The Anatomy of the market paradigm of university education : the rationalization of Nova Scotia's Universities

This thesis examines the review of Nova Scotia's Universities as conducted between August 1992 and April 1993. It discusses primarily, but not exclusively, the deliberations of the Nova Scotia Council on Higher Education to which the author had access as a public-at-large member during this time period. It is argued that the discourse of the review relied upon a set of interconnected assumptions. Taken together, these assumptions constitute a market paradigm of university education. The market paradigm is revealed in the Council's work partly by contrast to an alternative conception of university education, a democratic paradigm, and partly by the means of interpretative social science. The thesis addresses the work of the review by considering the meaning, purpose and the nature of the university. It also considers the questions of the distribution of the university as a "social good", the vision of the educated person and the nature of knowledge. The essay concludes by developing further the democratic alternative for university reform.