Thinking with and between social orders: Corporate embedded colleges and their public rivals

Scholars have argued that corporatisation is antithetical to higher education's educational purposes. In this article, I complicate such claims by considering how higher education institutions develop concrete alternatives once a private coordination mode emerges as the dominant order. I also aim to show how we can use concrete practices and their content, purpose and structure to reveal alternatives to current market forms. By drawing on pertinent interviews and documents, I undertake a comparative analysis of the order of England's corporate embedded colleges. Corporate embedded colleges are run by private companies in partnership with public universities. The purpose is to recruit and train international students for university preparatory programmes. I compare these colleges with three rival public orders: the University Pathways Alliance, in-house programmes, and the Northern Consortium. I proceed by thinking with and between these social orders. The goal is to help imagine alternatives to the corporate market for such colleges. I conclude that universities can learn from the private order and perhaps even outcompete its representatives if they cooperate and make full use of their institutional distinctiveness.