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We are very pleased that Michael Tomlinson, of the University of Southampton, will be giving one of the two keynote addresses at our launch seminar on 21st September. Michael’s talk will be entitled Student Experience in Context: higher education policy and the changing value of university education and we have pasted the abstract below.

‘This presentation will provide an overview of current trends and developments in higher education and their implications for student experience. The paper explores a variety of contextual and structural changes within and around higher education, including: massification, the move towards market-driven policy, the changing economic context for graduates and the continued socio-cultural divisions within the student population. The presentation will explore some of the main policy frameworks in place in UK higher education, their antecedents and potential consequences. One of the subtexts to recent HE policy has been the framing of contemporary students as rational choice-markers, consumers and self-disciplining agents who should hold their institutions to greater account. Recent policy frameworks have explicitly framed the value of higher education in almost exclusively utilitarian and performative terms (i.e. ‘value for money’, employability development etc). Drawing upon the speaker’s and other researchers’ critical insights in this field, the paper will consider some of the impacts of these changes have on student experience and the different ways in which students are positioned, and position themselves, in HE. This will include the contentious problem of the student-as-consumer and the way in which the value of higher education is framed.’

If you would like to join us on the 21st, for a day of stimulating papers, do register for a place here.

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEMPORARY HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENT: ONE-DAY SEMINAR

Wednesday, 21st September 2016; University of Surrey, LTJ, Lecture Theatre Block

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME

09.30-10.00, Registration

10.00-10.15, Welcome and overview of the ‘EuroStudents’ project: Rachel Brooks, University of Surrey

10.15-11.15, Keynote presentation: Michael Tomlinson, University of Southampton

Student Experience in Context: higher education policy and the changing value of university education

11.15-11.30, Break

11.30-13.00, Parallel sessions

Session A: LTJ

Spatial and social (im)mobilities through higher education: Michael Donnelly, University of Bath

Students in cities – the everyday mobilities of contemporary UK students: Mark Holton, Plymouth University and Kirsty Finn, Lancaster University

‘Talent-spotting’? Inequality, cultural sorting and constructions of the ideal employable graduate: Nicola Ingram, Lancaster University and Kim Allen, University of Leeds

Session B: LTF

Her majesty the student: marketised higher education and the narcissistic (dis)satisfactions of the student-consumer: Elizabeth Nixon, Richard Scullion and Robert Hearn, University of Nottingham

The student-as-consumer versus the student-as-learner: some preliminary findings from the UK: Stefanie Sonnenberg, University of Portsmouth

Understanding the student experience: Rachel Spacey and Mary Stuart, University of Lincoln

13.00-14.00, Lunch

14.00-15.30, Parallel sessions

Session C: LTJ

Unreasonable rage, disobedient dissent: the social construction of student activists through media and institutional discourses in the United Kingdom: Jessica Gagnon, University of Portsmouth

‘I am completely uninterested in politics’: ‘Filial nationalism’ and ‘rational patriotism’ as mainland Chinese students’ political orientations in Hong Kong: Cora Lingling Xu, University of Cambridge

Understanding the contemporary HE student: ‘It’s like a bubble. You just get sucked in’: Grace Sykes, Northampton University

Session D: LTF

How institutional doxa an shape choice within higher education: Jon Rainford, Staffordshire University

Contemporary students’ rights: a discursive strategy to overcome hysteresis in a post-92 HE setting: Karl Baker-Green and Cinnamon Bennett, Sheffield Hallam University

Paradoxes of the academisation process: a sociological exploration of the history of foreign and classical language education since 1864: Eric Lybeck, University of Exeter

15.30-15.45, Break

15.45-16.45, Keynote presentation: Johanna Waters, University of Oxford 

Biopolitics and the ‘making’ of the unexceptional student: some geographical reflections on education in East Asia

16.45-17.00, Concluding comments

To attend the seminar, please register here. (There is a small charge of £30.)

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEMPORARY HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENT 

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR ONE-DAY SEMINAR

Wednesday, 21st September 2016, University of Surrey

Keynote speakers: Anna Mountford-Zimdars (King’s College London) and Michael Tomlinson (University of Southampton)

There is some evidence that, at least within countries with neo-liberal welfare regimes, students are constructed largely as consumers with contemporary policy texts. However, there is less consensus about whether or not students have taken up such an identity. Some scholars have assumed that this construction of student-as-consumer is having a profound effect on how students themselves approach HE. Indeed, Molesworth et al. (2009) contend that the inculcation of a consumer identity has brought about a more passive approach to learning, in which students place much more emphasis on their rights rather than their responsibilities, and on having a degree rather than being a learner. Others have, however, argued that, despite the increasing recourse to the language of economics in policy documents (in which students are positioned as consumers and universities as providers), in practice, the behaviour of students does not conform to this model (Dodds, 2011; Williams, 2013). Moreover, research has suggested that such identities may be differentiated by socio-economic characteristics, with only more affluent groups having the capacity to ‘shop around’, unencumbered by financial concerns or the ‘identity risks’ of moving away from home.

This one-day seminar will provide an opportunity to explore our current understandings of the contemporary higher education student, and the extent to which they are shaped by, for example, policymakers, the media, higher education staff and students themselves. Papers may focus on one or more of the following: the impact of tuition fees on understandings of what it means to be a student; students as consumers; media representations of students; students as political actors; policymakers’ understandings of students; and cross-national comparisons. However, other topics, relevant to the seminar theme, are also welcome.

Abstract Submission: Please send abstracts of up to 250 words by 13th May 2016 to Rachel Brooks at the University of Surrey: r.brooks@surrey.ac.uk. (There will be a small charge of £30 for attending the seminar.) You can book a place here.

Seminar Organisers: The seminar is organised by Rachel Brooks and colleagues in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. It will help to launch the five-year ‘EuroStudents’ research project based at Surrey, which investigates understandings of the higher education student across six different European countries.

The seminar to launch the EuroStudents project will take place on Wednesday, 21st September at the University of Surrey. We will be posting details about this soon, along with a call for papers.

We are very pleased to have two great keynote speakers for the event: Anna Mountford-Zimdars, from King’s College London and Michael Tomlinson, from the University of Southampton.

Both have undertaken research in areas very relevant to the EuroStudents project. Anna has recently published a book on Meritocracy and the University, which provides a comparative analysis of higher education admissions in the US and UK, while Michael’s research has included a study of the impact of recent policy changes on student attitudes to learning in higher education.