Students in market-driven higher education: Challenges to identity and political agency

Presenter

Rille Raaper, Associate Professor and Deputy Director of Research at Durham University.

Resources

• Watch video recording of presentation
• View or dowload presentation (PDF, 2.4MB)

Introduction

This seminar, based on Rille Raaper’s recent book, delves into the concept of students as consumers in today’s market-driven higher education. It critiques the prevailing idea of the student-as-consumer, contending that it is an economic construct designed to emphasize self-interest and competition, overshadowing student diversity.

Utilizing poststructuralist theoretical tools, Dr Rille Raaper will present three scenarios portraying contemporary students as ‘the lost and lonely subject,’ ‘the futureless consumer subject,’ and ‘the commodified subject,’ but will conclude optimistically by exploring emerging forms of students’ political agency shaped by market forces and consumerist discourses.