IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/recgxx/v97y2021i4p315-337.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Geographies of Marketization in Higher Education: Branch Campuses as Territorial and Symbolic Fixes

Author

Listed:
  • Jana M. Kleibert

Abstract

The role of higher education institutions as active agents of globalization and marketization remains relatively little explored. Economic geographic perspectives are particularly well placed to investigate globalizing higher education as an important economic sector, in addition to its supportive role in the knowledge economy. Drawing on political economic and cultural economic perspectives on marketization and geographic fixes, the study analyzes the motivations and spatial strategies for geographic expansion of universities through the establishment of branch campuses. Based on qualitative interviews with key decision-makers of English universities, I argue that (international) branch campuses enable a range of geographic fixes for higher education institutions: a territorial fix through the geographic expansion and construction of segmented markets and a symbolic fix through the relocation of campuses to places that promise reputational gains. The rapid growth of British branch campuses abroad and domestically (in the global city of London) involve substantial financial and reputational risks and as fixes constitute only temporary stabilizations. The conceptualization of symbolic fixes, in addition to territorial fixes, may enable a more nuanced understanding of the role of space in the construction of segmented, yet relational markets that combines intersecting political economic and cultural economic logics.

Suggested Citation

  • Jana M. Kleibert, 2021. "Geographies of Marketization in Higher Education: Branch Campuses as Territorial and Symbolic Fixes," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 97(4), pages 315-337, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:97:y:2021:i:4:p:315-337
    DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2021.1933937
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00130095.2021.1933937
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00130095.2021.1933937?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Philip Völlers & Thomas Neise & Philip Verfürth & Martin Franz & Felix Bücken & Kim Philip Schumacher, 2023. "Revisiting risk in the Global Production Network approach 2.0 - Towards a performative risk narrative perspective," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(8), pages 1838-1858, November.
    2. Kutay Güneştepe & Deniz Tunçalp, 2023. "Territorial dynamics in organizing resistance: The assistants’ solidarity movement in two universities," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 41(6), pages 1200-1224, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:97:y:2021:i:4:p:315-337. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/recg .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.