Students as consumers? A counter perspective from student assessment as a disciplinary technology

ABSTRACT

The notion of students as consumers who exercise educational decisions based on economic self-interest leads to interesting questions about their perceptions of current higher education assessment practices. Guided by a Foucauldian theorisation and the findings from focus groups carried out with students from two European universities, one from the UK and another from Estonia, the article argues that globally dominant consumerist policy discourses have altered but not removed the student experience of constraint in assessment. I argue that students’ response to disciplinary power in assessment has become highly strategic and differs depending on the institutional assessment systems: students from Estonia recognise the powerful position of academics as assessors and find ways to create a good social impression of themselves; their counterparts from the UK, however, demonstrate a tactical approach to their learning and study processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• neoliberalism
• consumerism
• student assessment
• discourse analysis

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Dr Jan Smith for her time and generous feedback on this paper. I am also highly grateful to Dr Fiona Patrick for her support during my research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The Russell Group includes 24 UK universities ‘which are committed to maintaining the very best research, an outstanding teaching and learning experience and unrivalled links with business and the public sector’ (Russell Group 2015).

2 The Republic of Estonia gained independence from Soviet Union in 1991 and joined the European Union in 2004. The population of Estonia is approximately 1.3 million people.

3 The word ‘face’ is often used in Estonian language to refer to subjective judgment (e.g. favouring someone based on their visible characteristics).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ESRC [grant number ES/J5000136/1 +3 Doctoral Award] and the University of Glasgow, College of Social Sciences scholarship.