Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the societies of control. October, 59(3–7), available online: https://www.jstor.org/stable/778828. Accessed 24 Feb 2022. Derycke, M., & Foray, P. (Eds.). (2018). Care et éducation. Presses Universitaires de Nancy  – Éditions universitaires de Lorraine. Dewey, J. (2004)[1916]. Democracy and education. Dover Publications. Escobar, A. (2018). Sentir-penser avec la terre. Seuil. Favre, D. (2007). Transformer la violence des élèves. Dunod. Félouzis, G., Maroy, C., & Van Zanten, A. (2013). Les Marchés scolaires. Presses Universitaires de France. Fleury, C. (2015). Les irremplaçables. Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2004). Naissance de la biopolitique: cours au collège de France (1978–1979). Seuil, Gallimard, EHESS. Galvani, P. (2020). Autoformation et connaissance de soi: une méthode de recherche-formation expérientielle. Chronique sociale. Giband, D., Mary, K., & Nafaa, N. (2020). Introduction. Éducation, privatisation, ségrégation: regards croisés Nord/Sud. De l’importance de la dimension spatiale des dynamiques éducatives. Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, 19, 7–20, https://journals.openedition.org/cres/4803. Accessed 18 Feb 2022. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press. Guattari, F. (1989). Les trois écologies. Galilée. Illich, I. (1970). Deschooling society. Harper & Row. Ingold, T. (2018). Anthropology as/and education. Routledge. Laval, C. (2004). L’école n’est pas une entreprise: le néo-libéralisme à l’assaut de l’enseignement public. La Découverte. Laval, C., Vergne, F., Clément, P., & Dreux, G. (2011). La nouvelle école capitaliste. La Découverte. Lelièvre, C. (2008). Les politiques scolaires mises en examen: onze questions en débat (3e ed.). ESF. Macy, J., & Johnstone, C. (2012). Active Hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy. New World Library. Marsollier, C. (Ed.). (2020). L’éthique à l’école: quels enjeux? quels défis? Berger-Levrault. Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in Progress. Jossey-Bass. Morin, E. (2001). Seven complex lessons in education for the future. UNESCO. Morizot, B. (2020). Manières d’être vivant. Actes Sud. Mortari, L. (2021). La politica della cura: Prendere a cuore la vita. R. Cortina.

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Chapter 8

Geographies of Resistance in the Chilean Education System in the Post-dictatorship Age (1990–2019): A Protest Event Analysis Cristóbal Villalobos and Lluís Parcerisa

Abstract  From a comparative perspective, the Chilean school system can be considered a paradigmatic case that combines structural privatization processes, sophisticated accountability systems and high levels of school segregation. This chapter aims to analyze the role of the spatial dimension in the trajectory of protests in the education sector during the Chilean post-dictatorship (1990–2019). Methodologically, the research carries out a Protest Event Analysis (PEA) of a novel database of more than 1.700 protests. The findings show that the spatial dimension (e.g., regional distribution, degree of rurality, types of places of protest, etc.) mediates not only the characteristics and the nature of actors who participate in protest events but also the strategies and repertoires of collective action deployed by social movements. Keywords  Critical geography · Education policy · Protests · Neoliberalism · Chile

This work is part of the Fondecyt Project N° 11190198: “Estudiando el funcionamiento, organización y dinámicas del campo educativo. Un análisis de la trayectoria, características, relaciones e influencias en el Chile post-dictadura (1990–2020)”. C. Villalobos (*) Centro de Estudios de Políticas y Prácticas en Educación (CEPPE UC), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] L. Parcerisa ESBRINA, Departament de Didàctica i Organització Educativa, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_8

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8.1 Introduction In the 1980s, Chile starred in a deep educational privatization process that some authors have described as “structural reform” (Verger et  al., 2015). This process included the construction of a school financing system through a universal voucher, the transfer of public education from the Ministry of Education to the municipalities, and the massive incorporation of private schools (Villalobos & Quaresma, 2015), generating an educational system organized through the market logic. These neoliberal reforms -implemented during the Pinochet dictatorship and continued in the 1990s under the center left-wing government of the so-called Concertación- resulted in a low-quality education and high levels of school segregation (OECD, 2014; Treviño et al., 2018). Partly because of these problems, in the last two decades, Chile has experienced extensive citizen protests in response to growing social unrest, with a peak in the “Social Outbreak” in October 2019 (Somma et al., 2021). In this context, education -along with health and transportation- has been marked as a highly conflictive sector. The social protests that occurred in Chilean education have attracted social scientists’ attention worldwide, especially at the peak of the protests in 2006 y 2011. Specifically, the secondary student movement of 2006 (also known as the penguin revolution) and the demonstrations of the university students of 2011 have remained in the memory of citizens, activists, and scholars of social movements. However, despite the growing number of investigations (Asún et al., 2019) that have analyzed social protests in Chile’s education sector (see Bellei et al., 2014; Donoso, 2016; Parcerisa & Villalobos, 2020; Salinas & Fraser, 2012; Somma, 2012), the role of place and space in these events has been mainly explored through case studies focused on students protest in Santiago, the country’s capital. In this way, the research has analyzed the relationship between protest and the public sphere (Cuevas & Paredes, 2018; Paredes, 2018), the geographical distribution of secondary protests in the Metropolitan Region (Hernández, 2018, 2019) or the protests developed in the main street of Santiago, the so-called La Alameda (Marín, 2014). Drawing on a critical geography approach, this chapter aims to shed light on the role of place and space in citizen protests related to education during the post-­ dictatorship period (2000–2019) in Chile. Based on a quantitative protest event analysis, the research aims to answer the following questions: What is the role of place and space in citizen protests in Chilean education? How do social movements in Chile use place and space? How are the protests in education distributed by regions and cities? In what types of spaces do they occur? And finally, how is the space affected by the protests in education? The chapter is structured as follows: first, we present the theoretical framework, which provides heuristic devices to analyze the role of place and space in social protests. Second, we describe the policy context of the research, which, as we mentioned above, focuses on Chile during the post-dictatorship period. Third, we present the methodology based on a protest event analysis of a novel database built in the context of the Project Fondecyt N° 11190198, which include more than 1.700

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protest events that occurred in Chile during the period 1990–2019. Finally, we offer the main results of the research and conclusions.

8.2 Understanding the Geographies of Social Movements: A Critical Approach In recent decades, numerous investigations have focused on the study of the emergence (Zald & Ash, 1966) and impact of social movements on public policies (Amenta et al., 2012), the mobilization of resources (McCarthy & Zald, 1977), the configuration of their discursive frames (Benford & Snow, 2000), the construction of activist networks (Diani, 2013), or the repertoires of collective action (Tarrow, 1998). However, the relationship between geography and protest has been particularly under-explored within this particular area of research. According to Dufour (2020), a group of human geographers such as Harvey (2006), Jessop et al. (2008), Lefebvre (1974) and Miller (2007) has claimed the centrality of spatial factors and relations to analyze social practices such as protest events. In other words, these researchers argue that social relations are, by definition, also spatial relations. Thus, they consider that spaces and social relations are somehow co-produced (Dufour, 2020). The study of the geographies of social movements has gained attention in recent years. As a consequence of this “geographical turn”, an emerging body of literature has focused on analyzing the spatial dimension of collective action, trying to explain how geographic factors mediate the emergence and expansion of social movements and how the space is transformed by social protests. Following Nicholls (2007), in this investigation, we use three key concepts to analyze social movements and geography: scale, space, and place. In human geography, the concept of scale has been mainly used to study and describe the socio-spatial dynamics of collective action (Dufour, 2020). This concept is crucial to analyze political power, which is unevenly distributed across space as well as across geographic scales. The unequal socio-spatial distribution of power conditions the structural context in which social movements operate (Nicholls, 2007). Thus, the political opportunities and constraints that social movements may face to achieve their strategic objectives vary sharply depending on the country and the scale (local, national, or global) at which they intervene, which in turn, delimits its scope of action (Miller, 2004; Sikkink, 2005). The idea of the scale as a space of struggle seeks to highlight the fact that scales are not pre-existing and stable structures of the social world, and that can be used strategically for political purposes (Papanastasiou, 2019; Smith, 1992). On the other hand, the idea of place developed by Agnew (1987) is made up of three dimensions such as “the objective macro-order of location”, the “local social worlds of place” (locale), and finally, “the subjective territorial identity of sense of place” (Agnew, 1987, p.  28), also known as “structure of feeling”

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(cf.  Williams, 1977). The concept of place designates the particular locations where collective action takes place (e.g., a town, a city, a square, a university campus, or even an educational institution or school), which, at the same time, are semi-bounded by a mixture of qualities of a different (e.g., material, symbolic and embodied) nature (Endres & Senda-Cook, 2011). In this sense, Routledge (1996) points out the crucial role of place in the configuration of identities, the access to mobilization resources, and the shaping of the main demands and claims of social movements. Finally, the concept of space “refers to a more general notion of how society and social practice are regulated (and sometimes disciplined) by spatial thinking (e.g., the capitalist mode of production or gendered notions of private and public spaces)” (Endres & Senda-Cook, 2011, p. 60). Similarly, Salmenkari (2009) suggests that social movements can perform protest events in public, commercialized, or symbolic spaces, among others. In turn, places located in these different spaces have variegated characteristics in terms of ownership, access, and the level of freedom of speech to express subversive opinions and ideas. Our study is particularly interested in investigating the relationship between protest, scale, place and space, understood as a two-way relationship. Social movements and their actions influence and contribute to reconfiguring the scale, spaces and places where protest takes place, transforming the characteristics of geographies and cities. At the same time, spaces and places can also expand or limit the use of specific repertoires of collective action and are crucial to understanding their effectiveness. Therefore, social protest must be understood as a social practice embedded in a particular cultural, historical and spatial context (Tarrow, 1998). Finally, the relationship between protests, space and place is interesting because protests are -almost by definition- in public activities. For example, Martí (2011) points out the importance of public space occupation and disruptive protest mechanisms as forms of public expression. For many people, collective action is attractive, not only because it is risky or exciting, but also because of its expressive potential (Hirschman, 1982; Martí, 2011). In this sense, social movements often resort to collective action to communicate their demands, generate networks of solidarity, increase political instability, and challenge their political opponents (Ibarra et al., 2002), being the public space a key part of protest.

8.3 Policy Context: Neoliberal Education and Social Protests in the Chilean Post-dictatorship (1990–2019) On October 5, 1988, a national referendum voted “No” for Pinochet’s continuation in government. More than a year later, Patricio Aylwin, representing a broad center-­ left coalition called Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia, who will rule uninterruptedly in the next 20 years, inaugurating what has been called the Chilean post-dictatorship. The post-dictatorship can be understood as a period of rupture

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and continuity with respect to the Pinochet era. It is a rupture since civil liberties are reestablished, political discussion is promoted, and (almost all) political persecution is eliminated. At the same time, it is a period of continuation regarding neoliberal economic policies, the centrality of the armed forces in the country’s development and the continuation of a constitution of 1980 (Garretón, 2011). This configuration creates an environment that does not promote protests or other forms of citizenship action, especially during the 1990s. In the educational field, during the first years of the post-dictatorship era, the protests are developed especially by teachers, who seek to improve the economic and working conditions that were eroded during the dictatorship, and which included the loss of their status as public workers, and absolute decrease in more than 50% in their salaries and a deterioration in their professional status (Matamoros, 2019; Villalobos et al., 2022). In addition, university students are becoming an increasingly active actor. Organized at the national level, university students carry out important contentious actions, with a peak in 1997, seeking to increase the budget of public institutions and improve scholarships and credits to pay for their studies (Thielemann, 2016). With the start of the new millennium, a new cycle of educational protest appears on the scene. In 2006, the so-called ‘Penguins revolution’ (due to the black and white uniforms of secondary education schools) mobilized thousands of students (especially secondaries) through marches and street strikes. This movement was able to place in the agenda the need for structural changes that break with the privatized and market-oriented model, and the need to ensure equal opportunities and quality education for all (Donoso, 2013; Villalobos et  al., 2021). Students made these claims easily understandable and reached a broad social support (Bellei, 2015). The main goal of the Chilean students’ movement was the removal of market dynamics in education. The students’ claims focused on four key elements (Bellei et al., 2014), which included the elimination of students’ selection and discriminatory practices, the defense of a public school system and free education as a social right, and the rejection towards for-profit educational providers. In 2010, an alliance of right-wing parties won the Chilean elections. Since the restoration of democracy in Chile, this was the first time that the Concertación coalition had lost the presidential elections. The conservative party arrived in government with a powerful promise: a real revolution in the education system, with a focus to improve the education quality for all. Yet, the slogan was not really translated in practice. As Bellei (2015) note, Piñera’s Government understood education as a commodity. This policy approach was not shared by relevant social actors, which showed strong opposition to market-driven reforms. Thus, the right-wing government conceived education as a market good, while teachers and students promoted the idea of education as a social right. As a reaction of these differences, in 2011, a new social movement led by higher education students put education again on top of the political agenda (Bellei, 2015; Donoso, 2016; Villalobos & Ortiz-Inostroza, 2019). The students’ movement built a powerful alliance with the main teacher union (the so-called Colegio de Profesores de Chile), student’s grassroots organizations such as the Asamblea de Estudiantes

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Secundarios (ACES, for its acronym in Spanish) and other actors, which carried out multiple collective actions against market-driven reforms promoted by the right Government.1 The social movement reinforced the collective imaginary built by the Penguins’ revolution and challenged the market ideas, which were embedded in Chilean society since Pinochet’s dictatorship (Salinas & Fraser, 2012). The primary demand formulated by the higher education students was related to the high cost of university fees (such as the cost of tuition and other kinds of fees) and the business of private firms. The 2011 social movement requested a stronger role of the State in the governance and regulation of higher education and the elimination of for-profit education (Bellei et al., 2014). The students also defended teachers’ union’s general claims and the penguin’s movement. The students had three main claims: (a) increase public funding in higher education; (b) ensure equity and equality in the access to higher education; (c) democratization of the governance of higher education. During the protests, the students’ demands received broad support while the popularity of the conservative President Sebastián Piñera declined (Cabalín, 2012). This fact favored that various student leaders became elected as parliamentarians, allowing them to increase their influence in the definition of the political agenda and debates in education (Palacios-Valladares & Ondetti, 2019). In 2022, one of these leaders (Gabriel Boric) became the country’s youngest president, and others three (Camila Vallejo, Giorgio Jackson and Izkia Siches) became members to the Cabinet. In 2014, Michelle Bachelet won the national elections for the second time. Unlike the first government, this second term was supported by a new coalition (called Nueva Mayoría) that, in addition to the Concertación parties, includes the Communist Party and other small left parties. The Nueva Mayoría government support a broad agenda of reforms, which included the prohibition of profit in school education and free education in higher education, generating the most important reform in the educational system in the last 40 years, although they do not receive a complete support from social movements (Villalobos, 2016). Finally, in 2018 Sebastian Piñera won again for second time the national elections. Over a year after, Piñera’s government had to face the “Social Outbreak” in October 2019 (Somma et al., 2021). With more than two million protesters and under the idea of generating structural changes in health, education, and pensions, this outbreak transforms the cities (changing names of street and public places, tearing down monuments, scratching walls) and can be conceived as the end of the post-dictatorship era, inaugurating a new political cycle for the country (Cortés, 2022).

