I was asked recently about my views on the
marketization of higher education, specifically in relation to the UK and
students’ view of themselves as customers. Over the last few weeks, this
question of has been niggling away at the back of my mind almost non-stop: if
students aren’t the customers of universities, then what are they? And, more importantly, how would I explain
this to a student if needed?
This is a discussion that has been ever
present in UK HE since the introduction of top-up fees in 1997, and has become
even more prominent since the lamentable decision to withdraw funding for UK
undergraduate students under the Con-Dem coalition government under
Cameron-Clegg. Yet my own teaching
experience has brought me into contact with other systems (Chinese, French,
British and US) which place different financial demands on students. While most
of my Chinese students and their families have paid tuition fees upfront,
international students I’ve taught have funded their education via some
configuration of cash, financial aid, bursaries, scholarships and student
loans. They often have an even stronger view of themselves as customers – or it
is manifest more openly. Colleagues in the UK, US and Australia have reported
that students can become very demanding (some crackers stories of students and
this Guardian article seems to capture this pretty well: Academics
Anonymous: My students have paid £9000 and now they think they own me). There are more head-on rejections like this
one on Slate concerning US HE, but while I find these logical and
persuasive, they tend to argue points on salary and how tuition fees are used rather
than questioning the very foundation underpinning the student-as-customer
mindset.
The problem of students viewing themselves,
or being viewed by institutions, as customers is both simple and nuanced. In
simple terms, this view commodifies an undergraduate degree and reduces it to
the status of something that is purchased.
The nuance is that this characterizes higher education as something that
is done to students, visited upon them, by their professors and lecturers. The commodification of higher education is
straightforward, but it is this more nuanced understanding of higher education
which more severely undermines both the students, the academic faculty and the institution
in creating the conditions conducive to a rewarding and enlightening
educational experience.
This blog post will give some thoughts of
mine on two aspects of this problem. Firstly, a quick look at how I’ve made
efforts, without directly addressing this student-as-customer perspective, to
give students a more helpful perspective on their undergraduate education. Secondly, some views on how we really need to
reframe this discussion to fix clearly in our own minds how to refute this
misleading and ultimately damaging notion that students are buying an
education.
Vessels
or Fires: The Student’s Mind
In my Year one/Freshman intro lectures over
the last two years, I’ve spent the first hour going through the syllabus with
my students (classes varying in size between 82 students and 170
students). The second hour has been
spent laying out how I expect students to approach their studies, and what the
differences are between high school and university. I’ve never directly addressed the
student-as-consumer question in class, but focused more on encouraging students
to shift the way the view themselves, their education and how they approach
syllabus content, lectures and seminars.
I won’t go into too much detail here, as
this part of the lecture is a 30-40min exploration of good habits, bad habits (and
how the best students are often a mix of both who learn to enjoy their
university experience), but the general gist is to challenge students’ thinking
about their minds as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. This small point seems to make a very clear
impact from day one, and is reinforced consistently throughout the semester
(including in the design of assessments which allows students to explore topics
and content of particular interest to them personally).
This part of the lecture is pretty brief,
but students get it. I can often see
them looking at this picture thinking (above): But isn’t that what we’re here
to do? Learn things and fill our minds with new knowledge?
Until, of course, they see the next
picture.
This is the way I want all of my students to
regard their minds while at university: as a fire in need of fuel. This view of
their educational journey – as a mission to kindle that fire and find the very
unique combination of fuels that make their own fire burn brightest – allows
them to extend their educational experience beyond the classroom. Viewing their mind in this way (I hope) will
allow them to engage more actively with (a) syllabus and module/course content
and assessments, and (b) all activities they pursue outside the classroom through
extra and co-curricular activities.
Additionally, I would hope it might inform their module/course choices,
encouraging them to explore subjects and topics in which they possess an
intrinsic interest, wherever possible.
Again, this attitude towards university is
something I hope my students will foster from day one. The question to which we now turn is: how can
this “Mind-as-Fire” disposition help combat the damaging effects of the
student-as-customer perspective that many, if not most, students seem to have.
