Dr Rille Raaper rille.raaper@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Students’ Unions and Consumerist Policy Discourses in English Higher Education
Raaper, R.
Authors
Abstract
This article centres on the recent Higher Education and Research Act 2017 in England and the consultation documents leading to the legislation. I will start by arguing that the reform promotes consumerist understanding of students. Guided by Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, I will further explore the ways in which five students’ unions from England and their sabbatical officers understand and respond to the consumerist policy discourses. The unions’ official responses to the government’s consultation demonstrated a strong opposition to the reform, particularly against the tuition fee increase and metrics used to measure teaching quality. The follow-up interviews with sabbatical officers, however, highlighted that this opposition can often be fragmented by consumerist counterarguments. The interviewees emphasised consumer rights as benefiting students and the unions. The differences between the written and verbal discourses will be discussed, and the reasons for a lack of consistency in the participants’ discourses questioned in relation to their relationship with the university management and wider student population they represent.
Citation
Raaper, R. (2020). Students’ Unions and Consumerist Policy Discourses in English Higher Education. Critical Studies in Education, 61(2), 245-261. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1417877
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Dec 13, 2017 |
Online Publication Date | Jan 5, 2018 |
Publication Date | 2020 |
Deposit Date | Jan 15, 2018 |
Publicly Available Date | Jul 5, 2019 |
Journal | Critical Studies in Education |
Print ISSN | 1750-8487 |
Electronic ISSN | 1750-8495 |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 61 |
Issue | 2 |
Pages | 245-261 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1417877 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(866 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Studies in Education on 05 January 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17508487.2017.1417877
You might also like
Handbook on Academic Freedom
(2022)
Book
COVID-19: A Neoliberal Nirvana?
(2022)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search