David Harvie (2006), Mike Neary and Joss Winn (2009), and Duna Sabri (2011) all express concern at the commodification of education and its effect on student and academic, with the latter two papers specifically linking the economics of education with ‘the student experience’, a ‘totemic’ and ‘sacred’ (Sabri, 660&665) notion at the heart of University policy, curriculum and pedagogy, and which has gained great purchase in UK universities (1994 Group, 2007; BIS, 2010; Browne 2010).
One might admire, as inherently democratic and empowering, HE institutions’ desires to base their policies and strategies around students’ views (with the National Student Survey being central to measuring ‘the student experience’), however, Sabri questions whether choice is really available to all when socio-economic, gender, race and other factors can seriously inhibit choice (664). Further, when education is reduced to ‘an economic transaction’ (665), choice in education becomes a matter of learning based on ‘”relevance” and the employability agenda’ (665).
One might admire, as inherently democratic and empowering, HE institutions’ desires to base their policies and strategies around students’ views (with the National Student Survey being central to measuring ‘the student experience’), however, Sabri questions whether choice is really available to all when socio-economic, gender, race and other factors can seriously inhibit choice (664). Further, when education is reduced to ‘an economic transaction’ (665), choice in education becomes a matter of learning based on ‘”relevance” and the employability agenda’ (665).
Harvie does not explicitly mention ‘the student experience’, but, in a piece of Marxism-lite, he does take on an education system that ‘not only[…]serves the corporation[…]but that[…]emulates it’ (2006, 3). Harvie’s claim is that this marketization of education alienates both academics and students from their own teaching and learning, where academics are forced to adapt their courses to market forces (11) and students learn with the sole aim of ‘employability’ (13). Harvie’s notion of alienation accords well with Sabri’s view that the choice at the heart of ‘the student experience’ is not necessarily a choice at all, and that, with the power of the consumer, the academic is disempowered (Sabri 2011).
Neary and Winn, also condemning ‘the way in which universities have allowed themselves to be redesigned according to the logic of market economics' (192), propose instead a way forward, ‘reinventing the student experience’ (192). The alienation that both Harvie and Sabri identify is to be swept away by a collaborative process of learning between student and academic, and with the ‘student as producer’ instead of consumer (Neary & Winn 2009, 192). This relationship, and the role of student as producer, will be particularly resonant to a consideration of e-learning, with technology being proposed by some as a democratizing tool.
Neary and Winn, also condemning ‘the way in which universities have allowed themselves to be redesigned according to the logic of market economics' (192), propose instead a way forward, ‘reinventing the student experience’ (192). The alienation that both Harvie and Sabri identify is to be swept away by a collaborative process of learning between student and academic, and with the ‘student as producer’ instead of consumer (Neary & Winn 2009, 192). This relationship, and the role of student as producer, will be particularly resonant to a consideration of e-learning, with technology being proposed by some as a democratizing tool.