Students
Are Not Buying An Education
Before we get deeper into this, its vital to
acknowledge how the introduction of undergraduate education tuition fees
transformed UK higher education. This
will help us obliterate the student-as-customer argument. What follows is a little UK centric, but
makes a point that is absolutely valid in any context where tuition fees are
charged directly to the student.
Before the introduction of tuition fees in
1997, who paid tuition fees? It was the UK government. Was the UK government
buying degrees for young British students?
No. Definitely not. Were the UK government the customer of the
universities when they paid tuition? No.
Definitely not.
So what exactly were they doing when they
paid grants towards to tuition fees?
They were investing in young people. And that, ostensibly, is what changed with
tuition fees. The UK government withdrew
its investment in school leavers, placing the burden for that investment upon
the students (and families) themselves. The resulting shift in attitudes has
been the most lamentable and damaging consequence of the introduction of
tuition fees, both amongst students and at the institutional and sectoral
levels.
So
What Exactly Are Students Paying For?
This is the crux of the matter and to answer
this effectively, we need to acknowledge that students are paying for
something: freedom, time and
opportunity.
Tuition fees and maintenance loans buy
time. They function to remove the
students’ economic necessity: placing the student in a context where they can
pursue and accumulate cultural and social capital free from the need sustain
themselves through labour.
Some of you may be recognizing a theoretical
framing here: Pierre Bourdieu. And you’d be right. As Bourdieu asserted: “it is in fact
impossible to account for the structure and functioning of the social world
unless one reintroduces capital in all its forms and not solely in the one form
recognized by economic theory”
Our students need to study to ensure they
achieve the best degree possible. A
degree is a form on institutionalized cultural capital that attests, beyond
dispute, that the holder has credentials. It cannot be removed once bestowed.
It cannot be contested once awarded.
Yet by far the more important form of
cultural capital at university is what Bourdieu called embodied cultural
capital. This comes in the forms of taste, skills, attitudes, dispositions and
behaviours inculcated throughout our childhood socialization and educational experiences.
Embodied cultural capital is at the heart of privilege, where those in
positions of privilege have had a far longer investment in education aimed at
the embodiment of cultural capital. To
give an example, a student might have bought a MacBook, but this is essentially
a form of economic capital unless the student possesses the skills, the embodied
cultural capital, to use different software, be that MS Office, Garageband, FinalCutPro,
Twitter, GoogleDrive or anything else we care to think of. University offers various different ways this
embodied cultural capital can be accumulated, not always through formal classes
and assessments.
Here, the concern isn’t with the social
justice implications of cultural capital, but with the way students should view
their education once admitted to an undergraduate program in order to help them
realize the greatest benefits. In this way university is not dissimilar to
World of Warcraft or other online role-playing games: students aim in this game
is to form their own persona through the active pursuit of embodied cultural
capital. This form of cultural capital
can’t be bought with money, it can only be accumulated through experience, and
the university provides a vibrant landscape with an endlessly flourishing and
infinite variety for students to pursue.
The major difference between university and World of Warcraft is that
you don’t get endless lives, you have to use the time wisely, and at the end
you get to be that person in the real world regardless of how well you’ve
done. Your prior socialization and
education allows you to enter university more tooled up than many of your peers
(Private schooling? Private tuition? Extra-curricular activities?), so its no
level playing field, but the results are far from certain, and for those who
are more successful in identifying what they’re interested in, what path they
want to take in the real world, and who it is they want to be, the benefits of
investing in a university education can be limitless.
Students who view themselves as customers
are, then, not really at university.
They’re just taking modules/courses towards a certificate. Our challenge as academics is to get them to
open their eyes; to recognize the myriad opportunities available inside and
outside the classroom at university; to use this freedom and time to
consciously and reflexively take advantage of the opportunities that university
presents, and from Day One to adopt an approach to university that liberates
them from this damaging and restrictive straight jacket that is the
student-as-customer mindset.
We need to do our students a solid here and
make damn sure they realize this from the minute they arrive.
MG
(I will follow this up with a post on social
capital in the university – specifically the role of social capital in
enthusing students in relation to argument laid ut above. However, there are a number of thoughts I
have on this related to research obsessiveness, adjuncts and zero contract
hours, overuse of GTAs and other features of the modern university that hugely
impact on social capital. So a separate
post will follow in a week or so).
