Teacher’s Identity, Marketization of Higher Education, and Curriculum

For a long time, education has been praised as a morality in itself. Great philosophers have proudly called themselves “teachers”, and education was considered a special gift given to young gifted people. But in today’s world, in which everything, including even human feelings, have changed and become commodified, education has not been an exception. There have been many changes in education such as internationalization, increased competition and cooperation, neoliberalism, marketization, privatization, and new teaching methods. The idea that education is simply another market commodity has become pervasive in different discourses. Marketization which is one of the consequences of neoliberalism policies is an attempt that appraises everything related to higher education based on a market, where demand and supply and all the educational activities are determined and evaluated based on the price mechanism (Brown, 2014). This trend has fundamental effects on different aspects of the higher education including teacher’s identity and curriculum design. In this article, the researcher defines the concept of identity and then describes the type of teacher’s identity that is promoted by the marketization of higher education. Also, characteristics and some of the consequences of marketization of higher education and the effects of such trend on curriculum design are discussed.