The “MacBurger”, Non-State Universities and the Changing Landscape of Higher Education in Sri Lanka

Abstract

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In the present moment of global capitalism, the marketisation of higher education is a reality in the Global South and North. Yet, the Southern experience of marketisation differs from that of the North. This article examines how market-based development in Sri Lanka since the economic liberalisation of 1977 has reshaped Sri Lankan university education. It revisits the historical evolution of “free (higher) education” and critically analyses the influx of global brands into the country’s “education market”. Using the “MacBurger” as a metaphor—for “posh” food in Sri Lanka—the article shows how the influx, together with the rise of fee-levying non-state (and state) universities, endangers the legacy of Sri Lankan (university) education as a “public good”. In conclusion, the article emphasises the widening educational inequality in the country and argues that higher education cannot be left to the free market in the peripheral countries of the South.