Constructing Value: How Public Universities Frame Their Role in a Neoliberal Climate

This study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine how public universities construct narratives of value amid intensifying political, economic, and cultural pressures. We analyze institutional websites across Iowa’s three public universities—a flagship, a land-grant, and a regional institution—to explore how discourse functions as a mechanism of legitimacy within a neoliberal higher education climate. Findings reveal that institutional narratives privilege economic productivity, workforce development, and research innovation while selectively invoking broader public goods such as civic engagement and community well-being. These moments of role ambiguity arise as universities attempt to reconcile tensions among their multiversity roles and the demands of the market. In navigating these tensions, institutional language not only reflects adaptation but actively reproduces neoliberal logics that position higher education as a private good. Together, these findings illustrate how institutional value discourse operates as a survival strategy within a neoliberal climate—normalizing market logic as the dominant framework through which higher education’s worth is constructed, communicated, and judged.