Privatisation, Markets & Neoliberalism

Since the 1980s, the logic of the market has remade education systems around the world. School choice, vouchers, public-private partnerships, low-fee private schools, shadow education, edtech platforms, venture philanthropy — each represents a different face of the same underlying shift: the transformation of education from a public good into a market. FreshEd has tracked this transformation across decades and continents, hosting the researchers who have documented its spread, its contradictions, and its consequences for equity. These conversations are analytically sharp and politically clear-eyed — they take the claims of market advocates seriously enough to examine them rigorously, and they don’t shy away from what the evidence shows. Explore this topic through these themes and the related Collections: