Student as Consumer, Investor, and Juggler

Alison Taylor

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Chapter 2 Student as Consumer, Investor, and Juggler

In: Juggling Rhythms

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Alison Taylor

Alison Taylor
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 23–52

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004731745_002

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Abstract

Chapter 2 considers two metaphors that are part of popular discourses used by policy-makers and researchers to describe university students: student as consumer and student as investor. I then introduce a metaphor that I think better reflects the diversity of student experiences: student as juggler. The three metaphors generate different images of universities, society, and the student experience. The notion of the student as a consumer of higher education reflects discourse about the marketization of education including the commoditization of knowledge. Student as investor reflects the continuing influence of human capital discourse regarding the financial returns—collective and individual—to higher education. For decades, policy-makers and university administrators have asserted that education is a key driver of economic competitiveness in the knowledge economy (OECD, 2008). I draw on data from the HWS mixed-methodology study to engage in critical dialogue with these ideas about the student experience.

The work of various scholars as well as my own research counters the simplistic idea of education as a consumer good. Researchers also probe what is meant by human capital, how it is measured, and how it is to be valued (Feher, 2009). Some writers suggest that conceptualizing education as gift exchange (Wittel, 2018) or adopting the capabilities approach (CA) (Brown et al., 2020) would serve students better by rejecting narrow economistic measures of education and educational success. As a counter-metaphor to student as consumer and student as investor, I introduce the idea of student as juggler, intended to generate new ways of understanding the relationships between different students’ studies, work, and other activities without predetermining them. The juggler metaphor was central in HWS and continues to be generative for thinking about students and temporal-spatial relationships. I introduce this metaphor in Chapter 2 and develop it more fully in Chapter 4.

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Juggling Rhythms

Working-Student Life in the 21st Century

Series: The Knowledge Economy and Education, Volume: 13

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004731745

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 16 May 2025

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- Education
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Chapter 2 Student as Consumer, Investor, and Juggler

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Juggling Rhythms

Working-Student Life in the 21st Century

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