The Small State, Markets and Tertiary Education Reform in a Globalised Knowledge Economy: Decoding Policy Texts in Botswana's Tertiary Education Reform

A number of global discourses have gained currency in national education policies. The need to reform education systems is coated in economic terms, the rationale of which is efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. Education is assigned the task of producing a competitive workforce in the global market. In these reforms, education is commodified. It is no longer a service but is a cost. The basis of all these is neo-liberalism, an ideology and political system that has displaced welfarism associated with the economics of Keynes. Tertiary education is neither insulated against this markets tide nor is it immune to its processes. This tide has led to the convergence of education reform worldwide. The convergence equally extends to higher and tertiary education. While instigated by economic liberalism, it is also a product of the saleability of market ideals through "institutional capitalism" and their purchase by public policy makers and governments. In this article, I seek to explore these discourses in Botswana's tertiary education reform, anchored on consultation. I argue that Botswana's tertiary education policy making reflects a global-local nexus in which the global sits on the local - the local is influenced and informed by the dominant global tertiary education reform agenda. The article draws on interview data of policy making elites and stakeholders. It also draws from the analysis of a corpus of key documents of this policy process.