Students as consumers? The perspectives of students' union leaders across Europe

Abstract

Various scholars have argued that higher education is becoming increasingly similar across Europe as a result of processes of marketisation and neo-liberalisation, as well as the creation of a European Higher Education Area. While much of this body of work has focussed on governance, institutional structures and reforms related to teaching and learning, some have suggested that the subjectivities and perspectives of students have also altered—becoming more consumer-like in their orientation. Nevertheless, there has been relatively little work across the continent that has explored, in a comparative manner, students' own perspectives or those of students who represent other students. This article starts to redress this omission by drawing on interviews conducted with students' union leaders across six European nations to examine the extent to which they shared the same understanding of students, focussing specifically on the concept of student-as-consumer.