Rethinking the Consumer Metaphor versus the Citizen Metaphor: Frame Merging and Higher Education Reform in Sweden

Abstract

Neoliberal metaphors of students often describe students as consumers, managers and even as commodities, but this analysis often disregards the discursive complexity of education. We argue that frame merging is essential to understand the hybrid modalities of neoliberal images of students in the Swedish context, where the image of the student is suspended between a social democratic welfare service model, academic capitalism, new public management and welfare nationalism. We demonstrate this through the case study of introducing student fees for non-EU students in Swedish higher education, and how the merging of universal tax financing with a more individualised fee paying solution creates variegated and complex metaphors of students and higher education. These metaphors are infused with social democratic social citizenship, neoliberal reform of welfare services, academic capitalism and nationalist welfare chauvinism. This implies that, in practice, it is nigh on impossible to disentangle the neoliberal consumer metaphor from that of social citizenship; instead they merge to generate multiple contextually relevant metaphors to fit the local debates in higher education.

Exploring the Political Discursive Lock-Ins on Sustainable Aviation in Sweden

“…Merged frames, in turn, comprise elements of each of the input schemas, while they contribute to a new frame that results in its own unique and separate structure. Metaphors as such need to be understood in the context of larger frames [47], seen as "devices or units of language that are deployed within particular conversations and contexts" [48]. This means that metaphors are not isolated discourses from its context but instead are directly connected to specific ideological frames.…”

“…This means that metaphors are not isolated discourses from its context but instead are directly connected to specific ideological frames. Merged frames, and their related metaphors, "are variegated towards the local political context and therefore always adapted and contextualized in locally meaningful ways" [47]. Our method is an adaptation of frame merging and metaphor analysis inspired by Nordensvärd and Ketola [47].…”

“…The different metaphors can represent frames but also merged frames, where frames are "embodiment" while merged frames are taking on a "variegated form" [47]. We chose this framework because it explains how a frame as neoliberalism is contextualized and creates multiple understandings of the aviation discourse.…”

Performances of care: Questioning relationship‐building and international student recruitment

“…Second, it fostered a targeted recruitment of international students by universities brought about by differential fee regimes in the UK. Regarding the development of the student consumer, it is argued that the move to a more business‐like approach to higher education alters the position of the student, with degrees reduced to what they can offer in terms of capital accumulation (Nixon et al, 2018; Nordensvärd, 2011). Molesworth et al (2009) write that while in the past students would have focused on being learners, instead their goal as consumers of higher education is to have a degree.…”

Case Study: Decolonising the Curriculum – An Exemplification

“…Social justice concerns of redistribution, recognition (parity of esteem) and equity (Winberg and Winberg, 2017) are argued to be counter-narratives to the increasingly individualistic, consumerist and privatized characteristics of the Neoliberal trend in Higher Education (Ross et al, 2018) which sees students as customers focussed on maximising their opportunity and universities as service providers supporting the economy (Zepke, 2015;Deeming, 2016), and bluntly, training people for work (Adams, 2020).This case study illustrates that decolonisation could be well-served by selectively frame-merging these two discourses (Nordensvärd and Ketola, 2019) in order to achieve practical progress. Nordensvärd and Ketola (2019) argue that neoliberalism involves steering institutions like universities in order to better serve capitalism, which can be illustrated via the existence of the Office for Students (OfS), which regulates Higher Education. A major policy lever that could be harnessed to drive decolonisation of the curriculum in England is the identification by the OfS that there are unacceptable differences in the experience of students from BAME backgrounds, compared with their white counterparts, which have consequences for future labour market prospects.…”