The consumerist turn in higher education: Policy aspirations and outcomes

Abstract

Insights from the marketing and education literature are combined to analyse government rationales and mechanisms related to the positioning of contemporary students as consumers and to assess the impact on the process and outcomes of education, on the professional practices of faculty and on widening participation. Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual framework is applied to analyse how consumer mechanisms are mediated by the organisational cultures and practices within universities. These theoretical insights are combined with data from different national contexts to indicate positive outcomes. However, the organisational context of higher education, gamesmanship and outdated marketing relations have also led to the opposite of what policy makers have aspired to. We show how consumerism also promotes passive learning, threatens academic standards, and entrenches academic privilege. The paper contributes to scholarship on consumerism in sectors which are subject to changing relations between state regulation and market forces, and offers policy and management insights.

Issues in Malaysian Higher Education: A Quantitative Representation of the Top Five Priorities, Values, Challenges, and Solutions From the Viewpoints of Academic Leaders

“…1 Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia 2 University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia expansion of networks and external relations (Shin & Harman, 2009;Van Damme, 2001), and the issue of consumerist turn in HE (Naidoo, Shankar, & Veer, 2011) have been scrutinized. Other main identified challenges include academic leadership challenges (Black, 2015;Drew, 2010;Fullan & Scott, 2009), sustainability challenges in HE (Mader, 2012;Mader, Scott, & Razak, 2013;, university mergers and transnational virtual delivery of HE (Van Damme, 2001;Yung-Chi Hou, Morse, & Wang, 2015), challenges pertinent to embedding a quality culture in universities (Lomas, 2004), gender issues in HE (Baker, 2016;Cotterill & Letherby, 2005), and the challenges of merging divergent campus cultures to form coherent educational communities (Harman, 2002).…”

Consumerisation in UK higher education business schools: higher fees, greater stress and debatable outcomes

“…These include an increase in transactional attitudes amongst students that are not conducive to learning, pressures to recruit a greater volume of students, increased workloads and additional stress, and concerns over the quality of provision. We concede that university leaders cannot ignore business considerations and financial costs in running a college or university (Naidoo et al 2011;Potts 2005). Yet, we also suggest that those who run HEIs should be cognisant of protecting the quality of their provision and the wellbeing of their staff, while also ensuring that they remain financially viable.…”

“…In the view of Naidoo et al (2011), the move towards consumerisation is a global trend with many countries attempting to increase their overall market share of higher education. However, this approach is not universal.…”

“…For example, although Germany did trial the use of tuition fees, these were quickly abolished due to challenges in the German courts (Kehm 2014). This era of consumerisation has created a twofold problem: firstly, student expectations are increasing (Naidoo and Williams 2015), and secondly, many HEIs have started to make strategic decisions based on market forces which require institutional leaders to consider competitiveness, efficiency and customer satisfaction (Bunce et al 2016;Naidoo et al 2011). This has created unintended consequences, with many post-1992 UK HEIs stating that higher education is going through a process of change, with the competition for students increasing, there is pressure to expand both the 'core values' and the branding of the institution, in order to entice students (Molesworth et al 2009).…”

Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market

“…The problems linked to conceiving higher education as a consumer service or product have been extensively discussed and challenged (see Molesworth et al 2010;Naidoo et al 2011). These range from critical pedagogic approaches to challenges around the specific meanings of the student-consumer and how effectively it may be applied to higher education.…”