Hegemony within Higher Education: The Creation of an "Ideal" Student

Abstract

This paper is an examination of how higher administration at Jesuit schools use hegemony to create an ideological definition of the ‘ideal’ student. I use rhetorical criticism as a means of explaining how students are characterized and defined based on Creighton University sanctioned webpages. The results provided two major ideological principles that influence Creighton’s discussion of the overall student population, the privileging of numbers and the construction of a preferred student model. These ideological themes in combination with hegemonic principles promote the creation of an ‘ideal’ student that no individual is fully capable of attaining.