 See Education International (2011). Cronología del movimiento por la Educación Pública en Chile. http://www.ei-ie-al.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=492:cronolo gia-del-movimiento-por-la-educacion-publica-en-chile&catid=78:chile&Itemid=33 1

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8.4 Methods Methodologically speaking, a Protest Event Analysis (PEA) is carried out to describe educational protests in the Chilean post-dictatorship era. The PEA is a technique that allows the systematic analysis of protest events, using secondary sources of information, generally, press. With a tradition of more than 40 years, the PEA allows scholars to study the historical evolution of the trajectories and cycles of mobilization and social conflicts (Earl et al., 2004; Koopmans & Rucht, 1999; Olzak, 1989). In our case, three national Chilean newspapers were reviewed to develop the PEA: (i) El Mercurio; (ii) La Tercera; and (iii) La Nación. The selection of these sources sought to include media with high volumes of information (daily circulation); with different editorial lines, to control this potential bias (Ortiz et al., 2005); and that they were present throughout the study period (1990–2019), to give temporal continuity to the possible bias produced by the selection of newspapers (Koopmans, 2007). For each newspaper, we read the news and extract the protest events following two steps. First, all the news items that involved educational protests were selected. Subsequently, these pieces of news were contrasted between the different newspapers, allowing to build each protest event. This process was developed by two researchers independently. For each protest event, a set of variables were coded. They include information about the participants (number of participants, social actors and social or political organizations involved in each protest), the demands (declared objective of the protest) and tactics. Regarding the tactics, we follow Medel and Somma’s work (2016) and distinguish between: (i) conventional contained tactics (demonstrations, rallies); (ii) culturally contained tactics (concerts, arts performances); (iii) non-violent transgressive tactics (occupations of public or private places) and (iv) violent transgressive tactics (destruction of street furniture or private property). In order to analyze the geographical dimension of social protests, three variables were coded: (i) the region and city where the protest events take place; (ii) the location where the protest takes place, distinguishing between symbolic places of institutional power (state buildings, government offices), public space (squares, parks, streets) or educational institutions, trying to capture the different qualities of places (Endres & Senda-Cook, 2011) and; (iii) a variable to distinguish if the protest had (or not) a national scope, as a proxy of scale (Dufour, 2020). In total, 1.766 protest events were codified.

8.5 Findings Protest events can take place on different scales. In this sense, social movements can deploy different geographical strategies to maximize the effectiveness of their actions. Thus, multiscalar strategies such as ‘scale-jumping’ can contribute to

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increase the pressure on central governments and alter the structure of political opportunities (Dufour, 2020; Miller & Nicholls, 2013). This scaling process is important in a large country like Chile, with 756.950  km2 of extension between Arica (in the far north) and Punta Arenas (in the far south). Figure 8.1 shows the distribution of national and regional protests in education between 1990 and 2019. In our case, national protests were defined as those protests that took place in at least four non-adjacent regions (of a total of 16 regions). As can be seen, there is a predominance of regional protests, which reach almost 90% of the total protests throughout the period, showing the importance of regional and local identity in the Chilean educational field (Fernández, 2014). However, there was an increasing trend in national protests during the first two decades of the 2000’s (2005–2014), which was incredibly intense in 2008 (in August, seeking the elimination of the Constitutional Organic Law of Teaching, LOCE), 2011 (in August and September, focused on the demand of “free-tuition” in tertiary education and coordinated by the Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile, CONFECH) and 2014 (in support to the reform that sought the end of profit, selection and copayment in the school system, with big demonstrations in the first days of September). As other studies have indicated (Hernández, 2018; Bellei et  al., 2018; Valenzuela et  al., 2016), this increase in national protests could be explained by three factors: (i) the increased coordination of social movements in the national territory; (ii) the intensification of the use of digital technologies (especially social networks) in the

90

84

Number of protest events

80 70

73 68

64

66

64

60 50 40 30 18

20

21

11 11

10

11

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

0

National protest

Regional protest

Fig. 8.1  Local and National protests (1990–2019). (Source: Own elaboration, Project Fondecyt N° 11190198)

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coordination of protests and; (iii) the spread of protests throughout the territory, especially intense in 2011. Although most of the protests are focalized in one or two regions, their distribution in the national territory is quite heterogeneous. Table 8.1 shows the regional distribution of the educational protest in Chile. The first column describes the name of the regions, from north to south, while the second column displays the distribution of all protests. The other columns show the distribution of the three main actors’ protests in the educational field: (i) secondary students; (ii) university students and; (iii) teachers. Finally, the last column shows the percentage of population of each region with respect to the total of the country. As Table  8.1 shows, there is a high concentration of protests (69%) in the Metropolitan Region. This region not only concentrates more inhabitants and contains the only megacity in the country (Greater Santiago, with more than five million people) but it is also the city where almost the entire central government administration is concentrated, being for that reason the country’s central decision-­making node (Garretón, 2014). Besides, the Metropolitan Region concentrates the majority of educational institutions and is the main focus of educational reproduction of the elites (Villalobos et al., 2020; Moya & Hernández, 2017). In addition, the Metropolitan Region is considered a central place for discussion of educational policy and to protest, especially due to the power of two federations: the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile, FECH and the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad Católica, FEUC (Fleet & Guzmán-Concha, 2016). This could explain Table 8.1  Distribution of protest between regions (percentage) Region Arica and Parinacota Tarapacá Antofagasta Atacama Coquimbo Valparaíso Metropolitan Region Bernardo O’Higgins Maule Bio-Bío Araucanía Los Ríos Los Lagos Aysén Magallanes

Total protest 4%

Secondary Students 4%

University Students 6%

Teachers Population 3% 1%

3% 5% 2% 2% 16% 69%

4% 5% 1% 2% 19% 82%

4% 6% 2% 3% 22% 67%

3% 7% 1% 1% 17% 70%

2% 4% 2% 4% 10% 42%

1%

1%

0%

3%

5%

2% 12% 7% 3% 2% 0% 2%

3% 15% 9% 3% 2% 0% 1%

3% 16% 10% 4% 3% 0% 1%

2% 12% 6% 1% 2% 1% 4%

6% 11% 5% 2% 5% 1% 1%

Source: Own elaboration, Project Fondecyt N° 11190198

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the concentration of protest events in this region, which also tend to focus (more than 25%) in the country’s administrative capital: Santiago. As Marín (2014) and Paredes (2018) suggest, this focus in the “center of the country” can be showing the symbolic weight of public action in the specific space. In addition to the Metropolitan Region, the Valparaíso and Bío-Bío regions also have a high percentage of educational protests, with more protests than the percentage of inhabitants. Both regions are known for being important educational nodes, with historical regional universities (such as Universidad de Concepción, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Universidad de Valparaíso or la Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María) and being historical locus for youth protests, which could explain this concentration. In these cities, the protests have transformed the social geography of those urban areas, multiplied student meeting places (bars, squares, parks) and promoted artistic creation processes linked to the protests, especially in Valparaíso. Additionally, although the distribution of protest events among location and actors tends to be similar, there are some differences that need to be noted. Thus, the concentration of protest  events in the Metropolitan Region is lower in university students, with an increase in northern regions (where there are important university federations). In contrast, teachers’ and secondary students’ protests tend to be more spread throughout the territory. Finally, it is necessary to indicate that, in addition to being centralized and localized in a few regions, educational protests tend to be an eminently urban phenomenon. Thus, more than 93% of the protest events are concentrated in cities like Santiago, Concepción, Valparaíso-Viña del Mar, Copiapó, Coquimbo-La Serena, Temuco, Valdivia and Puerto Montt. In this sense, Chile’s educational protests are directly associated with the urban space and can be considered as a part of urban protest (Berroeta & Sandoval, 2014; Fernández, 2013), which could be explained by the geographical distribution of schools and universities, but also by the connection facilities (in transport and communications) offered by the urban landscape. Along with the scale and distribution of the protest, a second aspect of the geography of the protests is related to the location where the protest takes place. Figure  8.2 shows the historical evolution of the type of protest, distinguishing between three types of places: (i) public spaces, such as streets, sidewalks, parks or squares; (ii) symbolic places, understood as iconic spaces of institutional power (e.g., the Government House, the Ministry of Education or the courts of justice) and (iii) the educational establishment, including the protests developed both inside and on the front of this place. Figure 8.2 shows that there is a steady decline in protests in educational institutions, especially from the year 2000 until 2013, when they begin to increase gradually. In contrast, there is a slight increase in protests taking place in public spaces, which peaked in 2011, the year in which the protests were a subject of public debate and were developed especially in squares, parks and large avenues (Marín, 2014; Cuevas & Paredes, 2018), which could be showing how the space of the protest allows or conditions its dissemination. Two of the largest protests held in public spaces during that year were the so-called “Umbrella March” (August 19), where more than 200,000 students marched in Santiago under heavy rain; and the

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70

Number of protest events

60 50 40 30 20 10

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

0

Educational Institution

Public Place

Symbolic Place

Fig. 8.2  Space of protest (1990–2019). (Source: Own elaboration. Project Fondecyt N° 11190198)

Table 8.2  Distribution of protest among location and actors Symbolic places Educational institutions Public places Total protest

Secondary students 33% 44% 47% 570

Universitary students 26% 57% 34% 910

Teachers 32% 34% 33% 408

Source: Own elaboration. Project Fondecyt N° 11190198

so-­called “Day for Public Education” (August 30), where more than half a million people gathered in a political-cultural act in defense of Public Education in Almagro Park, in the downtown of Santiago. This general trend contains, however, relevant differences according to actors and types of protest. Tables 8.2 and 8.3 show how the place of the protest changes in an important way depending on which actor is involved and the tactics that the protesters develop. Regarding the actors, protests in public and symbolic spaces tend to be more present when secondary actors demonstrate, while protests by university students tend to take place more within or near educational institutions, which could be explained because universities in Chile tend to be larger than schools, bringing together thousands of students from different careers in the same place.

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Table 8.3  Distribution of protest among location and tactics

Symbolic places Educational institutions Public places Total protest

Conventional contained 42% 34%

Cultural contained 34% 35%

Non-violent transgressive 19% 72%

Violent transgressive 28% 47%

51% 917

57% 106

22% 1012

61% 362

Source: Own elaboration. Project Fondecyt N° 11190198

With regard to the tactics (Table 8.3), it can be observed that the conventional contained tactics (demonstrations, rallies) are developed both in public and symbolic spaces. As they congregate greater numbers of people, they tend to have a massive vocation and to highlight their peaceful nature (Della Porta, 2008). In this sense, it is not surprising that strikes, rallies and meetings occur preferably in open spaces. Similarly, cultural manifestations also tend to take place in public spaces (specially in parks, central avenues and pedestrian streets), mostly due to the repercussions they can cause, allowing passers-by to observe the artistic manifestation and attract the attention of large masses of the population (Cuevas & Paredes, 2018; Marín, 2014). In contrast to this trend, non-violent transgressive actions (like blocking streets and occupying buildings), that is, those that seek to disrupt routine, time, and social space, tend to take place mostly in educational institutions. Thus, following the tradition of the labor movement (Hobsbawm, 1973), the transgressive protests seek to break the “educational production chain”, subverting the established order of the school institution (e.g., see Peña & Sembler, 2019). Finally, the violent transgressive actions (burning of street furniture, destruction of public or private property) occur predominantly in open spaces, since a direct confrontation with the police forces is promoted, generating a scenario where the protest is understood as a “battle”, as happens with the well-known Alameda in the center of Santiago. In this way, the space of the protest seems to be a critical variable in two senses. Firstly, there appears to be a slow but constant transformation of the place of the protest, from a closed sphere to an open place, probably seeking to make the public place of educational discussion visible. Secondly, there seems to be a functional multiplication and differentiation of the protest spaces, depending on the tactics and actors involved, showing a non-homogeneous trend in this regard. Although with differences, these two trends are transforming the social geography of protest, building cities where educational protest is “outside” schools and universities, primarily when it acquires a massive character or has higher levels of violence, which amplifies its radio of influence in society as a whole.

