Social equity and the assemblage of values in Australian higher education

The paper argues that the policy concept of social equity cannot be adequately understood in a generalised abstract manner, but is better viewed as an assemblage that brings together a number of contrasting, and sometimes competing, values. Our use of assemblage is somewhat eclectic and is designed to underscore the performative character of policy in attempts to bring together a range of considerations that might not normally be aligned. We use this idea of assemblage in order to examine the concept of social equity embedded in a recent report on higher education for the Australian government – the Bradley Report. We show how the Report’s notion of social equity is assembled across a number of related concepts such as excellence, autonomy and efficiency, as well as a set of governmental techniques associated with a neo‐liberal approach to politics, including a focus on the market and policy as numbers.

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