They do not buy it: exploring the extent to which entering first-year students view themselves as customers

Saunders, Daniel B.

doi:10.1080/08841241.2014.969798

Cited by 58 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Burton, Xenos, Elgar, & Denny, 2013;Jenkins, Lyons, Bridgstock, & Carr, 2012); New Zealand (van der Meer, 2012); the U.S. (Saunders, 2015;Yan & Sendall, 2016;); the UK (Busse, 2013;Yorke & Vaughan, 2013); Ireland (Surgenor, 2013); Spain (Bautista, 2016;Diniz et al, 2016); and Portugal (Diniz et al, 2016). However, studies into FY students' learning experiences in Asia, especially in Taiwan, are limited.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring factors affecting first-year students’ learning experiences: A case study of a private university in Taiwan

Chalapati¹,

Leung²,

Chalapati³

2018

SUCCESS

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Taiwan’s low birth rate and declining demand for higher education among the country’s high school graduates has led to vigorous competition between Taiwanese universities to attract and retain students. Increasing international student enrolment can help alleviate these existing pressures. However, the transition from high school to university life and the need to study in a degree program with English as the primary medium of instruction, can present challenges for first-year students. We aimed to investigate First Year (FY) Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese students’ learning experiences and the barriers they face at a private university. The key research findings are based on factors affecting FY students’ learning experiences such as interactive teaching techniques, peer support, program attributes, social integration, and the international learning environment. We argue that for higher education institutions (HEIs) to stand out in a highly competitive environment, university management should optimise their resources and services to meet local and international students’ needs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring factors affecting first-year students’ learning experiences: A case study of a private university in Taiwan

Chalapati¹,

Leung²,

Chalapati³

2018

SUCCESS

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“…Students then reported their most recent grade in percent for an assessed piece of work. Next, students completed the Customer Orientation Scale (Saunders, 2014) by rating their level of agreement on a 5 point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) with 18 statements. Minor adaptations to the wording of the statements were made so that they were appropriate for the British higher education system as opposed to the United States system.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Tomlinson (2014), some students perceived lectures as a form of entertainment: 'sometimes you do come out of a lecture and think "well that wasn't very good" and like if you went to see a show, you'd be asking for your money back ' (p. 29). Other studies have further shown that although the majority of students do not identify strongly as consumers (Bunce et al, 2017;Saunders, 2014), those who do achieve a lower level of academic performance (Bunce et al, 2017).…”

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confidence: 97%

A degree of studying? Approaches to learning and academic performance among student ‘consumers’

Bunce

Bennett

2019

Active Learning in Higher Education

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The marketization of higher education and focus on graduate employability and earnings data has raised questions about how students perceive their roles and responsibilities while studying for their degree. Of particular concern is the extent to which students identify themselves as consumers of their higher education, for example, whether they view their degree as a purchasable commodity to improve future earnings. This is because research has found that a stronger consumer identity is related to lower academic performance. This study examined whether this relation could be explained by the impact of a consumer identity on the extent to which students adopt deep, surface or strategic approaches to learning. The hypotheses were that the relation between consumer identity and academic performance would be mediated by approaches to learning, whereby a consumer identity would be related to adopting a more surface approach, a less deep approach and less strategic approach. Undergraduates completed an online questionnaire that assessed the extent to which they identified as a consumer, their approaches to learning and academic performance. The analysis partly supported the hypotheses: a stronger consumer identity was related to a more surface approach to learning. However, a surface approach to learning did not mediate the relation between consumer identity and academic performance. Conversely, a deep approach to learning mediated the relation between consumer identity and academic performance, whereby a stronger consumer identity was related to lower academic performance through its negative impact on a deep approach to learning. There was no relation between consumer identity and strategic approach to learning. Implications of students identifying themselves as consumers of their higher education are discussed.

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“…Actually, a consumerist perspective is far from universal among students even in the UK, most of whom express "mixed, almost ambivalent position on the consumerism of higher education" (Tomlinson 2016, 10, see also Saunders, 2014). Moreover, the student-as-consumer approach may fail even on its own terms, with some evidence suggesting it is associated with lower academic performance (Bunce et al 2016).…”

Section: Separation Of Cost-sharing and Marketizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time is Money: Disentangling Higher Education Cost-Sharing and Commodification Through Deferred Graduate Retirement

Barakat

2017

High Educ Policy

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Current higher education policy debates in Europe are increasingly focusing on raising the share of private funding. To date, policy proposals have centred on a relatively small number of alternatives, namely full public funding, tuition fees, either up-front or delayed and income-contingent, or a surtax on graduate incomes. Here, I present an alternative that, to my knowledge, has not been suggested previously, but sidesteps some important objections against other forms of private contributions. The basic idea explored here is to increase the statutory retirement age for higher education graduates relative to nongraduates. In principle, the resulting decrease in future public pension liabilities can be converted into increased funds for present spending on higher education. In this first discussion of the above proposal I consider important caveats, perform an order-ofmagnitude estimate of whether the financial implications of Deferred Graduate Retirement (DGR) are comparable to those of tuition fees, and discuss advantages and disadvantages compared to more established policy options. I conclude that, at least in the continental European context, DGR promises a number of economically and politically desirable properties compared to established alternatives, and deserves more serious investigation. Keywordshigher education, fees, funding, access, retirement within a framework of endogeneous decisions regarding labour supply, for example. But also in that such a limited view ignores real-life cognitive and behavioural effects. In relation to HE participation, manifest behaviour is well-documented to deviate from strictly economic rationality. This has been noted with respect to mobility (Wakeling and Jefferies, 2013), take-up of financial aid or the repayment schedule of student debt (Chowdry et al., 2012), and the 'haphazard post-secondary choice process' in general (Scott-Clayton, 2013, 75). In his study of decision-making among HE applicants, Usher (2010) found 'there was not a single case of a student being able to show in concrete terms that they had appraised their chosen HE options in terms of both costs and benefits' (p 69). Policy-making with respect to HE funding is likewise 'less the result of rational analyses and more the outcome of negotiation among stakeholders with competing interests' (Marcucci, 2013, 9). It matters how issues are framed, communicated, and justified (Usher, 2010). Accordingly, policies that are equivalent in accounting terms can interact quite differently with perceptions, attitudes, and actual participation decisions.Naturally, there is no empirical evidence yet on how prospective HE entrants perceive and respond to the idea of DGR. However, given well-known general cognitive biases (e.g.'sticker price shock', or 'hyperbolic discounting') it seems highly likely that DGR will have a different effect on HE participation behaviour than fees or a graduate tax. To make the case why DGR might actually be preferable, it is therefore necessary to discuss the issue in terms of HE polic...

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They do not buy it: exploring the extent to which entering first-year students view themselves as customers

Cited by 58 publications

References 41 publications

Exploring factors affecting first-year students’ learning experiences: A case study of a private university in Taiwan

Exploring factors affecting first-year students’ learning experiences: A case study of a private university in Taiwan

A degree of studying? Approaches to learning and academic performance among student ‘consumers’

Time is Money: Disentangling Higher Education Cost-Sharing and Commodification Through Deferred Graduate Retirement

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