Higher Education and student engagement: implications for a new economic era

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of rising fees and the increasing privatisation of higher education on the expectations of its students. It compares experiences in Canada, Australia and the US with conversations carried out in a UK university in 2012 (after the UK fee rise).

The research was informed by Burns Systemic Action research (2007), following emerging lines of enquiry and responding to resonance in these. It brings together conversations held with new undergraduates, second and third year students and staff tasked with introducing engagement into the curriculum.

Findings indicate that student expectations are heavily influenced by secondary schooling and a target-driven consumer culture but that change has been gradual over a number of years. Alongside wanting “value for money” and “a good social life and a good degree” students are heavily motivated by experience and keen to be challenged.

Because of the research approach, the research results may lack generalisability.

By comparing banking or transactional approaches to teaching and learning with critical pedagogy this paper hopes to highlight the importance of opening up rather than closing down opportunities for social engagement and experiential learning.

This paper makes a plea for social engagement that properly responds to the needs of communities resisting market-driven forces that treat students as consumers and expecting more rather than less from them in return.

Lecturers are encouraged to rethink the pressures placed upon them by the current economic era and the tensions between competing agendas of employability and engagement.