Fee-funded universities reframe students as consumers against lecturers’ pay

Evidence

Of course, one of the things senior management is trying to do with the introduction of fees is to create a split between students and lecturers. As the students are paying more in fees, it is expected that they will demand more from the lecturers. Management is fairly cynically trying to get students to behave as “aggrieved consumers” who should demand more for their money, but the problem is that none of that extra money is going to the lecturers. I know of a communication from a senior manager at a higher education institution saying that, in the wake of the hike in fees, “We’d better prepare ourselves for students demanding more”. Which means that lecturers will have to work more for the same money. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1672

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the education-critique threads across capitalist-realism material on instrumentalised learning and shrinking public space. Also bears on the standing interest in how small governance shifts reshape social relations. — connects to: Student tuition fees were proposed as a pro-market formula for achieving intellectual diversity — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 103; Universities aggressively recruit federally funded students as revenue sources — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 659; Defeated tuition-fee plans still pushed the symbolic acceptance of fees — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 256 (+1 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: management manufacturing conflict between two worker groups as a cost-control strategy, students as aggrieved consumers while the money bypasses lecturers.

Broader Connections

• Defeated tuition-fee plans still pushed the symbolic acceptance of fees #corroborates (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 256
• Student tuition fees were proposed as a pro-market formula for achieving intellectual diversity #expands (0.78) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 103
• Universities aggressively recruit federally funded students as revenue sources #expands (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 659
• Corporate funders now seek direct control over university faculty hiring. #expands (0.72) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 698