The Responsibilized Consumer: Neoliberalism and English Higher Education Policy

Morrison, Andrew

doi:10.1177/1532708616672675

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Through these plans, employers will play a central role in ensuring education providers produce the labour-power to support productivity growth in their local area. This reduces education to a social good whose primary value lies in its economic utility to capital (Morrison, 2017; Rikowski, 2004). Given the multifaceted crises facing working-class communities today, the question is whether lifelong learning can reimagine its social purpose in the coming years?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labour-power production and the skills agenda in lifelong learning: A critical policy analysis of the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022

Cogavin

2023

Policy Futures in Education

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This article considers how neoliberalism has created a reductionist view of lifelong learning in the UK focused on upskilling workers for the labour market. This critical policy analysis uses Marx’s theory of labour-power, as conceptualised by Glenn Rikowski, to examine the Skills and Post-16 Education Act, 2022 and to identify its ideological roots, its distribution of power, resources and knowledge, and the potential effect it will have on inequality. Findings indicate that while the Act aims to make it easier for adults to study more flexibly, not all adults will have the labour-power attributes and financial resources to access the higher-level qualifications prioritised for funding. This article argues that the Act represents a general deepening of neoliberalism in lifelong learning that will further stratify adult education and increase inequalities. This article concludes that policy has shifted from widening participation in lifelong learning linked to social enrichment and the development of democratic citizenship, to widening participation in higher levels of education and training aimed at enhancing labour-power for the capitalist labour market .

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labour-power production and the skills agenda in lifelong learning: A critical policy analysis of the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022

Cogavin

2023

Policy Futures in Education

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“…Students are increasingly positioned as ‘commodity purchasers’ and lecturers as ‘information brokers’, whose role it is to package and present information efficiently (Tomlinson 2017 , p. 454). This has led to hypotheses that students are consumers of a HE ‘product’ (Morrison 2016 ), as opposed to a ‘process’ (Tomlinson 2017 ). When presented with the statement: ‘I think of my university education as a product I am purchasing’, 11.88% ( n = 12) respondents ‘agreed strongly’ and 47.52% ( n = 48) ‘agreed somewhat’.…”

Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Where does my £9000 go?’ Student identities in a marketised British Higher Education Sector

Reynolds

2022

SN Soc Sci

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Significant evidence highlights processes of marketisation within British higher education since the 1980s, with changes to the funding, management, and expectations of higher education institutions, students, and staff. Through a cross-national and cross-institutional analysis, this paper explores the identities of students within a marketised British higher education landscape, and specifically, explores the identity of the ‘student-consumer’. Using a mixed methods approach with students from 37 higher education institutions across Britain, this research explores the attitudes, expectations, behaviours, and relationships held by students regarding higher education. Student identity orientations are explored, before the extent to which students’ express attitudes of instrumentalism and entitlement is investigated. The paper concludes that whilst there is evidence of consumerist discourses framing students’ relationship to higher education, students challenge the perception that they are passive consumers, and instead recognise the need to remain active co-producers throughout higher education. These findings have implications for policy and have resonance beyond Britain, as the marketisation of higher education is an increasingly international phenomenon.

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“…Universities have been transformed to produce such highly individualised and competitive graduates who have become ‘entrepreneurial actors across all dimensions of their lives’ (Brown, 2003: 38). For instance, Morrison (2017: 197) states that university students are now ‘responsibilized consumers’, and Kelly et al (2017: 105) similarly argue that universities aim to produce students that correspond to ‘the engaged student ideal’.…”

Section: Neoliberalism and Inclusion: Conflicting Or Mutually Constitmentioning

confidence: 99%

The voice of inclusion in the midst of neoliberalist noise in the Bologna Process

Kushnir

2020

European Educational Research Journal

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This article belongs to a limited body of scholarship concerning inclusion in the Bologna Process. The Bologna Process aims to create the European Higher Education Area with comparable higher education structures within the European Higher Education Area member states. Unlike previous research that focuses on the implementation of one of the Bologna Process inclusion-related action lines (i.e. lifelong learning, student-centred education and social dimension), this article adopts a broader lens, and investigates the evolution of the meaning of ‘inclusion’ in the key international Bologna Process policy documents. This article argues that there is still a lack of clarity around the meaning of ‘inclusion’ in the Bologna Process, and the list of underprivileged groups that the Bologna Process aims to include in higher education, is absent. This article calls for an urgent review of this problem in the Bologna Process at the European Higher Education Area ministerial conference scheduled for 2020 which will set the agenda for post-2020 work in the European Higher Education Area.

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The Responsibilized Consumer: Neoliberalism and English Higher Education Policy

Cited by 13 publications

References 12 publications

Labour-power production and the skills agenda in lifelong learning: A critical policy analysis of the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022

Labour-power production and the skills agenda in lifelong learning: A critical policy analysis of the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022

‘Where does my £9000 go?’ Student identities in a marketised British Higher Education Sector

The voice of inclusion in the midst of neoliberalist noise in the Bologna Process

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