Global Values in Higher Education 337the answers to these questions raised by globalisation will be
fundamental for global stability and prosperity in the future.^269
With growing numbers and limited access, and fiscal austerity con-
fronting universities globally, there has been increased focus on com-
mercialisation and marketization. As this situation embeds itself, univer-
sities are increasingly becoming part of the of the corporate capital sys-
tem. In keeping with the neoliberal, capitalistic framework of globaliza-
tion, profit (the market) has become one of the primary drivers and
higher education has predictably become a multinational export indus-
try, even meriting its own category in the General Agreement on Trade
and Services (GATS). Unesco (2002:1) actually provides the rationale
for higher education’s inclusion in GATS as follows:
Trade in higher education is a million-dollar business. The de-
mand for higher education, on the one side, is growing, while on
the other side, trans-border education (e.g. private or for-profit
higher foreign university campuses, IT Academies, twinning ar-
rangements with other universities, corporate universities, virtual
universities, open universities, e-universities etc.) is increasing.
The capacity of the public sector has not kept up with this de-
mand. This coupled with the recent developments of ICTs and the
ensuing growth in online learning has resulted in the creation of
this very lucrative market.
Against this backdrop, the preamble to the Report (undated) pro-
duced by Deloitte Canada Higher Education is Evolving reiterates this
reality stressing changes in both economic and technological environ-
ments that ‘make the application of more traditional higher education
governance models increasingly difficult and impractical’. As universi-
ties become more corporatized an emerging sense of the importance of
269
BBVA OpenMind – González 2013: 11).