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8.6 Conclusions In this chapter, we have analyzed the geography of social protests against privatization and market-oriented educational policies in Chile. As we have shown, the neoliberal reforms imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship, and consolidated during the first two decades of the Chilean post-dictatorship period, have been increasingly contested and resisted by grassroots movements. Since the emergence of the penguin movement in 2006, social protests in education have become a reference for social movements and activists worldwide. The impact of the student protests in the years 2006 and 2011 made many researchers interested in studying the processes of resistance in this country known for implementing a laboratory of neoliberal reforms in the Global South (Chovanec & Benitez, 2008). However, despite the efforts of some scholars to analyze the relationship between geography and social protests in the education sector (Hernández, 2018, 2019), the role of space and place in social protests in the education sector has been largely under-explored. Our research aimed to shed light on the geographical dimension of social protests in Chile’s education sector. This chapter highlights the importance of the multiscalar dynamics of protests and their historical evolution. First, the research has shown the key role of local identities in articulating collective action. However, the chapter has also identified a significant increase in the number of educational protests organized at the national level, which is explained by the consolidation of new coordination mechanisms that allow social movements to organize large-scale protests and by the irruption of emerging communication technologies and social networks, among other factors (Hernández, 2018; Valenzuela et al., 2016). Secondly, the chapter shows that the social conflict in education has manifested itself with greater intensity in urban areas such as the Santiago Metropolitan Region. These findings are not surprising if we take into account the fact that Chile is a country with a very centralist administrative tradition, with a capital city that concentrates most of the country’s political and economic power institutions (Garretón, 2014; Villalobos et al., 2020). Interestingly, our study also shows that both Valparaíso and the Bío-Bío region concentrate a significant number of contentious events, in part, due to the presence of higher education institutions and the consequent sedimentation of the student movement in these regions as well as the construction of a “culture of protest” linked to a counter-hegemonic perspective. The research also illuminates the mediating role of organizational and institutional factors in the territorial distribution of protests against neoliberal education reforms. This chapter indicates that contentious events led by secondary students and teachers tend to have a more homogeneous spread throughout the territory. In contrast, university students’ protests mainly focus on those regions with a greater presence of higher education institutions. Besides, our research also identifies the presence of student federations (mainly in the most prestigious universities) as a critical factor to understand the intensity with which protests are expressed.

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Finally, the chapter demonstrates the increase of protest events in public places. Specifically, we argue that the place of protest is a context-sensitive choice. In other words, the type of place where collective action is carried out depends largely on the actor organizing the protest and its political purposes. Thus, while secondary students tend to display their collective action repertoires in public places, university students are more inclined to select educational institutions (universities or campuses) to protest. Also, the place where collective action is performed appears to be highly influenced by the type of tactic that social movements choose. For example, while educational institutions facilitate the effectiveness of specific disruptive actions (specially the occupy of building), actions carried out in public and symbolic places tend to enable the participation of a large number of people and allow grassroots movements to socialize their demands. In short, our chapter points out the centrality of geography to analyze emerging resistances against neoliberal reforms in education. Specifically, it points out the importance of taking into account variables such as scale, space, and place in the analysis of social movements. Last but not least, analyzing the geographical dimension of contentious actions is essential to understand the formation of collective identities, as well as social movements’ organization, their repertoires of collective action, and their impacts on public policies.

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Medel, R., & Somma, N. (2016). ¿Marchas, ocupaciones o barricadas? Explorando los determinantes de las tácticas de la protesta en Chile. Política y Gobierno, 23(1), 163–199. Miller, B. (2004). Spaces of mobilization: Transnational social movements. In C.  Barnett & M. Low (Eds.), Spaces of Democracy (pp. 223–246). Sage. Miller, B.  A. (2007). Modes of governance, modes of resistance. In H.  Leitner, J.  Peck, & E. Sheppard (Eds.), Contesting neoliberalism (pp. 223–249). Guilford Press. Miller, B., & Nicholls, W. (2013). Social movements in urban society: The city as a space of politicization. Urban Geography, 34(4), 452–473. Moya, E., & Hernández, J. (2017). El Rol de los Colegios de Elite en la Reproducción intergeneracional de la Elite Chilena. Revista Austral De Ciencias Sociales, (26), 59–82. https://doi. org/10.4206/rev.austral.cienc.soc.2014.n26-­04 Nicholls, W. J. (2007). The geographies of social movements. Geography Compass, 1(3), 607–622. OECD. (2014). Education at a Glance report 2014. Available at http://www.oecd.org/education/ Education-­at-­a-­Glance-­2014.pdf Olzak, S. (1989). Analysis of events in the study of collective action. Annual Review of Sociology, 15, 119–141. Ortiz, D., Myers, D., Walls, E., & Diaz, M.-E. (2005). Where do we stand with newspaper data? Mobilization, 10(3), 397–419. Palacios-Valladares, I., & Ondetti, G. (2019). Student Protest and the Nueva Mayoría Reforms in Chile. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 38(5), 638–653. Papanastasiou, N. (2019). The politics of scale in policy: Scalecraft and education governance. Policy Press. Parcerisa, L., & Villalobos, C. (2020). Movimientos sociales y resistencia al accountability en Chile: estrategias discursivas, identidad y acciones de la campaña Alto al SIMCE. Revista Izquierdas, 49, 2427–2455. Paredes, J. P. (2018). En la calle y sin permiso, yo me educo y organizo. La manifestación de la educación pública como politización de la juventud chilena. In R. Torres, G. Urzúa, & J. C. Sanchéz (Eds.), Juventud y espacios de participación en Chile y América Latina (pp. 31–56). RIL. Peña, J., & Sembler, M. (2019). Movilizaciones estudiantiles y liderazgo directivo: un estudio exploratorio en tres liceos de la Región Metropolitana. Calidad en la Educación, 51, 315–349. Routledge, P. (1996). Critical geopolitics and terrains of resistance. Political Geography, 15(6–7), 509–531. Salinas, D., & Fraser, P. (2012). Educational opportunity and contentious politics: The 2011 Chilean Student Movement. Berkeley Review of Education, 3(1), 17–47. Salmenkari, T. (2009). Geography of protest: Places of demonstration in Buenos Aires and Seoul. Urban Geography, 30(3), 239–260. Sikkink, K. (2005). Patterns of dynamic multilevel governance and the insider-outsider coalition. In D. Della Porta & S. Tarrow (Eds.). Transnational protest & global activism, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Smith, N. (1992). Geography, difference, and the politics of scale. In J. Doherty, E. Graham, & M. Malek (Eds.), Postmodernism and the social sciences (pp. 57–79). Macmillan. Somma, N. (2012). The Chilean student movement of 2011–2012: Challenging the marketization of education. Interface. Journal for and About Social Movements, 4(2), 296–309. Somma, N., Bargsted, M., Disi-Pavlic, R., & Medel, R. (2021). No water in the oasis: the Chilean Spring of 2019–2020. Social Movement Studies, 20(4), 495–502. Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in movement. Social movements and contentious politics. Cambridge University Press. Thielemann, L. (2016). La anomalía social de la transición. Movimiento estudiantil e izquierda universitaria en el Chile de los noventa (1987–2000). Tiempo Robado. Treviño, E., Mintrop, R., Villalobos, C., & Órdenes, M. (2018). What might happen if school vouchers and privatization of schools were to become universal in the US: Learning from a National Test Case-Chile. National Education Policy Center.

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Valenzuela, S., Somma, N., Sherman, A., & Arriagada, A. (2016). Social media in Latin America: Deepening or bridging gaps in protest participation? Online Information Review, 40(5), 695–711. Verger, A., Fondtdevila, C., & Zancajo, A. (2015). The privatization of education. A political economy of global reform. Teachers College Press. Villalobos, C. (2016). El campo educativo en Chile post-dictadura (1990–2013). Continuidad y ruptura en la implementación del neoliberalismo en educación. In A. Pinol (Ed.), Democracia versus neoliberalismo. 25 años de neoliberalismo en Chile (pp.  159–178). Fundación Rosa Luxemburgo-ICAL. Villalobos, C., & Ortiz-Inostroza, C. (2019). Continuidades y rupturas de la protesta universitaria en el Chile post-dictadura. Temas Sociológicos, 24(1), 89–120. Villalobos, C., & Quaresma, M. (2015). Sistema escolar chileno: características y consecuencias de un modelo orientado al mercado. Convergencia, 69(1), 63–84. Villalobos, C., Quaresma, M. L., & Franetovic, G. (2020). Mapeando a la élite en las universidades chilenas. Un análisis cuantitativo-multidimensional. Revista Española de Sociología, 29(3), 523–541. Villalobos, C., Bellei, C., & Pereira, S. (2021). Ciudadanía, protestas y juventud. Un análisis socio-histórico del ciclo de protestas educativas en la post-dictadura chilena (1990–2014). In C.  Villalobos, M.  J. Morel, & E.  Treviño (Eds.), Ciudadanías, educación y juventudes. Investigaciones y debates para el Chile del futuro (pp. 433–467). Ediciones UC. Villalobos, C., Pereira, S., & Lagos, T. (2022). Protestas docentes en el Chile post-dictadura (1990–2019). Tendencias, características y variables explicativas. Movimientos, Revista Mexicana de Estudio de los Movimientos Sociales, 6(1), 33–56. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press. Zald, M., & Ash, R. (1966). Social movement organizations: Growth, decay and change. American Journal of Sociology, 44(3), 327–340.

Chapter 9

Filling in the Gaps – Alternative Schools in French Rural Areas: From the Dismantling of Public Education to a New Horizon for Educational Entrepreneurs Aurélie Delage, Nora Nafaa, and Manon Riffard Abstract  Developing a geographical analysis, this paper questions the recent and accelerated diffusion of “alternative” schools (mobilizing alternative pedagogies, and of non-contractual private status) in the French rural space. Through an exhaustive mapping of the school market in two departments, the life stories of the educational entrepreneurs who have set up these schools, and a territorial re-contextualization, it appears that this niche offer is both militant in marginal areas seen as a fertile ground for alternatives, and opportunistic in the interstices of the public system that is withdrawing from low-density areas. It is based on a commercial logic that is ambivalent in its methods (entrepreneurial) and values (alternatives to the dominant educational and societal system). This implicit transfer of a public service competence to the private sector ultimately raises questions about its durability in marginal areas. Keywords  “Alternative” schools · Peripheral areas · Educational entrepreneurs · Commodification · Privatization

A. Delage Geography and Urban Planning, University of Perpignan, Perpignan, France e-mail: [email protected] N. Nafaa (*) SAGE Institute, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] M. Riffard University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, Toulouse, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_9

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9.1 Introduction: An “Alternative” to What?1 Alternative education or schools have gained popularity in recent years. Highly publicized, they nevertheless represent only 2–3% of pupils in France (Wagnon, 2019). While their visibility is increasing, their definition remains unclear as they designate a myriad of various situations (home schooling, de-schooling, new educations, unchartered private schools...). Above all, the term does not cover the same institutional and educational realities in different countries (Aron, 2006). In English, the term “alternative education” refers to establishments intended for students with special needs, those who are no longer accepted in the traditional school system because they have a disability (visual or auditory for example), are subject to a disciplinary or legal sanction (prison schools, hands’ on schools…), or need a more important socio-emotional framework (addictions, trauma, mental illness). French alternative schools refer more specifically to the alternative pedagogies associated with the different schools of thoughts of new education such as those developed by Maria Montessori, Célestin Freinet, Rudolf Steiner or Ovide Decroly. Born at the beginning of the twentieth century, they have been reinvested in the last twenty years by teachers creating schools based on these models, among which the Montessori one is the most popular (Viaud, 2017). Other schools of thought, such as democratic or ecocitizen schools, are also joining them. Thus, while in English-­ speaking countries, the alternative school signals a choice by default and welcomes students who cannot attend a conventional school, in France, schooling in alternative schools – especially elementary schools2 – is most often the result of a positive choice, through adherence to different pedagogical philosophies, or even an explicit refusal of the public school system (methods, representation of the institution, etc.). The alternative schools at the heart of this article are in fact alternative in two ways. Pedagogically, these schools adopt a method “presented as profoundly new and at odds with the usual or ‘traditional’ forms of pedagogy, which are thus criticized” (Leroy, 2022, p.  3). The criticism focuses first of all on the vertical and monodirectional transmission of knowledge between teacher and learner, which is widely developed in public schools, although these schools are not reduced to this form.3 These schools are also institutionally alternative: often having an associative status, they belong to the category of unchartered private schools. Since they do not receive public funding, they are not required to follow the National Education  This chapter has been partly published previously in a French scientific peer-reviewed review. It has been enriched with newer information. See Delage, Nafaa and Riffard, 2022. 2  This “positive” choice certainly diminishes with each grade level: as they grow up, children may have experienced difficulties adapting to the traditional educational system (for a variety of reasons: malaise, boredom, school phobia, harassment, ADHD, HIP, etc.), which leads their parents to change them to a school that implements alternative pedagogies. 3  This simplistic categorization should not obscure the adoption, within the national education system, of pedagogical methods inspired by alternative pedagogies, whether in the context of experiments, micro-high schools, or Montessori classes in public primary education (Allam, 2020; Hugon et al., 2021; Leroy, 2022; Reuter et al., 2013; de Saint-Denis, 2017; Viaud, 2017). 1

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p­ rogram, except to prepare for the National Common Core (Socle Commun des Connaissances) (Viaud, 2005) or to respect Republican values. They must mainly meet the safety conditions for receiving the public. Free in their teaching, unchartered schools can also move away from the “classic” school form (like Forest Schools, for example). Out of step with their high media profile, these alternative schools still constitute a “blind spot in French research” (Allam & Wagnon, 2018): the scientific literature offers a few portraits of alternative schools or educations (Kraftl, 2013), or even a first overview (Leroy, 2022; Viaud, 2017; Wagnon, 2019) of this “galaxy” (Allam & Wagnon, 2018), in approaches that combine educational sciences, political science or sociology. On the other hand, there are no geographical studies, probably due to the relatively new nature of this object, in a field of study that is still under construction and has very imprecise contours, particularly in French geography (Giband et al., 2022). A geography-based approach places the development of schools in a spatial and institutional context in order to understand their role in territorial dynamics (inhabitant practices, games of actors, mobilities, etc.). The analysis therefore does not focus on the pedagogical content developed in these schools, nor on the cleavages between the different currents (Allam & Wagnon, 2018). By their doubly alternative nature, these establishments participate in a now well-documented movement of privatization of education (Chevaillier & Pons, 2019): legally of private status, they fall under “exogenous” privatization (Ball & Youdell, 2007). Through the educational methods developed, they take the form of “individualized privatization,” that is, “in search of an alternative model of education on behalf of the needs and interests of the child-individual” (Chevaillier & Pons, 2019, p. 35). It is precisely the articulation of these two forms of privatization that this article seeks to interrogate, by putting them to the test of the territory and market logics from which education no longer escapes (Dubet, 2007). For a long time, the prerogative of the central State, thus escaping the extension of the hold of market logics onto public services (Coutard et  al., 2020), education is now, like other sectors, experiencing a disengagement of the State, leaving room for other actors. An individualized offer, which is a niche market in an otherwise largely massified education system, may at first sight seem economically profitable where the demand is the strongest – that is, in dense (urban) areas, where there is the widest range of choices, and where school markets tend to diversify and segment. Does this mean that alternative schools are absent from rural areas, where education is notoriously more expensive or less profitable due to low densities (Gauthier & Luginbühl, 2012, p. 40)? A simple internet request quickly shows that this is not the case, thus challenging traditional market logics. The public disengagement in education leads local authorities to play an increasing role in the educational landscape of their territory (Glasman, 2005) in order to preserve their attractiveness. To what extent does this “new local educational order” (Ben Ayed, 2009), essentially thought of in urban areas, find a new expression in the establishment of alternative schools in rural areas, reshuffling the cards of interactions between public (mainly local elected officials) and private (mainly educational entrepreneurs) actors? Following the example of what has been postulated for urban

