The reason why the threatening image of the student has penetrated and disseminated so well may reside in the fact that academics studying higher education reforms have not challenged quality assurance’s dominant views on students. Frequently, documents include assumptions about student behaviours that have not been corroborated73. Theories that denounce the commercialisation of higher education or the commoditisation of research do not contradict these assumptions, they take for granted that students embrace competitive practices and a market oriented mentality. For some researchers, at least “segments of the university, including faculty, administrators, and students, embrace market activity, while other segments are resistant (or neglected)” (Slaughter & Cantwell, 2012, p.587). This might explain why, in the midst of criticism, the regime has still been able to flourish. Ambitious transformations
73 For example, Schade assumes that higher education students in Germany are using the information
generated by quality assurance processes, as customers, to make informed choices: “The expectation of more transparency has been met, however, since the Akkreditierungsrat’s information on accredited programmes is increasingly used by ‘customers’ to make informed choices” (2007, p.193).
have been conducted under the assumption that they deliver what students want, essentially an education tailored to the job market both in form and content. It is clear these transformations have been imposed on academics who do not agree with them, but it is never considered whether this is also the case with groups of students also refuse them.
The critique of academic capitalism focuses on what universities do in their relationship with students, what they offer to them and what they tell them. They denounce that institutions see students as “targets for the extraction of revenue”, involving much more than their payment of tuition fees. It is said that universities have adopted “an economic, proprietary orientation to students [in which], the consumption versus the educational dimensions of a college education become increasingly emphasized” (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p.279). Universities use marketing in ways that serve their economic interests, they have a preference to attract economically privileged students – both from a wealthy background as well as professionals who return for graduate degrees – over others who remained underserved. They also market consumer capitalism to their students (pp. 279-304) through what Slaughter and Rhoades identify as “a (somewhat) hidden extracurricular course of instruction in consumption capitalism” and by turning them into technology savvy consumers of corporate products (2004, p.19). The authors here refer to the coupling of technology with education. In other words, students are led to encounter technology as a fundamental part of their education; having access to the latest technologies becomes equated to having access to a proper education.
To the above I would add another example in which universities market consumer capitalism to their students: the practice of requiring their participation in marketing research. For research on brands and perceptions of quality, researchers frequently conduct empirical studies with students as participants. In many of these studies, students are required to fill-in questionnaires that include the names of well-known brands listed together with hypothetical new products. This is the case in brand extension research. In one classic and often cited study from 1990, for example, 107 undergraduate business students from an American university participated by filling in questionnaires in which they shared their perceptions and evaluations of six real and very well-known brands and 20 hypothetical brand extensions. Significantly, the students had to participate in the study as part of a course requirement (see Aaker & Keller, 1990). This study also enlisted another 121 students for a second experiment. Another study, in 2006, was applied to 227 graduate business students in classroom settings (see Kalamas, Cleveland, Laroche & Laufer, 2006). Other studies also mention the participation of hundreds of – mainly business – undergraduate students completing questionnaires during class time in
order to help researchers understand consumer reactions to brands and brand extensions (Mao & Shanker Krishnan, 2006; Milberg, Sinn, & Goodstein, 2010). Innumerable examples of this practice can, of course, be found in the marketing literature, suggesting that, at least in some areas, it can be common practice to use the classroom as a convenient space to improve the science of selling products.
In addition to turning students into captive markets, and to forcing them to participate in marketing research, another way in which students are placed at the service of the market is as cheap or free labour. Internships place students in the position of low-cost or free labour for corporations. From this arrangement companies obtain the most advantage because they no longer have to invest in training programmes for new employees and test future personnel without incurring in costs (Perlin, 2012). In turn, the facilitation of internship placements by a university is presented as an advantage for students, portrayed as a lesson in real life – more valuable than classroom time – and an enablement of the proper and much needed entrepreneurial attitude. Internships become an apparent win-win-win situation. Arguably, there are sharp differences with respect to how much each part wins. In this arrangement, it is expected that students should have the greatest gratitude for the opportunity to enter the labour market.
Many messages available for students in the university emphasise market and prestige issues over access; and noninstructional services over educational (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p.284). From the perspective of academic capitalism, when students enrol in a university they become captive markets, and when they graduate they are registered as “output/product, a contribution to the new economy” (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p.2). Hence, universities behave as marketers which “advertise education as a service and a life style” (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p.1), and accordingly, from this perspective students are seen as consumers who choose universities and majors based on their capacity to offer a secure return on their investment and on their closeness to the new economy (p.2).
