Students as (More Than) Consumers? An Exploration of Undergraduates' Discourses and Practices in Marketised Higher Education

‘Students as consumers’ has become the dominant discourse applied to English undergraduate students in the United Kingdom. This construction by policymakers is linked to the marketisation of higher education and the increased financial contribution of English students towards their studies. However, the construction of students as consumers, from their perspectives, has received little empirical attention. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with English undergraduates in England and Scotland, this article argues that while policymakers construct students as consumers, students do not enact this uniformly. The degrees to which their discourses and practices present aspects of consumerism, instrumentality and passivity vary considerably and are enacted in different combinations according to the number of contact hours on a course, and socio-economic and education backgrounds. This article provides a comprehensive picture of students in a marketised system and shows how ‘students as consumers’ impacts students' discourses and practices, informing higher education management and policymakers about its potential consequences.