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areas in decline, seen as a fertile ground for innovation (Béal & Rousseau, 2014), we hypothesize that rural territories constitute a space conducive to the establishment of these alternative schools. It is true that (hyper-)rural areas offer a limited pool of potential students, but the opening of a school in these areas does not follow traditional economic and entrepreneurial logic (i.e., driven by the profit motive). Indeed, as it has been observed since the early 2000s in both urban and rural areas, these schools are often financially fragile, relying for example on volunteers to maintain themselves.4 Often, the opening of a rural alternative school is also part of the adoption of different lifestyles, and finds its justification in alternative territorial development models, which the distance from urban centers perhaps makes easier – or necessary. As geographers, we therefore question the recent and accelerated diffusion of these schools in rural areas, as a different pedagogical offer, an alternative to the institutional pedagogical offer, and their inclusion in specific territorial dynamics. Our proposal is based on exploratory research5 based on two field surveys conducted in different contexts. The first fieldwork is located in the Dordogne, in the diagonal of low densities. Essentially agricultural and rural, this department, which has no large polarizing city, is located at the northeastern limits of the area of influence of the Bordeaux metropolis. For several decades, it has been experiencing a rural renaissance due to the settlement of new populations, particularly French and English (Velasco-Graciet, 2006). The second area chosen is that of the Pyrénées-­ Orientales, on the southern periphery of the metropolitan territory, and largely classified as a “mountain area”. Demographically attractive (heliotropism of the Mediterranean rim), this department suffers from a deficit of jobs that tourism does not make up for, making it one of the poorest territories in the country. In these two marginal departments, an exhaustive mapping of the school markets was carried out thanks to the constitution of unpublished databases. It was complemented by a qualitative survey based on case studies of alternative schools between 2018 and 2020 (a dozen semi-directive interviews with educational, political and administrative actors in the territories concerned). This qualitative methodology aims to understand the territorial inscription of these schools. The life stories that we collected from the bearers of alternative school projects make it possible to place them in a set of social interactions: this approach, which is similar to the analysis of social networks, enabled us to understand “behaviors not explained by a purely economic analysis” (Arrow, 1998, p. 93, cited by Rème, 2008, p. 8).

 See on this subject the communications of the VIIth research day of the network of “Research on different pedagogies” devoted to “The economic dimension of educational alternatives: actors, interests, pedagogies, controversies”, which took place on April 14, 2021 in Gennevilliers. Online: https://www.recherchespedagogiesdifferentes.net/la-dimension-e769conomique-des-alternativese769ducatives-avril-2021.html (accessed on 31/10/2022). 5  This exploratory research began with an introductory research workshop with the students of Licence 3 Géographie Aménagement of the University of Perpignan (2019–2020). The fieldwork on the Ur school is the result of this workshop (group of Aïcha Abdillah, Zoé Persico and Manon Riffard). 4

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The analysis is deployed using a multi-scalar approach. First, the mapping of the educational offer in the two departments aims to place the alternative schools in the local educational market, more or less polarized by the medium-sized cities of these territories. Then, the paper focuses on two specific case studies (one in each department): the portrait of the project leaders of these alternative schools reveals the personal and professional trajectory of these educational entrepreneurs, a key to understanding the motivations for the location of these schools. Finally, by questioning the interactions of these schools with their environment, we qualify their territorial anchoring in order to put into perspective the alternative nature of the proposed educational offer.

9.2 Geography of an Alternative School Market Filling in the Public System Gaps The term “school market” is now commonly used to refer to the supply of education (public and private) at all levels, as well as the dynamics of demand. Often used in the plural to designate a variety of configurations, the terms “school markets” or “educational markets” mainly account for educational competition linked to “the search for the best possible educational quality as well as, for the upper classes in particular, the reproduction of their social status” (Felouzis et al., 2013, p. 4). In order to be able to position alternative schools in these markets and assess their attractiveness, we first draft a panorama of the French school system and market, then we mapped all school markets in both territories, both public and private. All the primary and secondary schools were listed and located in relation to our double standard, both educational and institutional. Then, in a more territorial approach, we crossed the educational offer with the types of areas concerned  – urban and rural, more or less in decline.

9.2.1 Alternative Schools, Alternative to What? The French school system is highly centralized. Based on a national administration, the Ministry of Education (Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale), it is divided in administrative regions named Academies. The structure is the same everywhere, as for the curricula, the teacher hiring process, the division of school grades (elementary, middle and high schools). The education system can be divided in three categories that relate to the public schools as the norm: the public schools, the private chartered schools and the private unchartered schools (Table 9.1). The alternative to the norm is adjusted to the category of schools. The private schools are ruled by a private administration and collect private funding (tuition fees, subventions). The chartered ones however receive indirect public funding as

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Table 9.1  School norms et alternatives in the French education system Category Type of schools

Funding

Public Neighborhood schools Specialized schools Public

Pedagogy

National curricula

Values

National values

Chartered private schools Unchartered private schools Traditional confessional schools Associative schools Bilingual and regional schools

Specialized schools

Public + tuitions fees and other contributions from the parents + subventions National curricula

Tuition fees and other contributions from the parents + subventions Alternative pedagogies (actives, cooperatives, traditionals…) Free

In adequacy with national values

Conception and realization: A. Delage, N. Nafaa & M. Riffard, UMR ART-Dev, 2022

the educators (teachers and educational staff) are paid by the State. They are privately hired, even though they go through public certifications. The unchartered private schools are completely privately funded and pay their educational staff through private funds. This categorization of public/private schools, and chartered/unchartered schools create an institutional alternative, but also a pedagogical alternative. As schools receive less funding from the State, they are allowed to implement other pedagogies and values. The chartered private schools usually are traditional confessional schools (mainly catholic schools, Israelite schools) or bilingual and regional schools (Breton, Catalan, Corsican…). As they receive public funds, the charter with the State compels them to follow the national curricula and promote values that are in adequacy with national values. For example, Catholic chartered schools are authorized to propose religious classes but have to propose an alternative class for students who are not catholic, and therefore be in adequacy with the value of laicity. Unchartered schools, on the contrary, do not receive any public fund and consequently can practice any type of curricula, and promote values they wish. These schools, proposing an alternative funding – that is fully private, can then propose an alternative education as well.

9.2.2 In Dordogne: Schools in the Gaps Left by the Public Schools The school market in Dordogne is organized in a fairly traditional way between small urban centers and rural and agricultural areas (Fig. 9.1). Most of secondary schools are located in the cities (Périgueux, Bergerac), as are the chartered private schools. As for the unchartered schools, they are distributed in both urban and rural areas. However, if we refine the analysis of these schools, and select those that claim to offer an alternative pedagogy as defined in the introduction, it appears that they

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Fig. 9.1  Map of a fairly public school market in Dordogne

are all located in rural areas (Fig. 9.2). The second map allows us to identify them according to the pedagogies practiced. The only unchartered private school located in town, in Bergerac (27,000 inhabitants), is the Sainte Jeanne d’Arc school, which defends a “traditional Catholic pedagogy”,6 and as such is excluded from our panel because of the absence of an alternative pedagogical method. The eight alternative schools that meet our dual criteria are therefore located in rural areas. Among these eight schools, five are located in townships where no public school is listed, and are thus part of an Intercommunal Pedagogical Grouping (RPI). Either these villages are so small demographically that they have never had a public school, or they are villages that have lost population and whose school has closed. The children of these villages are therefore forced to go to the school of another village belonging to the same RPI. This system was set up in low-density territories with the aim of rationalizing costs by the public authority; it was particularly aimed at closing schools with “single classes” (i.e., grouping together all educational levels), which were considered both too costly and perhaps also symbolic of an obsolete school form (Alpe, 2012). RPI can take two forms: several schools merge into one, so only one is kept open, as is the case in one of the eight townships  Presented as such on the school’s website, it refers to principles developed by Sarah A. Curtis (Curtis, 2003). 6

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Fig. 9.2  Map of a rural unchartered private school market in Dordogne

in the department housing an alternative school, or each school retains only one or two grade levels, forcing children to change schools (townships) several times during their primary education. This arrangement can be a deterrent for some parents, because of the longer transportation time to school. One of the eight townships with an alternative school has a school in a Priority Education Network (Réseau d’Education Prioritaire – REP), which means that the students belong to disadvantaged households. This categorization also has a repulsive effect on some families who find it stigmatizing. It is therefore apparent that alternative schools are mainly rural and develop in the gaps in public provision, i.e., in areas where there are no longer any public schools, but also in areas where public provision is not attractive.

9.2.3 In the Pyrénées-Orientales: Schools in Direct Competition with the Public Sector The school market in the Pyrénées-Orientales is also organized according to a logic that differentiates rural areas from urban areas (Fig. 9.3). The main city, Perpignan (120,000 inhabitants, 200,000 agglomerated inhabitants), has a very large number of schools, both public and private, chartered and unchartered, complemented by secondary centers on the coast and small towns in the hinterland (Prades, Céret,

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Fig. 9.3  Map of a diversified school market showcasing a strong private education offer in the Pyrénées-Orientales

Font-Romeu). Among the unchartered schools, the variety of pedagogies practiced is also more important (Fig. 9.4). The classic alternative currents can be found in ecocitizen, secular, Montessori and plural pedagogy schools... but they are completed by another abundant private educational offer, made up of schools with a so-called “traditional” or denominational pedagogy, but also more innovative through bilingualism or the arts. Two alternative education markets coexist in the department. In Perpignan and its immediate surroundings, new schools have sprung up in recent years and the survey reveals that the alternative is more a matter of school marketing (Cucchiara, 2013; Nafaa, 2021). In a hyper-pauperized city (Giband et al., 2021), where a majority of schools belong to the priority education network and where the chartered private school offer, particularly diocesan, is already highly developed, the mobilization of the “alternative pedagogy” argument allows certain schools to differentiate themselves on the market and to attract middle-class parents who are anxious to distinguish themselves with a view to placing their children in a private secondary school. A second market for alternative schools is found in rural areas, and, as in the Dordogne, mainly in the interstices of the public service. These schools are located in townships where the village school has closed, or where the growing demography makes it possible to offer another school without emptying the first. The analysis of these two territories thus allows us to distinguish between an urban market and a rural market for alternative schools. In the city, the schools are

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Fig. 9.4  Map of an alternative school market polarized by Perpignan in the Pyrénées-Orientales

located as close as possible to the demand, and the alternative can appear as an opportunity in the positioning of the school offer. Rural alternative schools seem to find a more favorable environment for an alternative pedagogical and institutional offer. The absence of competition from the public sector is associated with a market niche proposed by these schools. The approach by the peripheral territories, sometimes in disarray for the most marginal, leads us to question the very term “alternative”. Is it still an alternative when there is no longer a public school, or when the latter is a deterrent? These alternative schools appear in these territories as a “non-­ alternative”, neither pedagogical nor institutional, since the free public school is no longer present there.

9.3 Alternative Market Players: Opportunities for New Edupreneurs in Rural Areas The gaps in the public sector in rural areas are materially manifested by school wastelands, particularly former communal schools. They are part of the long movement of desertification of public services in these areas.7 Several authors  See the information report on the evaluation of access to public services in rural areas, presented to the National Assembly on October 10, 2019 by deputies J.-P. Dufraigne and J.-P. Mattei. Online: https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/15/rapports/cec/l15b2297_rapport-information, accessed on 10/31/2022. 7

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have nevertheless shown that the position of periphery, or margin, can be conducive to the birth of alternative initiatives (Hakimi-Pradels, 2021; Longhurst, 2013; Neumeier, 2012). The field investigation explored this avenue through two case studies and an in-depth investigation at a micro-scale within two schools. By collecting the life stories of the project holders, the figure of the edupreneur stood out.

9.3.1 Outdoor Schools Out of the System The alternative unchartered schools in our study are located on the hyper-rural margins of two departments that are themselves peripheral. Their profile is similar in that they are both in townships whose public school has closed leaving few options available in the immediate vicinity. The first school is La Tour Rose. It is located in Saint-Pierre-de-Frugie, on the edge of the Périgord Limousin, equidistant from the two nearby urban centers, Limoges and Périgueux. The township of 400 inhabitants, marked by traditional agricultural activity (mixed farming and livestock) has seen its population halved in fifty years due to a strong rural exodus. At the beginning of the 2010s, with a change of mayor, the township took a clear ecological turn by choosing a “zero herbicide” policy and a more general affirmation of an increased concern for the environment. It is in this context that the Montessori school was created. It opened in 2015 and welcomed 6 students the first year. In 2020, 23 students divided into 3 classes attended the school, a figure that rose to 35 students the following year. Due to the success of the Montessori school and a cohort effect, an unchartered private middle school, also based on alternative pedagogical choices and an associative status, opened in 2019.8 Faithful to the principles of Montessori education, the school favors autonomous work using teaching materials made by the educators. The school is set up in a house with a large garden on the edge of town, offering a clear view of the surrounding countryside. Initially, the living room was set up as a classroom (Fig. 9.5a). But as the number of pupils increased, the whole house was progressively transformed into an educational space: the two bedrooms (Fig.  9.5b), then the garage, transformed into a multifunctional space (grouping all the pupils for common activities such as motor skills, games or meditation). The last extension was financed by a participatory fund.9 Break times are in the lawn in front of the house (Fig. 9.5c), which includes a vegetable garden, a henhouse and a composter (out of the picture).

 But this experience was short-lived, in part due to the Covid-19 health crisis that plagued its first year of operation. 9  See online: https://www.helloasso.com/associations/association%20ambre/collectes/youpi-onagrandit-l-ecole, accessed on 10/31/2022. 8

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Fig. 9.5  Photographies of La Tour Rose school at Saint-Pierre-de-Frugie in Dordogne (a) Main classroom (former living room). The furniture is put away for the holidays. (b) Activities individual room (former bedroom). (c) Recreation area with huts and chicken coop. The vegetable garden and the compost are outside the field (former pleasure garden). (Source: Delage, Nafaa & Riffard, UMR ART-Dev, autumn 2019)

The children are thus in direct contact with nature, as recommended in the Montessori pedagogy. The second school in the investigation is the Ecole Libre de Cerdagne (Free school of Cerdanya) in the township of Ur in the western part of the Pyrénées-­ Orientales, the least densely populated area of the department. This mid-mountain township is located on the border between France and Spain and has 362 inhabitants. Font-Romeu, the nearest intermediate center, is 15 kilometers away and the center of higher services, Prades, is 60 kilometers away. The low number of children led to the closure of the public elementary school in the township, which joined the

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inter-township educational grouping of Latour-de-Carol, Enveitg, Porté-Puymorens and Porta in 2016. The premises of the former public school presented a suitable site for the opening of the private school. The mayor made the premises of the former public school available in exchange for a symbolic rent which allowed the Ecole Libre de Cerdagne to open its doors in February 2017. It welcomes 11 children of kindergarten and elementary levels in a Montessori pedagogy class. The school is organized around a classroom, a playroom and an outdoor courtyard that overlooks the mountains. The two rooms separate the kindergarten students from the elementary school students. The classroom includes a few tables and Montessori materials (Fig. 9.6a). The children are grouped in heterogeneous age groups and manipulate objects in learning workshops of their choice or that have been suggested to them by the accompanying adults. They decide to enter the elementary level, which means they have to do two workshops a day. The playroom includes a playhouse, Montessori materials, books and toys (Fig. 9.6b). The outdoor play area is set up on the grass around the chestnut trees (Fig. 9.6c). A stream, the Riu, runs at the foot of the school. The school is multilingual: the languages spoken in the school are French, Catalan and Castilian.

9.3.2 Personal Convictions and Spatial Opportunism for Edupreneurs In both schools, the project to create a Montessori school is the work of two young women whom we call educational entrepreneurs or edupreneurs. At the Tour Rose, as at the Ecole Libre de Cerdagne, they are former teachers from the French Ministry of Education system who have chosen to leave their position in a public school to start a school. After having both followed a Montessori training, one within the AMI network (International Montessori Association)10 and the other not, they decided to create their own school. For both of them, motherhood was the trigger for their conversion – sometimes coupled with dissatisfaction with the pedagogies practiced in the public system. In both cases, the choice of the Montessori pedagogy is a life choice, associated with an educational project (Giraud, 2019; Leroy, 2022). The implementation strategy is also similar for both schools. The two teachers explain that they chose a village where the public school had closed (in 2006  in Saint-Pierre-de-Frugie and 2015  in Ur). Pragmatically, they had noticed that the reception was more favorable in these villages because the elected officials were not afraid that a new school would “steal” precious students to keep the public school open. On the contrary, it was a question of offering a school where there was none left. Both of them report a positive relationship with the local community, since the

 The Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), founded in 1929 by Maria Montessori, promotes the principles of Montessori education through training and certification of educational materials. 10

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Fig. 9.6  Photographies of the École Libre de Cerdagne at Ur in the Pyrénées-Orientales (a) Classroom (b) Play room (c) Outdoor playground. (Source: Delage, Nafaa and Riffard, UMR ART-Dev, february 2020)

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mayors of the two rural communities helped them set up their project and find a location. In Ur, the former public school is used for a symbolic rent. In Saint-Pierre-­ de-Frugie, the former school having already been reinvested (to make a communal lodging), it is a house in the communal estate which is rented at low cost, while waiting for the refitting of a communal barn. The concretization of the project was also fast for the two teachers: in Ur, the association was created in 2015 and the school opened in 2017. In Saint-Pierre-Frugie, the project was set up in 6 months in 2015. It must be said that when she went to the town hall to present her project, the young woman noticed on the mayor’s desk a file entitled “alternative school” (source: interview in November 2019), a sign of a certain local expectation in this matter. The township was then in the midst of redefining its communal strategy, which would soon be summed up in the slogan “another life is invented here”. The alternative school then became a key part of its argument to attract new families concerned about the quality of their living environment and the possible education of their children (as will be developed in the third part). The schools then developed very quickly. In Ur, the school offers part-time schooling, 25 hours per week, provided by two full-time educators who also hold other jobs to supplement their salaries. For La Tour Rose, four full-time educators now provide care for 35 children aged 3–12 (2021–2022). The success of the second school has led its director to accompany other alternative educational projects in the department, which shows both the spin-off effect of alternative schools and the creation of a professional network in northern Dordogne. The path of these two teachers is based on two logics. The first is entrepreneurial in nature. As project leaders, they set up the project (both financially and pedagogically), canvassed municipalities and families, and developed a territorial implementation strategy. The second logic is more geographical. By selecting hyper-rural areas on the margins of the markets, or even the education systems, they select areas where demand is strong and comes from both families and communities. These hyper-rural communities without public schools are an opportunity for these schools to set up shop and for local elected officials11 to become more attractive, thereby establishing a “win-win” relationship. Moreover, hyper-rural areas are conducive to experimentation because they have, as these two schools show, open spaces, available land at low cost, and natural amenities nearby that are valued in alternative pedagogies. If in the case of Saint-Pierre-de-Frugie, the children who attend the school now also come from the township (with a certain sociological bias),12 this is not yet the case for the school in Ur, which does not yet have any children from the township. Two hypotheses can be formulated: on the one hand, the parents of the children of these townships are not sensitive to alternative pedagogy – either because they are  Schools play an important role in the settlement policies of municipalities, especially rural ones, whether they are private schools, as here, or public ones (Barrault-Stella, 2021). 12  If at the beginning, the Montessori school enrolled only children from outside the commune, gradually, with the sociological renewal of the commune, it also welcomes children from neo-rural areas (source: interviews 2019 and 2020). 11

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unaware of it or because they do not adhere to it. On the other hand, the cost of these unchartered private schools can be a barrier for some modest households. Although the project leaders we met explained to us that they wanted to free up a minimum of salary and reduce school costs as much as possible (in line with a certain search for sobriety), the fact remains that enrolment fees amount to several thousand euros per child. Admittedly, in the alternative school market, these are still inexpensive schools,13 but it raises the question of access to education and the inclusive or segregative potential of such an educational offer. Doesn’t the latter risk revealing a divide between, on the one hand, a population that benefits from diversified cultural capital and sufficient financial capital to pay for a local private education, and, on the other hand, populations that lack such capital and are more captive to the limited local public offer? If the pupils of these alternative schools do not necessarily come from the township, the postulated anchoring of these schools must then be questioned in the light of the reality of the relations woven between the school and its environment, whether the latter is understood in the sense of natural resources or social and economic interactions.

9.4 Alternative Schools Unequally Anchored in Their Territory: Off-the-Ground School or Ferment of an Alternative Way of Life? Beyond the mapping of these school markets and the analysis of their installation in peripheral territories, a second question guided our investigation. If these peripheral and marginal territories appear to be an opportunity for these edupreneurs to settle, are they an opportunity for development and attractiveness for the territories that host them?

9.4.1 A Hyper-Local School in a Vast Outdoor Playground One of the main lines of force of the new educations to which the Montessori pedagogy belongs is the importance of the educational environment, both the classroom and the immediate environment as a learning space. In this logic, rural schools are conducive to a large number of outdoor activities. The Ecole Libre de Cerdagne,

 2500 euros against 5 to 6000 euros for more urban alternative schools for example. Discounts are available depending on the number of children. For the start of the 2021–2022 school year, the Rose Tower school has implemented a sliding scale according to family income, ranging from 2880 to 5760 euros per child (source: school website, “2022–2023 registration fees” document). 13

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located in the middle of the mountains, allows us to highlight this integration of the school’s immediate environment. The first scale of analysis is that of the village, which appears to be a learning space (Fig.  9.7). The outing area is restricted (and therefore essentially done on foot): the accompanying teachers suggest visiting the surrounding businesses, industries and construction sites. A trip outside the school is proposed at least once a week. The choice of destinations is linked to the sources of interest observed in the children and the resources available in the area. This space responds to an ultra-­ local logic of pedagogy: the preserved rural territory is an educational resource. The second scale of analysis focuses more on the catchment area of the students, which is the townships where the families live. The school’s students live in six townships scattered throughout the valley, but none in Ur. Distances vary, and in the mountain context, the travel time is more relevant to estimate the constraint represented by the journey (which can be lengthened according to the climatic conditions, in particular the snowing of the roads). In normal travel conditions, the furthest family lives half an hour away by car, in La Cabanasse, east of Ur. The school is part of an extra-local school market, the catchment area is extended and does not concern the township where it is located. The length of the travel time (which can be found in the La Tour Rose school, where some children – including the project leader – can travel up to 45 min daily one way) is a sure indication of the attractiveness of this niche educational market. A thousand miles away from the

LA CABANASSE Distance : 22 km Travel time : 24 min Number of children : 3 ANGOUSTRINE Distance : 2.5 km Travel time : 4 min Number of children : 2

SAILLAGOUSE Distance : 11 km Travel time : 12 min Number of children : 1

SPAIN

BOURG-MADAME Distance : 3 km Travel time : 4 min Number of children : 1 École Libre de Cerdagne Children's place of residence Place of school trip School trip area

ERR Distance : 12 km Travel time : 13 min Number of children : 1 OSSEJA Distance : 7 km Travel time : 9 min Number of children : 1

Recruitment pool Main roads Natural land Built environment

Conception and realisation : A. Delage, N. Nafaa, M. Riffard, 2022

Fig. 9.7 Map of the area of influence of the Ecole Libre de Cerdagne in Ur in the Pyrénées-Orientales

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assertion of a (public) school accessible to all – physically, i.e., nearby, and financially because it is free  – these alternative schools reveal the power of parental motivations in the free educational choice of their children, coupled with a material capacity to implement them (motorization, disbursement of several thousand euros per child).

9.4.2 A School at the Heart of an Alternative Ecosystem: Does the Alternative Feed the Alternative? The literature has sketched out a geography of the high places of alternatives, ranging from the emblematic example of Larzac to the more recent Plateau of Millevaches, via the Ariège or the Cévennes: these spaces have in common that they are rural margins, sometimes in medium mountain areas (Hakimi-Pradels, 2021; Koop, 2021). The birth of alternatives is correlated with both a local demand for alternative lifestyles and services and a growing supply. The establishment of alternatives feeds the birth of new activities in the vicinity: these high places, although few in number, are characterized by the intensity of local relations within a more or less restricted perimeter. The case of Saint-Pierre-de-Frugie is emblematic of this movement – although disconnected from the above-mentioned high places, according to the mayor (source: interview July 2019). When this newly elected mayor committed his township to an ecological turn (without this translating into a political affiliation), he activated several levers: a zero phyto policy in the maintenance of green spaces (helped by a road worker trained in permaculture), an eco-hamlet project, the creation of a local vegetable garden where everyone can come and pick fruit and vegetables for free, etc. Following a report in a widely read news magazine on public television, the township suddenly became attractive beyond the local scale. Households from all over France showed interest in coming to settle, while setting up market gardening or craft projects. An emblematic case, a Belgian couple comes with their family and takes over the local restaurant. In a few years, a dynamic of short circuit is established, largely carried by newcomers, in which the alternative school comes naturally. In the annex of the old school, an organic grocery store opened, selling animal and vegetable products from local producers (natives and neo-rurals alike). The restaurant claims to be supplied with fresh products. Above all, the restaurant prepares the midday meals for the children of the Montessori school, which is just across the street (Fig. 9.8). Thus, the alternative way of life is structured in particular around the local food system, it attracts several neo-rural families. In just a few years, the village of Saint-­ Pierre-­de-Frugie has acquired a profile as a hotbed of alternatives, which has also received constant national media coverage. The alternative school, a real amenity for the territory that hosts it (Cucchiara, 2013), thus contributes fully to the structuring of the local territory and the emergence of an “alter-territory” (Segas, 2020),

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Fig. 9.8  The school as part of the local alternative ecosystem in Saint-Pierre-de-Frugie

where the territory is “the support where social practices carrying a political meaning whose scope is more general” (ibid, p. 15) are concretized. However, the detailed analysis of the profile of the bearers of the alternatives, sometimes described as “altergentrifiers” (Richard et al., 2014), essentially people from outside the territory, often in a project of professional transition, invites us to question a geographical proximity that would ultimately signal logics of social reproduction as well as the reconstitution of an entre-soi that is not very connected to the indigenous populations. The constitution of two apolitical lists with different sociologies in the last municipal elections confirms the presence of a cleavage between “neos” and “elders”.

9.5 Conclusion: An Alternative Educational Offer Caught in Its Contradictions? The study of two departments on the margins of the city has revealed the coexistence of two types of alternative school markets: on the one hand, a market of distinction in a competitive urban and peri-urban context, i.e., as close as possible to the demand, a fortiori in urban contexts where the public offer is stigmatized. On the other hand, and this is what our analysis has focused on, a niche offer in hyper-rural contexts, in direct application of the precepts of alternative education close to nature, but also in the interstices of the public system that withdraws from lowdensity spaces. If alternative education is one option among others in urban areas, it is clear that in these marginalized rural areas it is not really an option. This differentiated territorialization of educational alternatives raises the question of a two-speed educational offer, between a discredited or butchered public offer and a private offer adorned with the trappings of distinction and authenticity.

