Education Policy in the Age of Knowledge Capitalism

Abstract

The term ‘knowledge capitalism’ emerged only recently to describe the transition to the so-called ‘knowledge economy’. Knowledge capitalism and knowledge economy are twin terms that can be traced at the level of public policy to a series of reports that emerged in the late 1990s by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (1996a,b,c) and the World Bank (1998, 1999), before they were taken up as a policy template by world governments in the late 1990s. In terms of these reports, education is reconfigured as a massively undervalued form of knowledge capital that will determine the future of work, the destiny of knowledge institutions and the shape of society in the years to come. This article focuses on the twin notions of knowledge capitalism and the knowledge economy as a comparative context for formulating education policy. First, it provides a brief theoretical context based on developments in the economics of knowledge and information by reference to the work of Hayek; second, it analyses recent documents of world policy agencies concerning these two concepts; third, it discusses the notion of knowledge capitalism as it has figured in the work of Alan Burton-Jones (1999). These accounts serve as three accounts of knowledge capitalism that have exerted a profound influence upon national education policies. This article is an essay in the new political economy of knowledge and information. It adopts the concept of knowledge capitalism as an overarching concept that denotes a sea change in the nature of capitalism. Finally, the article entertains the concept of knowledge socialism as an alternative organizing concept for knowledge creation, production and development.