A Critical Discourse Analysis of University Marketization of Higher Education: A Comparative Study of Promotional Discourses in Leading Pakistani Universities
Abstract
Increased marketization of higher education has made universities increasingly into competitive entities in a market-oriented higher education environment. From this perspective, the official communication of the university also plays a significant role in the formation and dissemination of values inherent in the market, such as excellence, competitiveness, employability, innovation, research productivity and internationalization. To explore the marketization of higher education in Pakistan as reflected in and reproduced by the official discourse of three main universities in Pakistan: Aga Khan University (AKU), Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST). In order to achieve this, the study has embraced a qualitative comparative research design, which involves the examination of official promotional texts such as institutional profiles, vision and mission statements, leadership messages, core values and related institutional texts using the Three-Dimensional Model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by Norman Fairclough. This analysis is restricted to three main fields: the institutionalization of excellence and competitiveness, the construction of employability, innovation and economic productivity, and the globalization, internationalization and neoliberal market values discourses. The results suggest that all three universities use evaluative language, positive self-representation, future-oriented narratives, and persuasive lexical elements to build educational value for excellence, research productivity, innovation, leadership, employability, global engagement, and competitiveness of the institution. But they are formulated in diverse ways, depending on the institutional positioning of each university, in relation to these market discourse. While AKU is known for excellence and humanitarian services and social development, LUMS is known for its intellectual leadership and research excellence, and NUST is known for innovation, productivity, employability, sustainability and national development. Overall, the results show that the discourse of promotion serving higher education at the macro-sociological level is increasingly dominated by neoliberal values, with which the concepts of competition, productivity, employability, international visibility, and institutional performance play an important role in the definition of educational success. The study adds to the Critical Discourse Analysis and the domain of higher education research, as it illustrates the nature and role of the promotional discourse as a discursive process that helps in the normalization of higher education marketization in the Pakistani context.