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Above all, through the analysis of the career paths of the educational entrepreneurs who have led the projects and the territorial anchoring of the schools, the two case studies reveal a certain number of ambiguities in this form of education that competes with the public offer. Firstly, while these private schools outside the contractual framework are undeniably part of the privatization of education, they also constitute an ambivalent form of commercialization. Of course, their establishment is undoubtedly based on market methods and techniques (market research, opportunism). However, in view of these admittedly recent experiences, this is not a private service driven by considerations of unbridled profit: the trainers are paid a minimum of money and balance their budget as closely as possible in order to cover the costs of hosting the children. The model is therefore certainly entrepreneurial, but tinged with an alternative, with the affirmation of a certain form of “happy sobriety” or “return to the essential”, refusing the excesses of the consumer society. In this respect, the educational market of rural alternative schools must be read in the light of economic sociology and the analysis of social networks: the structuring of this niche market (White, 1981) does not respond to classic economic logic. The “Montessori” label certainly protects against uncertainty (ibid) in a school market weakened by low enrolment, and enhances the status of teachers who might feel downgraded (Giraud, 2019). Above all, it is not the traditional determinants (price, profit) that explain the structuring of the market but other variables dominated by the quality of social relations (Steiner, 2005, p. 33), in this case the quality of the entrepreneur’s relationship with the mayor, but also with the parents, who strongly value non-market elements such as the quality of interaction with the school’s immediate environment, or the more general quality of life in the commune where the school is located. Secondly, the proliferation of these alternative schools in rural areas raises questions about the public/private articulation in a sector traditionally considered as an essential service, free of charge, equally accessible at all points of the territory (the “continuity” of public service). The fact that this offer intrudes into low-density territories from which the national education system is withdrawing under the impact of austerity and neo-liberal policies, with the major support of local political actors, signals the implicit transfer of a public service competence to the private service, without the continuity of the transferred service being guaranteed. If these alternative schools are indeed part of a “new local educational order” (Ben Ayed, 2009), where communities take charge of educational issues, they also signal its fragility over time, especially when coalitions of actors change, where inter-personal trust seems to play an important role. This fragility may be increased in rural areas because of low population densities, and therefore the low number of potential candidates for taking over the torch. Third, the territorial anchoring and practices associated with these schools confirm that rural areas, considered as a margin far from urban centers and decision-­ making centers, offer a space of freedom (availability of premises) and a window of opportunity in the educational field (Hakimi-Pradels, 2021). Beyond the educational offer, education is even a means, territorially situated, of challenging in action a dominant model deemed unsatisfactory – in this case national education and its

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traditional pedagogical methods. This contestation, which differs from more traditional militant practices to come closer to an “emancipatory activism” (Leblay, 2020), is thus nourished in return by the territory in which it is inscribed, according to its history and its natural, social and economic resources. In this case, the nature of these marginal rural spaces, the land, environmental and symbolic resources they offer, feed the educational alternative. Ultimately, this study, conducted before the health crisis, contains many of the seeds of the crisis.14 On the one hand, the sanitary protocols in place in public schools may have made them seem like an oppressive place for children. As a mirror image of these (urban) public schools, alternative schools with a direct connection to nature may have appeared to some parents as a new desirable horizon. On the other hand, and as a result, alternative schools can become a powerful factor in the (re)location choices of parents, especially those who are part of a globally different lifestyle  – but with the help of cultural and financial capital inherited from life “before”. For elected officials who are well aware of these new criteria for comparison (and therefore competition) between territories, alternative schools are a territorial amenity, a fortiori in rural areas that are hotbeds of the alternative. But this trend ultimately raises the question of the real control of this educational offer by local authorities and its articulation with the public service. Indeed, the arrival of these neo-rural residents sometimes leads to the disillusionment of mayors who thought they were saving their public school by the arrival of new households and find themselves not only confronted with alternative modes of schooling (private school without a contract, education at home) but also sometimes with the creation of new “entre-soi”. It is therefore the place of the school – public and private schools – in neo-rural society that is being questioned.

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Chapter 10

Conclusion: Neoliberalized Private Education – Main Themes and Counter Hegemonic Futures Ranu Basu

10.1 Introduction The rationalization of neoliberalism that dominated much of public-policy discourse based on the market-logics of privatization, competition, and deregulation, deeply infiltrated the realm of educational restructuring over the past few decades. With its intellectual origins in the postwar writings of Hayek and Milton, it was only after the macroeconomic crisis of the 1970s that neoliberal ideology, policy and practices gained prominence (often associated during that period with the aggressive programs of Thatcherism and Reaganism) in the 1980s. Over the years, it rapidly advanced as a global hegemonic phenomenon, continuously being constructed, contested, and reconstructed, while remaining spatially contingent to the diversity of its contexts. By 2022, the disaster of neoliberal financial capitalism that was accelerated by the crisis of the global coronavirus pandemic, further exposed and widened the cracks in the system. The irregularities generated by decades of neoliberal policies contributed, among many other debilitating processes, to the rise of poverty and social inequalities, forced migration, increased racial and gendered violence, retrenchment of the welfare state, and environmental devastation. Similarly, the effects of neoliberalization of educational policies that were implicated by many of these trickle-down effects – whether through budgetary cutbacks in the education system; rise of privatization, vouchers, and charter schools; effects of community-based school closures and increase in classroom size; pedagogy dependent on metric-­based performance, standardized testing and competition; or fragmentation and dissolution of collective bargaining by teacher unions – were tried and tested, adjusted and reformulated, but also resisted over the years. Conceptualizing the ‘neoliberalization’ of education in this everchanging way suggests that the process of neoliberalism is not static, but R. Basu (*) Faculty of Environment and Urban Change, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_10

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“socially constructed, contextual and contingent rather than an external monolithic force” (England & Ward, 2007: 170). Such policies now more firmly embedded in the educational landscape have been rationalized and normalized to the scale of inter-personal subjectivities, and inadvertently led to harmful consequences on society, democracy, and public education over time. Peck (2010) similarly reminds us that the process of constructing neoliberalism has been a continuous one arguing that “developing an adequate account of neoliberalism consequently means paying due attention to these twists and turns, contradictions and compromises” (xiii). It is within such dynamic aspects of neoliberalism, in relation to the privatization of education, that the case studies in this volume expound in great depth. The private sector involvement in education and its territorial realities is the focus of the Geograph(ies) of globalized education privatization(s) edited collection. In their contributions to this volume the authors take on the detailed task of exploring the multiple trajectories, processes, and complex scalar forms that constitute the privatization of education – an immensely successful educational construct of neoliberalism – in order to gain a deeper perspective of its inner workings, contradictions, and adaptations. As initiatives related to the privatization of education are deployed globally, questions on its effects on the public realm of education are debated. Such questions and concerns more generally relate to, for example: the in/ appropriate use of public funds; outsourcing of core public services to private firms; increasing reliance on contractors motivated by profit; transparency and ethics; issues of conflict-of-interest; pedagogical quality assurance; and concern over the broader implications and ethos of educational policy as a public good. As the governance of privatized education is quite often ambiguously connected to public education, the case studies delve into and unpack the mechanisms of these many complexities and links in eight different contexts. The underlying argument made across the case studies notes that despite the widespread prevalence and adaptation of the neoliberalized model of privatized education – it ultimately undermines the project of education, social justice, and equality across scales and nation states. The range of case studies presented varying from North Carolina, Lebanon, to the urban and rural regions in France attempt to bring together the range of geographies and experiences that have resorted to (involuntarily or voluntarily) the privatization of education. As the collection uniformly argues and empirically demonstrates, however, the neoliberalization of privatized education is spatially contingent on the political, economic, and socio-cultural conditions of the locales in which they unfold; and which in turn, have created new forms of territorialities and governing regimes. Several significant themes emerge from the eight case studies on the geographies of neoliberalization of private education, that are critical in understanding the broader implications related to the public sphere of education as a public good and that are closely connected to its spatial transformation. These are briefly discussed in the sections below: 1. Rationalization of privatization of education: prevalence, plurality, performativity. 2. Diversification of actors and spatial-networks in the private realm of education 3. Neoliberal state reconfiguration – global to the local educational pathways

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4. Spatial reproduction of inequalities and educational injustice 5. New forms of territorial governance through privatized education 6. Scalar strategies and creative alternatives of resistance

10.2 What Are the Main Themes That Emerge? 10.2.1 Rationalization of Privatization of Education: Prevalence, Plurality, Performativity One of the main concerns with the shift towards privatization of education is the shift from a welfare state based approach with its ‘egalitarian and compensatory rhetoric’ to a ‘neoliberal ideology, that values individual success and pedagogical efficiency’ notes Giband (Chap. 6). The globalization and rapid increase of privatized education is made possible by the rationalization of neoliberal discourse which powerfully appropriates the language of competition, freedom, choice and quality to promote a system of schooling that will respond to the aspirations of a disillusioned public. With the dismantling of state based publicly funded schools, resource cut-backs, and pedagogical reforms, the alternatives touted by a privatized model are designed and promoted accordingly. The rapid and ongoing privatization of education in its multiple permutation and combinations (for profit, not for profit, exogenous, endogenous, other forms) alongside the performativity of a host of stakeholders with varying motivations (transnational corporations, international donors, religious organizations, non-profits, parental home-schooling, politicians) have challenged the democratic foundations of state-based public education. In the case of Chile this process has been pushed very far as Villalobos and Parcerisa show in their study of protests in the education sector (Chap. 8). The murkiness of public and private educational classification is evident in most of the case studies explored in this volume. In the case of France for example – Public, Chartered private schools, and Unchartered private schools – vary by funding, pedagogy and values (Delage, Nafaa, Riffard, Chap. 9). Corporate and multinational involvement in schools in matters of curriculum design remains prevalent in the quality of interventions. For example, as Cyna demonstrates (Chap. 2), the corporate framework provided by IBM involvement in educational policy in North Carolina schools was a product of public performativity and slow infiltration and in the classroom, providing both computer equipment and also pedagogical instructions in curricular design. New public management practices and the plurality in the transformation of higher education, as both Audren and Vergnaud show (see Chaps. 4 and 5), promoted trends towards ‘corporatization, marketization and entrepreneurialism’. Audren (Chap. 4) illustrates how this slow process of rationalization is guided by global scripts that call into question the ‘public character’ of French universities. Similarly, the rationalization of the Educational Cities approach through EPAs (Giband, Chap. 6) demonstrates the “affirmation of neoliberal rhetoric that relies on a series of

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low-­key changes” – a key strategy in the successful diffusion and prevalence in the neoliberalization of education. The rationalization of privatization of education as the case studies show is made possible by its large scale diffusion and prevalence in the landscape of education; plurality and heterogeneity in its approach and delivery; and performativity in its public outreach and appeal.

10.2.2 Diversification of Actors and Spatial-Networks in the Private Realm of Education The case studies showcase the heterogeneity of private schools and the diversity of actors involved. The spatial-relationality of public and private schools suggests that multiple typologies exist – based on different funding models, curriculum design, stakeholders involved, and state criteria. Actors enmeshed within this network of systems include corporations, parent groups, politicians, teachers, among others. The role of multinational corporations, like International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) as demonstrated, became actively involved in schools by not only providing access to hardware and software in the classrooms; but also setting curriculum standards that catered to their own self-interests. In other words, creating a structure through the schooling system that would provide them a potential future labour source of trained employees, narrowly focused on their own commercial interests and specifications. Yet, this form of active involvement as practiced by corporations in schools did not exhibit a grounding in pedagogical theory based on the illusion of ‘expertise’. Further, the inadequacy of some volunteers replacing trained personnel were unaddressed and revealed gaps in the altered system. The Lebanese experience of higher education discussed by Kabbanji and Mary (Chap. 3) reveal the diversity and hierarchy of the system and spatial-network of institutions that ranged from a single public university, a few elite universities, to a multiplicity of private market-oriented universities. The reproduction of urban inequality as in the case of Marseille analyzed by Audren (Chap. 4), was a result of the larger project of urban renewal of port cities involving a plurality of actors – both private and public ranging from municipal authorities to EU and real estate developers. The diversification of actors and the corresponding spatial-networks in which they operate through provide a shadow-state apparatus for the privatization of education to thrive within.

10.2.3 Neoliberal State Reconfigurations – Global-to-Local Educational Pathways Neoliberalization is a process of state restructuring (England & Ward, 2007). The globalization of neoliberalism has been highly uneven and varies significantly across spatial scales. As a complex assemblage of institutions, organizations, and interactions the neoliberal state has varying spatiotemporal extensions and capacities

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to meet their objectives (Jessop, 2016). Brenner and Theodore (2002) note the polycentric and multi-scalar character of neoliberalism as a geopolitical and geoeconomic project – ranging from the supranational to the local. In the realm of educational restructuring and privatization, the authors reveal the embeddedness of “actually existing neoliberalism” in its various forms and mutations  – ranging across continents; from the urban to the rural; from the local schools to university. In this way they demonstrate the complex, multifaceted project of socio-spatial transformation. The authors analyze the movement and diffusion to these sites. In the case of Lebanon (Chap. 3) the authors discuss the differentiated degrees of “internationalization” where they note that the search for educational quality is frequently premised on the ‘prestige associated with internationality’. The partner countries, they observe, benefit greatly from this process (US, England, Canada, France, Australia) as the main exporters of educational services. The example of the Educational Cities model in France (Chap. 6) similarly demonstrates another interesting story of such educational pathways – how its slow and steady progress over decades based on the rationalization of four pillars involving – “an alliance of educational actors, empowerment of stakeholders, focusing on projects, and creating a learning territory” – led to the establishment of 200 educational cities within the period of just three years across the country. The process of state restructuring ranging from global-to-local pathways through the realm of privatized education illustrate the scalar strategies used by neoliberalist regimes in spatially embedding infrastructural frameworks in urban areas and beyond.

