The Policy Reassembly of Afghanistan’s Higher Education Sector

This is an account of a study undertaken into higher education strategic planning in Afghanistan. The aim of the study was to explore the relationship between conflict, higher education, and state building through an investigation of a country that is seeking to develop its higher education sector within a context of historical and contemporary conflict. To this end, during the course of this study I critically analysed higher education strategic planning, and interviewed a policymakers, consultants, donors, and Ministry of Higher Education officials, in order to better understand the policy purpose of Afghan higher education. This process led me to a 2-part thesis which I advance in this study: 1) When the institution of higher education has been disassembled through violent conflict, a dominant ideology can (re)assemble the institution with little contestation. 2) The manner in which higher education is (re)assembled has a mediating effect upon its institutional function within an ongoing state building project. Throughout the chapters below, I argue from a Critical Realist ontology that Afghanistan's higher education strategic planning is anchored by a dominant ideology of neoliberalism, which orients the primary purpose of higher education towards economic growth (thesis part 1). Whilst important, I argue that the dominance of this orientation has limiting implications for higher education's potential to positively contribute towards greater social cohesion and political sustainability (thesis part 2). In seeking to explain the dominance of neoliberalism within Afghanistan's higher education strategic planning, I draw on a Gramscian notion of wars of manoeuvre and position to better understand the wide range of actors vying for influence within Afghanistan's higher education sector.