ABSTRACT. Colonial institutions of higher education are thriving in postcolonial contexts, wherein neoliberal higher education policies position tertiary education as a tool for national development. A framework of postcolonial affective governmentality is conceptualised through affective critical policy analysis to decipher the discursive and affective constructions of the policy problem of the quality of higher education. The analysis highlights the reproduction of colonial rationalities and patterns of feeling for the colonised self that reinforce colonial hierarchies of knowledge and being through the problematisation of quality in higher education in Pakistan. To provide a historically situated understanding of the dynamics of reproduction of colonial relations of power in the postcolonial context, a brief history of the emergence of the Westernised higher education system is also provided. The analysis demonstrates that the goalpost of higher education quality has become a governing strategy in postcolonial Pakistan, reinforcing colonial modes of thinking, feeling and being, confining ways of knowing and being educated to the limits of the colonial matrix.

Keywords: quality crisis; higher education; colonial matrices of power; Westernised university; affective critical policy analysis

How to cite: Ahmad, M. (2025). Postcolonial affective governance of higher education through problematisation of quality. Knowledge Cultures, 13(2), 47–67. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc13220253

Received July 1, 2025 • Received in revised form August 1, 2025
Accepted August 1, 2025 • Available online September 1, 2025