10.2.4 Spatial Reproduction of Inequalities and Educational Injustice The processes of neoliberal educational restructuring unfold in place-specific formats within particular geographical contexts. The contributions in this volume provide evidence of these uneven spatial developments that are a result of the diverse pathways that range from global reforms, national adaptations and localized practices. A range of entrepreneurial projects have led to the gentrification of localities, redistribution of limited resources, social polarization, and segregation. For example, the strategy of IBM’s involvement of setting up computers at the micro scale of the classroom in selective areas of the city (discrepancies between the Research Triangle Area and the rest of the state), led to inequities in their resource allocation. These spatial disparities varied by the industrial investment in the area – where questions of race and the unwillingness to invest in racialized neighbourhoods led to educational injustice. Similarly, in the case of Lebanon, especially after the war, higher educational institutions aspired to “conquer” new student markets within targeted urban peripheries – creating uneven “academic capitalism” and a logic of “territorial expansion” to broaden student recruitment. In the case study of Marseille, Audren (Chap. 4), carefully details the mechanisms in the production of socio-spatial inequalities in the central city undergoing gentrification – a story not

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uncommon in the literature on schooling, displacement, and urban renewal. The author demonstrates not only how a school is conceived as an “urban amenity” and becomes part of a strategy of urban renewal that segregates and fragments the city into a typology of neighbourhoods; but also uncovers the disturbing ‘covert and overt’ strategies used within the school itself to exclude marginalized students from enrolling. The strategy was put into practice by accepting only the children of new residents that were working in the business district, and by not permitting the admission of the children of previous residents. The result of this process of discrimination and elimination (also raced and classed) meant that despite the heterogeneity in the neighbourhood, the residents did not experience a “lived diversity” due to these plans of “educational and socio-spatial distancing”. Vergnaud (Chap. 5) reveals that with the decreasing role of the state, the French University system has been altered based on a financial model of performativity, resulting unfortunately they note in “hierarchies and differentiations” instead of “territorial equivalence”. In the case of implementing EC in Perpignan, Giband (Chap. 6) notes the complex administrative and territorial context of the challenges faced involving a “triple difficulty: geopolitical, socio-ethnic, and territorial”. Further, the exclusion in many of the decision-making processes of local communities who include “local cultural institutions, teachers’ unions and parents’ associations” are alienated from the democratic process of decision-making and local governance. The resistance and limitations of neoliberal policies in such cases that are designed and governed from a distance invariably face constraint when confronted with the complexities of the local situation. Another form of discrepancies as illustrated in the case of examples of rural France (Chap. 9) is the alternative pedagogical model schooling system that allows certain schools and “edupreneurs” (including politicians) to “differentiate themselves in the market to attract middle-class parents..” and promote a further hierarchical and differentiated system implanted in the educational landscape of rural geographies. The spatial reproduction of inequalities and consequential forms of educational injustice through the strategies and tactics of privatizing education (in its various forms and iterations) have had adverse exclusionary impacts (directly or indirectly) that are structurally classed, raced and socio-spatially configured.

10.2.5 New Forms of Territorial Governance Through Privatized Education Complex forms of territorialities are generated by the negotiating process in the production of privatized educational regimes, especially in state-educational-­ capitalist governance relations. New forms of regulation and deregulation allow for the flexibility of educational territories where the boundaries of markets and gerrymandering of catchment areas can either stretch out or be restrictively constrained. The various case studies in this volume unpack the distinct geographical

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strategies working alongside the privatization of education that give rise to new forms of territorial governance. The fragmentation in the modes of governance of education with the layering of privatized structures alongside public education, has led to renegotiation between different levels of government in relation to funding, curriculum, hiring, and other decision-making processes – from the local to national scalar levels. Shaping the entire state’s educational agenda, like in the case of IBM is an example of how private firms shape larger public agendas. In this case, the territoriality of the Research Triangle Project included a large technological hub which was non-unionized and had been offered large corporate tax cuts to invest in the region. In the case of Lebanon (Chap. 3), we see new territorial forms of governance through the project of “entrepreneurial universities” where the strategy was to increase their revenues, reputation and international ranking within the “geopolitics of capitalism” and where “spatial displacement” as a mode of exclusion became an option. In the Lebanese case, a new relationship between universities and territories became evident in the expansion of the urban peripheries in order to capture new markets. In the case of French universities, as discussed by Vergnaud (Chap. 5), by considering their transformation through the prism of spatial dimensions, provides further insight into the stratification of universities based on a neoliberal logic of differentiation. This deviation from publicness, the author suggests, led to unjust practices that even implied a breach in the French Constitution. In another case, the territorial strategies used in Perpignan through Education Priority Areas demonstrates the embeddedness of a governing practice that had become ‘less social and more technical and managerial’ (Giband, Chap. 6). The spatialities of this project, as demonstrated in the chapter, led not only to the successful implementation of numerous reforms – such as the commodification of education, increased competition between schools for limited resources, targeting of teachers, among other changes – but more importantly also remained strategically ‘co-constitutive of the process of urban restructuring’. Thus, the new forms of territorialities produced through the hegemonic mechanisms of privatized education, we observe, have allowed for neoliberal governance regimes to persist with their market-based public policy agendas.

10.2.6 Scalar Strategies and Creative Alternatives of Resistance The rapid rise and diffusion of the globalized neoliberalization of education as part of a broader economic and political strategy, however, does not remain uncontested. In Chile, which can be considered as a laboratory of neoliberal reforms in the Global South, these reforms are being increasingly contested, as Villalobos and Parcerisa analyze (Chap. 8). The authors show multiscalar dynamics of protests where geographies of protests play a role in their outcomes. The political alternatives to the dominance of neoliberal ideology, policy and practices in education have taken

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on different forms in different places. The case studies reveal strategic reversals and evaluate several endeavours taken to create alternative routes. For example, as determined, by adjusting the flexibility provided by the private education model to modify rigid curriculum; or by organizing for increased accessibility and access to alternative programs. The case studies provide a range of strategic responses, such as when NAACP leaders in North Carolina called upon their Black residents to invest their own money into a revitalized project drawing their inspiration from the rich history of Black-led business in Durham. In the case of Lebanon, the authors highlight how the student movement sparked one of the driving factors of the intifada revolt in 2019 that was organized in order to access free, quality, higher education. In examining the effects of ultraliberal and neoliberal policies in the rural areas of southeastern France, Barniaudy (Chap. 7) analyzes a creative form of resistance that emerges in opposition to neoliberal values  – incorporating a transformative learning and care ethics, including nature and care of the earth. The particular geographical context of rurality and neoliberal reform in such a case allowed for an alternative model to emerge within the illusion of a “new educational order”. The transformative and emancipatory learning was fostered by rejecting a neoliberal subjectivity but instead included, as they note  – “ethical dimensions within the pedagogical relationship” focusing on the “well-being and the development of their person as a whole”. Similarly, the niche markets discussed in the study of rural schools in France, provided ‘fertile’ and ‘opportunistic’ grounds for alternatives to emerge – both in terms of pedagogical initiatives (e.g. eco-centred schools) and also in locales where public schools were no longer made viable by the state. Though these examples may not necessarily indicate a mass class struggle to eradicate the disparities created by a neoliberalized educational system, however, the creative initiatives illustrated in these local examples provide deeper insight into opportunistic and alternate pathways to everyday incremental resistance. The struggles and contestations against neoliberal policies of privatized education, as demonstrated in the various practices, are scalar in their strategic implementation and often creative in their modes of resistance in providing alternative pathways towards transformative change.

10.3 Important Next Steps: Counter-Hegemonic Struggle The critical message related through the various case studies in the Geograph(ies) of globalized education privatization(s) is to pay close heed to the genealogical progression of the privatization of education, and as noted earlier in this chapter, defined as an – immensely successful educational construct of neoliberalism – in order to gain a deeper perspective of its inner workings, contradictions, and adaptations. The book has significant implications for how we might study public-­ policy and -processes more generally in relation to the rationalization of neoliberalism; the role that power, space, and activism play in aiding/disrupting the process of neoliberalism; and provides deep insights into how and why territoriality

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plays a significant role in the politics of governance and strategies of resistance. What would then be the next steps? By delving and learning from such detailed insights provided in this volume, we can contend with the possibilities of counter-hegemonic struggle. As Paulo Freire (1964) argues in his classic work on the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, such insights lend themselves to providing a basis towards praxis – that is the reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed. In an increasing destabilized pandemic world, with increased social polarization and poverty, a looming climate crisis, ongoing proxy wars and mass displacement – it is only through the privileging of emancipatory alternatives that strive towards basic rights towards egalitarian education and democratic ideals, that we can build a more socially just and humanitarian world.

References Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. (2002). Spaces of neoliberalism  – Urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe. Blackwell Publishing. England, K., & Ward, K. (2007). Neoliberalization: States, networks, people. Blackwell Publishing. Freire, P. (1964). Pedagogy of the oppressed. The Seabury Press. Jessop, B. (2016). The state: Past, present, future. Polity Press. Peck, J. (2010). Constructions of neoliberal reason. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 11

Testimony: The Return of the Taliban: Education in Danger in Contemporary Afghanistan Mohammad Edris Raouf

Abstract  This testimony portrays the evolution of the Afghan Educational system throughout 3 main periods: the first Taliban regime (1996–2001), the Islamic Republic era (2002–2021) and the second Taliban regime since 2021. It shows how Education has been subject to several sudden and radical changes during the Afghan contemporary history. It describes how the privatization process that had been implemented since 2002 and the market logics that come with it are not definitive and can be (violently) removed by a political power, like the second Taliban regime did in 2021. Eventually, this testimony expresses concerns regarding the return of the Taliban and its consequences. Keywords  Afghanistan · Education · Privatization · Taliban · Women

11.1 Introduction It has been over a year since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, this regime change had a significant impact on many aspects of life in the country, especially in the education sector. Since August 2021 the Taliban took the power, but it is still not clear how they are going to rule or how they are going to be accepted on the world This article is a testimony of the return of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan since 2021 and its consequence for education. The testimony takes the point of view of Afghan Scholar Dr. Mohammad Edris Raouf. He is an agricultural economist who holds a bachelor from the university of Kaboul and a Ph.D from the University of Montpellier (France). He was an Associate Professor at the University of Kaboul since 2007 and member of the quality assurance board at the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education. He left the country in August 2021 and is now living in exile. This testimony is based on his professional experience and interviews with former colleagues currently working in Afghanistan since he is in exile. We chose to include this paper as a testimony revealing the sad reality of education in Afghanistan, especially for girls and women. M. E. Raouf (*) Agriculture Faculty, Agri-Eco Department, Kabul University, Kabul, Afghanistan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. Mary et al. (eds.), Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_11

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stage (Jackson, 2022). However, Taliban have given a clear signal to Afghans and the international community that they are more conservative and draconian than it was first predicted. The killing and oppression of religious and ethnic minorities continues, women are not allowed to work, girls after primary schools are not allowed to go to school, neither are they allowed to travel without a male escort. At the university level, a physical partition between male and female students has been imposed. On Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays only female students are allowed to enter the universities while Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are allocated to male students. Since December 20th, 2022, the girls cannot go to the university anymore. There is a 100% ban on female education and work in Afghanistan. The Taliban revised the university curriculum by adding more religious subjects to reflect their Islamic values. The Taliban’s overwhelmingly fundamentalist approach to education, in particular to higher education, left nothing behind but destruction and stagnation. The regime’s actions strongly reduced individual and institutional academic freedoms, while supporting censorship and Sharia. Statements made by the Taliban authorities indicate that the regime has decided to radically limit academic rights and freedoms, aligning them to their norms and principles of Islam and Sharia as the sole and legitimate source of science and true knowledge for them. The Taliban have declared that they will review academic subjects and unify curriculum for the public and private higher education institutions. Any subject deemed to be in contradiction to Islamic norms and values will now be removed. During the 2002–2021 era, after the US invasion, private investments in the education sector grew consequently. This was implemented since public universities were constrained by limited capacities while there was high demand for higher education. It was the demand-supply mismatch that first led to the emergence of private capital in the education sector. It covered investment in the education sector that included all levels of education. The economic growth fueled the demand for skilled manpower from various sectors of the economy. The private sector played a significant role in knowledge and skill development in the country and created opportunities for the education market to expand. The journey to private education service has however faced many hurdles and challenges. The education development in Afghanistan has gone through many ups and downs in the last 20 years, and has faced such sudden and rapid changes like no other country has probably ever experienced.

11.2 The Rise and Fall of the Taliban (1996–2021): A Sudden Opening to the World During the first Taliban regime (1996–2001), Afghanistan had only seven public universities, where learning was characterized by the Taliban’s radical ideological outlook based on non-scientific curriculum, with almost no linkages to foreign

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universities or academic institutions. Afghan universities were literally huddled in on themselves. The Taliban educational policy in 1990s came from their misinterpretation of Islamic values. All academic affairs including curriculum development and teaching materials were shadowed by fundamentalist perceptions. In all faculties the number of credits for core subjects decreased and were replaced by Islamic culture subjects. For example, the number of Islamic culture subjects in the faculty of economy, agriculture, at the Kabul medical faculty, civil engineering outnumbered scientific subjects. Meanwhile, there was no education standards for being a teacher: anyone introduced by the Taliban as lecturer to the faculties was basically teaching whatever they wanted to teach. In 2001, after the US invasion to remove Taliban from power, there were no private universities in Afghanistan. By 2021, more than 129 private universities and higher education institutions were registered and were operating across the country. Private institutions not only increased options for access to education but they also helped reduce the strain on public universities and generated jobs in the education sector. In 2001, only around 7000 students were enrolled in public universities. This umber rose to 197,247 by 2019. Similarly, female enrollments in public higher education institution rose from virtually zero in 2001 to over 54,861 by 2019. The quality of curriculum has always been a concern, but the credit nonetheless goes to the elected administrations in Afghanistan that focused on the education sector to a greater extent between the years 2001–2021. In addition, according to the UNESCO, about 31,522 Afghan students were studying at universities in neighboring countries in 2018, including Central Asia and western countries. An important achievement involved training a new generation of female Higher Education Institution faculty members following a decline from about 2000 in 1989 to almost zero in 2001. In 2003–2004, Afghan universities hired the first female lecturers, and in 2020, the number of Female teaching staff in public Universities increased to almost 1000 lecturers. While in 2020 the number of female teaching staff in private institutions increased to 1600 members.

