学生合约与学生消费者:学习的市场化与高等教育公共产品性质的侵蚀

Student Agreements and Student Consumers: The Marketization of Learning and the Erosion of Higher Education as a Public Good

不同国家依据市场准则对高等教育进行调整,这些调整导致了新的社会阶层—学生消费者的产生,从而影响了高等教育的性质、目的和价值观政府支持学生消费者权利的重要尝试体现在高校与学生的合约中,这些合约规定了学生期望获得服务的水平以及他们为之应尽的义务。作者运用布迪厄的理论框架分析了高校的组织特征和运作机制,关注其对学生学习过程和教师学术行为的影响。高校为提高市场运作而提供了很多生产和服务信息,通过研究这些信息,作者发现高校常常营造一种特殊形象向即将升学的学生进行宣传,这种形象同时也调整着在校生的预期,这说明信息并非中立,而往往能构建起学生体验的独特概念,影响着学生的身份并强化了学生作为消费者的地位。就此而言,我们认为在变革了的社会经济政治环境中,高等敉育作为公共产品与私人产品的平衡被重建了在学术与政策层面,对消费主义的关注为大学注入了外在驱动的实用主义目标,从而弦化了当前将高等教育看作私人投资的观念。

This article argues that attempts by various national governments to restructure higher education according to market principles have constructed the student consumer as a social category, thereby altering the nature, purpose, and values of higher education. A key government attempt to champion the rights of the student consumer has taken the form of institutional charters which indicate the level of services students can expect to receive and what they will be expected to do in return. We employ the conceptual framework of Pierre Bourdieu to analyze the organizational characteristics and the dynamics of practice within institutions, paying particular attention to the impact on students and learning processes, and on the academic practices of faculty. By studying the production and provision of institutional information created to enhance the workings of the market, we suggest a particular image of higher education is promoted to prospective students, which simultaneously serves to regulate the expectations of current students. This suggests that information is not neutral but constructs a particular concept of the student experience that affects student identity and reinforces the student as consumer model. In this regard, we argue that the balance of the concept of higher education as a public and private good is reconstructed according to the changed social, economic, and political environment. We conclude that in academic and policy discourses, a focus on consumerism places externally-driven, instrumental aims upon universities which reinforce current notions of education as a private investment.