But students are also described as defrauded consumers, passive, captive markets that are not better informed about a university but merely persuaded to buy (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p. 286; Giroux, 2007). They enter the picture in a very unfavourable position. The current promotion of costly expenditure in research and development – considered as an investment that can guarantee future and generous sources of income for the university – actively takes resources away from teaching while, paradoxically, students constitute a secure
source of income for the present74. Slaughter and Leslie (1997) claim that a decrease in expenditures on teaching was due to an increase in expenditure on research, whereas Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) consider the decline of investment in education is due to an increased investment in “non-academic personnel and activities” (p.300), including managerial staff that, as stated before, has proliferated with the quality assurance regime. In the case of the United States, this unequal distribution of funds has been a trend for the last twenty-five years. Examples of academic services that have not received the same amount of financial support are advising and tutoring, hiring of new faculty, and reducing student/faculty ratios (Slaughter & Rhoades, pp.301-302), or increasing library holdings (Ehrenberg, 2003). Furthermore, Slaughter and Cantwell state that an unquestionable effect of the promotion of competitiveness is a steady increase in costs, which students have to absorb by paying higher fees that will not necessarily result in a better education for them. The paradox is clear: students have to finance elements that strengthen their university’s capacity to compete with other institutions but may have no impact – or can even undermine – their education. In Europe this competitive trend is creating the same effect. In spite of this being a context of greater public funding, the latest European reforms have included an agenda to market higher education to fee-paying students: “The Lisbon agreement calls for member countries to change funding formulas so that student fees represent a greater share of university revenues” (Slaughter & Cantwell, 2012, p.599). As in the United States, in some European countries international students enter the picture as a sound financial alternative.
In addition to being made to pay for what they do not receive, and to pay steadily growing fees, students in the academic capitalism regime are also being given information – through intense marketing activities – that could be described as misleading and not for the students’ best interests (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p.283). As Bauman states, in the liquid society university students stop being people to cultivate and become clients to seduce (Bauman, 2009, p.158). Evidently, universities are involved in that effort, they do not talk about their weaknesses or limitations, and as a result “imperfect consumer knowledge may derive from college and university marketing efforts that are aimed at influencing consumer choices” (Slaughter & Rhoades, p. 284). Universities find themselves in the same position as
74 This has been a reality since the 1980s in the United States, where tuition fees paid by undergraduate
students are the main source of income for universities (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p. 295). This is especially true in some fields, as in the case of Sociology, which during the 1970s enjoyed a golden era of abundant public funding for research that sharply declined in the following decade. Competition for students became fierce between Sociology departments, so much so that third world students were identified as a valuable and necessary input to the system (Park Turner & Turner, 1990, p. 194). Today, the competition for students remains intense and is coupled with the competition between
any business that is trying to sell a costly product. Marketing efforts are directed to convincing the buyer of the product’s value, not of informing about its real qualities. A unique study, in which 48 American university ‘view books’ were analysed, revealed how universities engage in aggressive marketing. Their messages avoid important issues, such as the role of higher education in reinforcing democracy or the common good, or real social problems such as racism or gender discrimination. They also avoid giving key data such as tuition and other costs. Instead they create a fantastical image of college education, and focus disproportionally on campus beauty, student physical attractiveness, extracurricular activities, and fun. It was also revealed that students where enticed by conveying the message that everything would be centred on each individual student and his or her success and down playing the issue that individual work and effort, as well as a strong commitment, are also part of a good college education. Most universities refused to stay away from stereotypes and as a result view books seemed, on most cases, to be repeating themselves. The authors conclude that by avoiding discussions about the real purpose of higher education, view books portray college admission as a matter of selecting the most attractive offer, as a result commodifying college choice (Hartley & Morphew, 2008, p. 688).
Amply coinciding with this view, Ritzer states that in the postmodern consumer society, the university is under pressure for being perceived as a “decrepit mode of consumption” that “does not do a very good job of allowing students to consume education” (Ritzer, 1998, p. 151). For Ritzer, the McUniversity is, in fact, the result of a forced adaptation of the university to a consumerist student culture and economic factors such as the decline of funding for higher education. According to him, the McUniversity is a more compact organisation that tries to lower its operation costs, and combines this with a major effort on attracting students through superficial, fun-focused offers, competing with other organisations with greater capacity to entice them. Indeed, in the United States this trend is clear. Universities consistently and increasingly spend money on the physical appearance of their campus in an effort to become more attractive to prospective students. The effort is not limited to renovating teaching spaces, it also includes the introduction of mall-like areas and modern sports grounds in campus, information technology and cable television in the dormitories (see Slaughter & Rhoades, pp. 298-299; Boyer, 1987; Rhoades, 1995; Collison, 1989; Tuchman, 2009). To do so, universities often enter in partnerships with private companies, including banks, which offer services for the student captive market, but also finance certain operations for the universities in exchange for direct access to students to offer them particular services (Slaughter & Rhoades, p.300). These expenses, in turn, contribute to
raising the cost of tuition, and limiting entrance to students from under-privileged backgrounds.