11.3 A Wave of Privatization (2002–2021)… Especially in Higher Education After the collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001, Afghans largely sent their kids to schools while important number of emigrants returned to the country. The new established government faced important challenges in order to meet the people’s demand for education. These challenges undermined the government’s capacity to deliver education, in terms of educational materials, teachers, and an education-friendly environment. Hence, the private sector and the government mutually moved to a new era in education, clearly oriented toward a private education system (Packer et al., 2010).

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The increased focus in primary and secondary education in the country since 2000’s has created a wave of focus for tertiary education, which was lacking at the time. While in 2008 there were only 7 universities in the country, all of which were public institutions, the higher education sector has grown to 39 public and 128 private universities. The growth of university enrolment was phenomenal - from 8000 students enrolled in 2001, the number grew to nearly 400,000 in 2020. The number of women students stood at 11,000 in universities all over the country, from a level of zero in 2001. Before August 2021, there have been tremendous private initiatives in the education sector. Foreign aid from countries such as France, Japan, Germany, the USA, and India have massively fostered these efforts, to a large extent. Considerable investments were also made by national investors in the private education sector. According to World Education Service, the educational sector’s growth was characterized as an “explosion” of private education in Afghanistan. This was triggered since public universities, for instance, the University of Kabul, with its limited capacities faced with a high demand for higher education, could not accommodate the educational demand for the aspiring students. Emergence of private universities and their proliferation was supposed to fill that need. The demographic factors show that about 50–60% of the population of less than 18 years of age have also fueled greater demand for higher education. The private investments have covered all level of education. Private schools have been set up to offer quality education both in local language as well as in English language- -many engineering colleges have proliferated to offer technical manpower to the infrastructure and construction sector, the IT sector, vocational skills sector among the younger generation. The private sector not only played vital role in higher education development in Afghanistan but also played significant role in pre university education at the school level. In 2001, when the first Taliban regime collapsed, Afghan refugees returned to Afghanistan in large numbers. Among other things, they have imported the culture of private education from the neighboring countries where they lived, such as Iran and Pakistan. In Iran, Afghan’s children access to public schools was limited. So, they were mainly enrolled in private schools. In Pakistan massive enrollment in private schools was due to the perception that private schools provides a better education than the public system does. Eventually, millions of Afghan emigrants returned home with the culture of private education while in Afghanistan, education was always a public good managed by the government.

11.3.1 Education as a Market and Regulation Issues There have been issues related to the quality of education offered by the private universities  – even if the Ministry of Higher Education had worked to improve accrediting processes and quality of these institutions. However, many engineering colleges lacked laboratories, workshops, and practical teaching tools  - all these impacted the quality of education from many private universities that have

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proliferated. It is claimed that the private institutes have taken the lead in introducing new technologies, disciplines, and teaching methodologies. They offered shortterm courses, more evening classes and, in general, courses on topics that are higher in demand, such as computer science, English and accounting classes.1 At least partially, their quality seems to be higher than at state universities. Access to the private university education has not been uniform across the country. There were concerns relating to affordability among the marginalized and economically weaker segments of the society due to high cost of private education services. Equity in education service has also been affected in regard to geographic location of the universities – while the relatively developed regions have attracted higher investments in education, the far-flung and inaccessible areas have often suffered from accessibility issues. Graduates from elite universities bagged job placements faster than the graduates of other universities. These one were less costly and economically affordable for the majority of Afghan students. The proliferation of private universities spurred investments in the higher education sector principally from those who could bring in private capital. Notable investors were influential political entities who could obtain clearances for setting up infrastructure. Thus, the number of higher education institution increased exponentially and somehow it negatively impacted the quality of education, as most of these new established universities didn’t have qualified teaching staff. Meanwhile, most of these private universities got licenses from the ministry of higher education for certain faculties and disciplines to teach, but they often misused the licenses and established more faculties and branches than it was initially planned, causing problems for students who had graduated from these unregistered institutes. Ironically, some of the diplomas offered by these unaffiliated universities did not enjoy the approval of the concerned Ministry of Higher Education. Yet, they proliferated, generating considerable public debates and discussions in media and among actors in the policy making bodies. For example, according to a finding and report of Afghanistan’s Supreme Audit Office in 2020, the branches of 17 private universities were illegal. 19 universities established 24 faculties and departments without official permission from Ministry of Higher Education. 24 Universities gave admission to students before getting any license. Thus, the Afghan’s Ministry of Higher Education, with the financial support of World Bank through Higher Education Development Project (HEDP), launched from 2015 to 2021 the quality assurance and implementation of accreditation program at public and private universities. Thanks to this program, a perceptible improvement was noticed on the quality of higher education. A local university ranking system was established and the higher education institutions who could not meet the minimum requirements lost their licenses. Nevertheless, the process was impacted by factors such as limited budget and autonomy in public universities, scarce resources and lack of awareness and resistance of academic staff mainly in

 Authors own finding as member of quality assurance committee for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Higher Education. 1

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public universities. During this accreditation process, some private universities gained local respectability and at least 4 private universities ranked among top 10 universities in the country. This process led to a fragmented landscape of the Higher Education sector with a few elite private universities competing with underinvested public universities and numerous low quality private institutions.

11.3.2 Improvement in Education for Women The immediate challenge that faced the Ministry of Higher Education at the end of 2001 with the defeat of the Taliban, was getting women back into higher education (Hayward & Karim, 2019). The Afghan women during 1996 to 2001 were forbidden from all level of education. After opening of the university’s doors to women in, a total number of 1746 women got enrolled in Afghanistan universities (Ibid.). The number of enrolled women at universities reached 2723  in 2003 and about 8300 women were studying at Afghanistan universities in 2004, while this number rose over 54,861 by 2020 at public universities and more than 53,000 in private higher institutions. Remarkably, such progress was done under a continuous war context within the country (Hayward, 2022). Notwithstanding the exponential increase in the number of enrolled female students in Afghanistan’s university, there were some obstacles which acted as barrier for even more progress. One of these obstacles was the absence of proper dormitory places for the girls. The dormitory was largely allocated to male students, and due to this, numerous families didn’t allow their girls to live alone in the cities for studying. After 2006, while the private universities started to enroll students, the pressure was reduced on public universities, but until now one of the first priority for the majority of Afghan students are to enroll in public universities to get a degree. However, Afghan women generally performed very well after 2001 on the academic level. For example, the number of officially graduated female students in 2001 was zero, while this number in 2008 rose to 21,120 and in 2015 to 88,325 women graduated from high schools. According to Hayward, the number of women graduates from secondary schools continues to be lower than men although it was constantly improving. In 2008, the percentage of women students in twelfth grade was 25.9%. By 2014, it had grown to almost 35% and almost 39.8% in 2020. However, the number of male participants in the annual universities national entrance exam has always exceeded that of female participants on the national level. But in some province, such as Herat, a western province in Afghanistan proved it wrong. According to National Examination Administration (NEXA), in Herat province, the participation of female students in the annual national entrance exam made up 44% compared to 56 percent for male students in 2008. In 2020, Shamsia Alizada, the daughter of a coal miner from Kabul, received the highest score out of 170,000 students in the annual national university entrance exam. The success of Alizada

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and performance of girls in Herat constituted a true success story for female education in Afghanistan.

11.4 August 2021: A New Taliban Era, the Big Step Back for Education 11.4.1 Appointing Clerics and Banning Women The Taliban takeover in 2021 has undone almost all the progress made for the last 20  years (Hayward, 2022). Taliban have started torturing, detaining and killing members of the Afghan elites who were working with the previous governments. As a result, Afghanistan is once again on the verge of a severe brain drain. At the Kabul University, more than 200 professors left the country and many more are trying to leave. The Taliban have demonstrated an intent to transform the country’s education system into what they call a “real Islamic institution”, away from what they consider “Western and infidel thoughts”. Deeming those who graduated between 2001 and 2021 as being “of no use to us”, the Taliban has sought teachers who can instill religious values among students. Given the attitude of the Taliban, who believes Masters and PhD qualifications are unimportant as their leaders in cabinet and mullahs (clerics) are the “greatest” even without them, it is likely that the Afghan education system will collapse, causing a dire shortage of qualified and trained personnel to run the education sector. In another recent statement, Taliban new minister of Higher Education said “we have no expectations from those who have done schooling in the last 20 years2”. This drew sharp criticism from the Afghan public who chastised the Taliban for their anti-modern education stance. The Taliban’s intention to dismantle Afghanistan’s existing higher education sector is also evident in their decision to appoint ex-Taliban suicide bombing expert Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat, as Kabul University’s chancellor after forcing out Professor Osman Babory, a renowned scientist. They also appointed clerics as the new chancellors of Paktia and Kandahar universities. In response to these arbitrary replacements, around 70 Kabul University professors resigned and many more threatened to resign soon if the Taliban did not reconsider their decision. Approximately 200 teaching staff of Kabul University, 120 from Herat University and about 110 from Balkh University have already left the country and it appears that a similar situation is likely to unfold at other universities and higher education institutions. The current state-of-affairs in Afghanistan indicate that prospects for fostering critical thinking an objective of any form of education are extremely low if not non-existent. The ideological education under the Taliban rule will certainly

 Abdul Baqi Haqani, Taliban Minister of Higher Education, fourth October 2021, Media Speech.

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destroy whatever progress Afghanistan made in the education sector between the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and their return to power in 2021. It’s not only the higher education system in the country who is going through a dark period. Since August 2021, Taliban targeted all levels of education and banned girl’s from secondary to high school as well. Girls are not allowed to go to school anymore after they graduate from primary school. Afghanistan has become notoriously the world’s only country where girls are forbidden from attending secondary schools and recently from university as well, solely because of their gender. During the negotiations in Doha (Qatar) in 2021, Taliban pledged to open schools for girls aged more than 12 years old, but it turned out to be just a promise to appease the international community and assuage the feelings of Afghan girls. After March 2022 which coincides with the starting date of the educational year in Afghanistan, the Taliban announced the closure of girls’ schools in the country. In December 2022 they announced that universities will also ban women. These decisions were an outcome of three days Jirga (gathering) among Taliban members in Qandahar with the presence of their recluded leader Mullah Hebatullah.3 The main reasons for the closure were curriculum, proper dressing or school uniform and, more importantly, the conservative Afghan culture regarding sending their grown-­up aged girls to school. The Taliban Education acting minister recently said that “the Afghan culture and national values tell us to not permit the girls to go to school as the people in remote area of Afghanistan are not willing to send their girls aged over 14 to study”. This speech got huge reaction inside and outside of the country by all Afghans, this was the most discussed topic in social media for days. Everyone felt that this is a wrong allegation and that Afghan women deserve to be heard.

11.4.2 The Collapse of Private Universities After implementing policies to ban women from education, about 43 private universities in the country announced that they will not be able to operate without female students, as the majority of their student were girls.4 Banning girls from the education system harms human rights and trigger massive emigration to neighboring countries. The State of Afghanistan has been reversed backwards. Leader of the Taliban went further into these policies and pronounced orders forbidding females of the national and international NGOs from work in the offices. From now on, they will only be able to work from home. The Afghan education system is now facing an unbearable situation. Based on informal interviews with some of the school management authorities, it appears that  Since 2016, the supreme leader of Afghanistan has remained a reclusive figure, even after the Taliban seized power. 4  These Universities are mainly multi-disciplinary universities, focusing on faculties such as Law, Economy, Finance, Computer Sciences, Literature and Engineering with a science based as well as Market based curriculum. 3

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most schools are planning to wind up girls’ section, as there are sanctions against girls’ education. In addition to that, women are no longer allowed to “teach their male students” although they account for the majority of teachers in the private schools. The situation created recently has been pushing the country further towards a doomed future regardless of the fact that all gains so assiduously achieved in the education sector will be brushed aside under the carpet.

11.5 Conclusion and Perspectives The failure of the education system in Afghanistan is largely due to the Taliban’s conservative and draconian ruling system and their misinterpretation of the Islamic values. Since 2001, the experience of Afghanistan’s development in education showed how the system was slowly reestablished, by providing more education opportunities to young people. While the Afghan State was facing lack of resources, the private sector played a crucial role in the development of the Afghan education system, and thus answering a huge demand for education. The development of this sector was sudden and lacked regulations, leading to inequalities between private institutions (schools and universities). But the very existence of the private sector is now threatened by the new Taliban regime. Since August 2021 women are among the prime victim of the country. There are several areas of urgent need in the Afghan education sector to prevent further deterioration of past gains, and particularly to continue to provide women with access to education. Creating opportunities and developing programs, working around Taliban control, provides a new opportunity to rethink about education  especially women education - in Afghanistan. As it appears, the de facto authorities are in no mood to tweak its education policy to accommodate educational rights of the girls. So, it is important that international aids - that go into the form of humanitarian assistance - should be conditioned in such a way that basic education rights of the girls are not compromised. It is also important that the educated expats of Afghan origin mobilize funds for exploring action research in the form of a gender-neutral higher education through, for example, distant learning programs. Mobilization of resources will also help initiate empirical research in contemporary education areas involving the young and educated mass of Afghanistan with that of their expat colleagues and in association with the international donor agencies. The psychological trauma of the involuntary drop out from school education is another area that will require in-depth research, especially among women.

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References Aslam, M. (2009). The relative effectiveness of government and private schools in Pakistan: Are girls worse off? Education Economics, 17(3), 329–354. Hayward, F. M. (2022). Building higher education amidst war in Afghanistan. In Fostering institutional development and vital change in Africa and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­031-­04364-­2_6 Hayward, F.  M., & Karim, R. (2019). The struggle for higher education gender equity policy in Afghanistan: Obstacles, challenges and achievements. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(139). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.27.3036 https://news.trust.org/item/20210831110425-cvykj/ Jackson, A. (2022). The ban on older girls’ education: Taleban convervative ascdant and a leadership in disarray. Afghan Analyst Network. https://www.afghanistan-­analysts.org/en/category/ reports/ Packer, S., Allsop, T., Dvorak, E., Stanley, T. P., & Wirak, A. (2010). Afghanistan education sector analysis. Kabul, Afghanistan. Adam Smith International.