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As one of the pioneers and leading advocates of neoliberalism, Britain, and in particular England, has radically transformed its higher education system in recent decades. What was once a public good has turned into a market in which universities are required to perform like businesses, with students being increasingly referred to as customers.
The Idea of Higher Education and the Student investigates precisely this relation between the changing function of higher education and how we see the student. But instead of offering yet another critique of neoliberalism and marketisation, it widens the view beyond the present.
List of contents
1 Introduction 2 Theorising Higher Education Part One: Higher Education for Post-War Britain 3 Setting the Scene 4 National Needs and the Provision of Manpower 5 The Idea of the University 6 The Student Voice Part Two: Breaking the Ivory Tower 7 Higher Education and the Welfare State 8 Barbarians at the Gates 9 New Institutions for New Students? 10 The 1960s Student Protests Part Three: Marketisation and the Student as Customer 11 Thatcherism and New Public Management 12 Towards the Learning Society 13 Higher Education and the Third Way 14 The Triumph of the Market 15 Neoliberal Governmentality and the Student Part Four: Beyond the Customer and Neoliberal Higher Education 16 Looking Forward to the Past 17 Contesting the Customer 18 Towards the Future 19 The 2010 Student Protests 20 Conclusion
About the author
Robert Troschitz currently works at Dresden University of Technology.
Summary
As one of the pioneers and leading advocates of neoliberalism, Britain, and in particular England, has radically transformed its higher education system over the last decades. Universities have increasingly been required to act like businesses, and students are frequently referred to as customers nowadays. Higher Education and the Student investigates precisely this relation between the changing function of higher education and what we consider the term ‘student’ to stand for.
Based on a detailed analysis of government papers, reports, and speeches as well as publications by academics and students, the book explores how the student has been conceptualised within the debate on higher education from the birth of the British welfare state in the 1940s until today. It thus offers a novel assessment of the history of higher education and shows how closely the concept of the student and the way we comprehend higher education are intertwined. Higher Education and the Student opens up a new perspective that can critically inform public debate and future policy – in Britain and beyond.
The book should be of great interest to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of higher education; educational policy and politics; and the philosophy, sociology, and history of higher education.
