Critiquing uncritical EDI in higher education

Bibliographic Data

ID21691639
AuthorsMatt Lumb (0000-0002-7788-1956, Newcastle University, corresponding author), Penny Jane Burke (0000-0001-9924-706X, Newcastle University)
Year2025
Volume30
Issue6
Pages1389-1397
Publication date2025-08-18
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTeaching in Higher Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-2517 • E-ISSN: 1470-1294
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13562517.2025.2521374
OpenAlexW4411673562
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited23

Higher education (HE) systems and organisations across the planet have been significantly transformed. Framed primarily as businesses and constituted by individualised mobility and enterprise, HE is now understood to be explicitly driven by globalised imperatives of commercialisation, marketisation and corporatisation (Kahn and Misiaszek, 2019). Through this framing of HE, concerns for the wider social good have been profoundly undermined, and processes of neoliberalisation have thoroughly narrowed the purpose of HE towards the interests of hyper-capitalism, widening inequities despite institutional commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). We argue that the contemporary framing of HE ensures that uncritical EDI agendas often directly serve the interests of hegemonic orders (Burke and Lumb, 2025). In this PoD, we consider the role of critique in relation to EDI agendas in higher education, including whether and how forms of criticality might unmask superficial claims to progress

Higher education · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Higher Education Governance and Development · Higher Education Learning Practices · Law · Psychology

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