Educational commodification and the (economic) sign value of learning outcomes

If managerialism points to the ideological foundations and bureaucratisation of contemporary education, marketisation signals its commodification, image and exchange. This paper brings to bear the prevailing influence of marketisation on education. It begins with a brief description of the European context and development of learning outcomes, and outlines the (economic) rationale for their existence. It then sets out to explore the logic of learning outcomes, asking: what is lost in the process of education being exchanged as a commodity? We argue that marketisation, through its constituent concepts of commodification, image and exchange, seduces as an education 'spectacle' and ultimately shapes individuals' value positions. In essence, marketisation, grounded in contemporary neoliberal economics, privileges quantitative, at the expense of genuinely qualitative, educational substance. Further, we argue that learning outcomes are a simulacrum: like other signifiers of commodities, they appear meaningful (although they do exhibit meaning) but are ultimately incapable of delivering what they promise: transferable skills, at most, but not education. Ethical consequences are stark and signal the loss of the intrinsic value of education – a loss that begins with its own commodification. Keywords: learning outcomescommodificationexchangemarketisationneoliberalismprivatisationspectaclesimulacrum'lost knowledge' Acknowledgements We acknowledge the important contribution of colleagues on emerging developments in third level education and crucially the insights on loss of criticality, the instability of bodies of knowledge, the meta-issues of identity, globalization, difference, the negative impacts of modularization on education, the challenging divide between skills and enquiry and formula-driven benchmarking, all of which emerged in the course of the Knowledge Conference, The Lowry, Salford Quays, Manchester (1 May 2008), organised by the Annual Forum of Art and Design Media Centre, the Higher Education Academy UK. Forty-five institutions attended that Conference, constituting a cross-section of management and teaching staff in all areas of art and design. Their insights formed the basis for 'The Boundaries of Knowledge', an article developing these lines of enquiry by David Brancaleone, commissioned for the Knowledge Report for the 3rd Art Design Media Subject Centre Annual Forum by David Clews, ADM-HEA Subject Centre Co-Director. In the event, it was decided not to publish the Report, but the research fed into O'Brien, S., and D. Brancaleone (2011) and this paper. Our thanks once again to Clews for his encouragement. Notes 1. Such a postmodern view reflects Gilles Deleuze's influential approach to the simulacrum, which rejects Plato's ethical stance that the copy is inferior to the original and is, in certain cases, untruthful, arguing instead that the simulacrum is legitimate in itself: 'Overturning Platonism, then, means denying the primacy of original over copy, of model over image; glorifying the reign of simulacra and reflections' (Deleuze Citation2004, 80).