In Arms’ Way: Arms Company and Military Involvement in Education in the UK

Abstract

Arms company and military involvement with schools and universities in the UK takes a number of forms and has a variety of effects. Countering mainstream narratives around national security, good and bad forms of globalisation, and economic competitiveness, I argue that these effects are best characterised as the commercialisation and militarisation of education in pursuit of state and corporate goals. These are both forms of instrumentalisation that damage the autonomous space educational establishments strive to provide. Such developments are not going unnoticed however, and resistance to them continues.