The New Tyranny of Student Participation? Student voice and the paradox of strategic-active student-citizens

Abstract

Student in governance and decision-making has become ubiquitous in higher education, evolving from buzzword to orthodoxy. Student engagement measures have become instruments of quality control, with students expected to take an active role in shaping institutional policy and practice. In this paper, we argue that this ubiquity of demands for student engagement has served to hollow-out and depoliticise student voice practices – drawing upon Cooke and Kothari’s seminal (2001) work in development studies to ask whether student voice has become a new tyranny of participation? In developing this argument, we identify how students are expected to be both strategic, instrumental consumers and active citizens of their university. This results in the paradox of the strategic active student citizen.