With a tuition fees rise on the cards in England, Louise Taylor argues that students need to reconsider their identities as educational consumers to get the best value from their degrees
The idea that students should passively consume their education is widely regarded by academics as a bad one.
For some students, knowing that their tuition fees are paying their lecturers’ wages may engender unrealistic expectations around the quantity and/or type of input they should receive.
These expectations may also be accompanied by a sense of entitlement among some students in terms of grade outcomes.
Students as consumers
The idea that students’ consumer identities should be reinforced thus seems to be at odds with what educators perceive to be needed for creating optimal teaching and learning experiences, and research supports this.
For example, data I have collected from undergraduate home students in England suggests that those who identify more strongly as consumers have poorer academic outcomes than those with weaker consumer identities.
Furthermore, student “consumers” are more likely to have goals that are related to their performance, e.g., passing a test, than goals related to developing their understanding, and so they adopt more passive learning strategies, such as rote memorisation.
In addition, students who complain more about their course (a “symptom” of marketised environments whereby customer feedback is encouraged) are also more likely to report using superficial learning strategies, which are associated with poorer attainment.
When you look at the data, however, the extent to which students actually identify as consumers may be surprising. The data do not support the belief that most students identify strongly as consumers. For example, one study measured levels of agreement to statements from a student customer orientation questionnaire in over 600 undergraduates in England.
Example statements included: “As long as I complete all of my assignments, I deserve a good grade”, and “The main purpose of my university education is to maximise my ability to earn money”.
The mean agreement score was fairly low, and comparable to a similar study of almost 800 students, and another study of American students. How does this reconcile with the perception among many educators of students identifying as consumers?
A student identity typology
It is useful to look at the bigger picture and understand students’ supposed “consumer” identities alongside the more traditional identity of student as scholar or learner. In the same study that first measured consumer identities among students in England, Bunce et al also measured learner identity.
They found that students, on average, had a strong learner identity (measured with items such as “I read relevant sources to learn more about my subject at university” and “I feel most satisfied when I work hard to learn something”).