The McUniversity, described by Ritzer, tries to “script” professors – enforcing uniformity in lectures and ancillary materials – as a way of giving students “what they say they need and want, not what is part of some canon” (Ritzer, 1998, p. 158). What emerges in this view is that students are not asking for knowledge from their teachers, rather they are demanding standardised educational experiences, as well as value for money that can be guaranteed through a permanent adaptation of the university to the changing job market. In Bauman’s terms, students are seeking counsellors, not teachers (2009, p.162). Counsellors give people knowledge that is more like inspiration, they teach the ‘how-to’ kind of knowledge, and can help to reveal the inner riches the lie in the individual (pp.161-162). In fact, this idea is fundamental in the trend of lifelong-learning, where the individual enrols in the continuous look-out for new, better, and more effective counsellors (p.162). Students, therefore, are not interested in acquiring knowledge, or anything permanent, they are searching for experiences that can reveal their potential to themselves and possible employers, and necessarily changing according to the circumstances that may appear. Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) concur with this view, saying that the standardisation of teaching is done to allow for the possibility of education modules to be more interchangeable as well as those teaching them, turning the university into a more flexible organisation that can shift along with students’ desires and demands.
For Ritzer (1998) the issue is clear, “students (and often, more importantly, their parents) are increasingly approaching the university as consumers” (p. 151). He quotes articles and studies that confirm this consumerist orientation in students in the United States.75 Ritzer’s perspective is based on serious assumptions about student culture. For example, he assumes that students always know what they want and actively demand it, that they will always prefer a modern and luxurious campus above other characteristics of a university, or that they do prefer “high tech” universities. Callinicos, in turn, mentions a practical issue that forces students to behave less like students and more like opportunistic consumers: the reality of the rise in fees has meant that students must increasingly work and as a result devote less time to their studies (2006). In turn, Bok argues that immersed in a competitive context, students “may well neglect other purposes of undergraduate education in their eagerness to
75 See, for example, Levine (1993), who provides a list of services and conveniences that students claim
they want from their university; and Plater (1995), who presents an issue of the journal Change with a text that aims at persuading academics to serenely accept the fact that students have become customers and need to be treated in that way.
take any course that promises to give them a competitive edge in the struggle for success and financial security” (2006, p. 282).
Alvesson also makes the assumption that students have become flexible – and defrauded – consumers when he explains mechanisms that form part of the culture of grandiosity. He mentions that universities develop “pseudo-events” that are “easy to grasp from the consumer viewpoint, but consumers fail to appreciate the pseudo aspect and accept them as genuinely important phenomena” (Alvesson, 2013, p. 16). He provides us with an interesting reflection about consumers that questions higher education quality assurance regimes’ emphasis on placing student opinions as guiding truths76. Bok also considers that “if [students] are looking for anything, it is likely to be something that helps them find a job or reduce their college debts, not better courses in civic education, moral reasoning, or foreign cultures. What competition for students usually brings about are new vocational programs, merit scholarships, and tuition discounts…” (Bok, 2006, pp. 326-327). With this he assumes that because these kinds of decisions are claimed to have been reached through the consultation of students’ opinions, than they do reflect the latter. In addition, Bok argues that student and alumni satisfaction should not be interpreted as evidence of quality. He points out that:
“students are not infallible judges of their own learning, nor do they become so after they graduate. They can certainly recognize poor teaching, but, having experienced only their own college, they lack the comparative perspective to know whether they are receiving the best instruction – or even close to the best – that universities are capable of providing” (Bok, 2006, pp. 310-311).
Although Bok’s argument is convincing it may also lead us to conclude that students who have experienced different universities in different systems, and even different countries – as is the case for many nowadays – would be able to judge properly on quality issues. Is this a matter of how well informed or well experienced a student is in order for his or her opinion to be valid? Slaughter and Rhoades also reached the same conclusion as Ritzer, Bauman, Alvesson, and Bok, and believe that it is not clear whether students are in pursuit of quality education and may be more interested in consumer services and benefits that have little relation to educational quality or knowledge (2004, p. 302). The issue underscored here is
76 “In his/her capacity as a central figure, the consumer is, however, highly controversial. Perhaps he/she
is king, but is the monarch clever or stupid, directing actively or merely reacting passively? Is the consumer the incarnation of rationality: actively aware of his needs and wishes, capable of imposing efficiency and flexibility on various institutions as a result of his decisions in the marketplace and in quasi-markets? And can consumer choices overcome inefficiency and rigidity? Or is the consumer a typical example of amenability, a victim of power, manipulation, and limited rationality, permeated by illusions, wishful thinking with no sense of reality…” (Alvesson, 2013, p. 34).
whether we should disqualify or accept students’ opinions as valid data for decision making. An interesting divergence from the stance presented in quality assurance policies emerges: while the policies advocate for the student’s opinion as a guiding light for actions, these scholars seem to turn toward the opposite direction, they discredit this opinion based on the argument that students are no longer students, they are consumers.
Accordingly, other researchers assume that because the policies that turn students into clients exist, than students are most likely just passively following the trend, conceiving themselves as entrepreneurial customers and their teachers as service providers (see, for example, Liesner, 2006 and Pongratz, 2006, who describe the German case). Others claim that because protests are not massive or continuous, and actors in the university seem indolent and apathetic, there is a new kind of subjectivity already in place (Liesner, 2006, p. 493).
In sum, with the commoditisation discourse being so widespread, and with the conviction that it basically consists in giving students what they are demanding, it seems as if most if not all students, agree with the quality assurance regime. The critics of these reforms have failed to state that not only do these reforms, and some of their central notions, lack the