Consumerisation in UK higher education business schools: higher fees, greater stress and debatable outcomes

Abdul Jabbar*, Bejan Analoui, Kai Kong, Mohammed Mirza

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

For many UK higher education business schools, the continued recruitment of UK, EU and international students is crucial for financial stability, viability and independence. Due to increasingly competitive funding models across the sector, many institutional leaders and administrators are making decisions typical of highly marketised consumer environments. Thus, this paper explores academics’ perceptions of the impact of consumerisation in UK higher education business schools. To achieve this, 22 business school academics were interviewed within three UK higher education institutions (HEIs) in the North of England. Participants had a minimum of three years teaching experience. Data was analysed using template analysis taking an interpretive approach. The findings indicate that academics perceived the introduction of tuition fees to have been the catalyst for students increasing demonstration of customer-like behaviour: viewing the education process as transactional, with the HEI providing a ‘paid for’ service. It is argued that these changes in UK higher education have created tensions between university leaders and academics, creating genuine dilemmas for those with decision-making responsibilities who must balance academic integrity and long-term institutional financial viability.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)85-100
Number of pages16
JournalHigher Education
Volume76
Issue number1
Early online date4 Oct 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2018

Bibliographical note

Copyright 2018 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Keywords

  • Administration
  • Consumerisation
  • Leadership
  • Marketisation
  • Student as consumer
  • Tuition fees

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