Freedom, fragmentation and student politics: tracing the effects of consumerism in English students' unions

Rille Raaper

Chapter 17 in Handbook on Academic Freedom, 2022, pp 289-305 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Raaper focuses on the English higher education setting to explore how marketisation of higher education has led to the fragmentation of student politics, with significant implications on student abilities to exercise their freedoms and political agency. The chapter demonstrates how student freedoms are conditioned and increasingly restricted by various professional actors that govern universities and enforce a consumerist rather than activist identity on student officers in English students' unions. She concludes that the professionalisation of students' political practice reveals significant changes in student voice and freedom to act as collectives. Focusing on one specific example of student representation, that of English students' unions' engagement with the policy consultation process leading to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA 2017), an Act that encourages a culture of neoliberal performativity and marketisation in higher education, she evaluates how a group of full-time elected student officers constructed and limited their political agency during the policy consultation process.

Keywords: Business and Management; Education; Politics and Public Policy General Academic Interest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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