Scholar of education politics, privatization, technology, democracy, and critical pedagogy.
From early analyses of neoliberal restructuring in public education to recent work on digital educational privatization and AI schooling, Saltman’s scholarship traces how market power reshapes democratic education.
Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Current Work
AI Schools and the New Child Labor
A critical examination of how AI and digital platforms reshape schooling through data extraction, privatization, labor displacement, and new forms of inequality.
Core Areas of Research
- Neoliberal restructuring of public education
- Educational privatization
- Digital educational privatization
- AI and schooling
- Democracy and authoritarianism
- Critical pedagogy
- Cultural politics of education
- Higher education policy
Recent Books
AI Schools and the New Child Labor
Cambridge University Press, 2026
Smart Drugs, Attention Doping, and Screen Addicts
Bloomsbury, 2025
The Politics of Education: A Critical Introduction (3rd Edition)
Routledge, 2025
The Disaster of Resilience
Bloomsbury, 2023
The Alienation of Fact
MIT Press, 2022
About
Kenneth J. Saltman is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. His work bridges educational policy analysis, critical theory, and cultural studies to examine how schooling is shaped by broader struggles over power, markets, democracy, and subjectivity.
Kenneth J. Saltman 