Higher Education Consumer Choice provides a comprehensive and highly focused critical analysis of research on HE consumer choice behaviour in the UK and around the world. Ideal for students, scholars and marketing practitioners interested in consumer choice and behaviour in higher education markets, the book explores the background and context to research on HE choice including globalization, changing supply and demand, fees and costs, and concerns about social disadvantage. Focusing on personal factors that influence consumer choice, group aspects of consumer behaviour such as cultural and ethnic differences, as well as theoretical and research models, this book is designed to stimulate new debate and criticism of HE consumer choice.

The demand and the costs for higher education have risen steeply in recent years. The most common response worldwide has been some form of cost sharing: shifting per-student costs from governments and taxpayers to parents and students. This timely book provides a comprehensive discussion of the concepts and consequences of cost-sharing in higher education. It offers a comparative approach based on several national case-studies, and proposes alternatives to prevalent approaches.

In the twentieth century, Americans have increasingly looked to the schools--and, in particular, to the nation's colleges and universities--as guardians of the cherished national ideal of equality of opportunity. With the best jobs increasingly monopolized by those with higher education, the opportunity to attend college has become an integral part of the American dream of upward mobility. The two-year college--which now enrolls more than four million students in over 900 institutions--is a central expression of this dream, and its invention at the turn of the century constituted one of the great innovations in the history of American education. By offering students of limited means the opportunity to start higher education at home and to later transfer to a four-year institution, the two-year school provided a major new pathway to a college diploma--and to the nation's growing professional and managerial classes. But in the past two decades, the community college has undergone a profound change, shifting its emphasis from liberal-arts transfer courses to terminal vocational programs. Drawing on developments nationwide as well as in the specific case of Massachusetts, Steven Brint and Jerome Karabel offer a history of community colleges in America, explaining why this shift has occurred after years of student resistance and examining its implications for upward mobility. As the authors argue in this exhaustively researched and pioneering study, the junior college has always faced the contradictory task of extending a college education to the hitherto excluded, while diverting the majority of them from the nation's four-year colleges and universities. Very early on, two-year college administrators perceived vocational training for "semi-professional" work as their and their students' most secure long-term niche in the educational hierarchy. With two thirds of all community college students enrolled in vocational programs, the authors contend that the dream of education as a route to upward mobility, as well as the ideal of equal educational opportunity for all, are seriously threatened. With the growing public debate about the state of American higher education and with more than half of all first-time degree-credit students now enrolled in community colleges, a full-scale, historically grounded examination of their place in American life is long overdue. This landmark study provides such an examination, and in so doing, casts critical light on what is distinctive not only about American education, but American society itself.

Examining the intersections of education, sociology and politics, Student Identity and Political Agency provides a unique, research-informed account of the student experience in a contemporary higher education setting. By drawing on current societal context, this book has a two-fold aim: to unpack and discuss student identity in higher education, and to identify opportunities to influence positive educational and social change. This essential text encourages readers to critically examine and explore: the marketisation and massification of higher education, the homogenising model of consumerism in higher education and the impact this holds upon the diversity of the student population, the positioning of youth and student-hood in our higher education systems, past and present forms of student political agency – protest, unionism and consumer rights – in an attempt to influence positive change. Informed by recent research, this is a crucial read for academics and researchers who specialise in the field of student identity and experience, or, more broadly, in higher education transformations. This book provides a timely and academically rigorous account of contemporary student identity and agency in the global context of higher education.

The book rejects the politics of power as inimical to the very becoming of the human and posits the politics of strength as a new possibility that breaks with the plantation system of organized violence and vampiric wealth production.

Higher Education: Open for Business addresses a problem in higher learning, which is newly recognized in the academic spotlight: the overcommercialization of higher education. The book asks that you, the reader, think about the following: Did you go to a Coke or Pepsi school? Do your children attend a Nike or Adidas school? Is the college in your town a Dell or Gateway campus? These questions should not be a primary concern for students, parents or faculty in an environment that has to allow students to freely focus on learning. But in a time of fiscal uncertainty, can higher education ignore the benefits of commercial ventures? It may seem foolish to do so. However, commercialism has gotten too close to certain aspects of academia such as the campus environment, classroom activities, academic research, and college sports. This disturbing encroachment of academic ground is addressed in Higher Education: Open for Business by a diverse host of authors who are closely involved in higher learning.

Until recently government policy in the UK has encouraged an expansion of Higher Education to increase participation and with an express aim of creating a more educated workforce. This expansion has led to competition between Higher Education institutions, with students increasingly positioned as consumers and institutions working to improve the extent to which they meet ‘consumer demands’. Especially given the latest government funding cuts, the most prevalent outlook in Higher Education today is one of business, forcing institutions to reassess the way they are managed and promoted to ensure maximum efficiency, sales and ‘profits’. Students view the opportunity to gain a degree as a right, and a service which they have paid for, demanding a greater choice and a return on their investment. Changes in higher education have been rapid, and there has been little critical research into the implications. This volume brings together internationally comparative academic perspectives, critical accounts and empirical research to explore fully the issues and experiences of education as a commodity, examining: the international and financial context of marketisation the new purposes of universities the implications of university branding and promotion league tables and student surveys vs. quality of education the higher education market and distance learning students as ‘active consumers’ in the co-creation of value changing student experiences, demands and focus. With contributions from many of the leading names involved in Higher Education including Ron Barnett, Frank Furedi, Lewis Elton, Roger Brown and also Laurie Taylor in his journalistic guise as an academic at the University of Poppleton, this book will be essential reading for many.

University branding has increased substantially, due to demands on universities to enrol greater numbers of students, rising tuition fees, the proliferation of courses, the growing 'internationalization' of universities, financial pressures, and reliance on income from foreign students. As higher education continues to grow, increased competition places more pressure on institutions to market their programs. Technological, social, and economic changes have necessitated a customer-oriented marketing system and a focus on developing the university brand. This book is unique in providing a composite overview of strategy, planning, and measurement informed by ground-breaking research and the experiences of academics. It combines theoretical and methodological aspects of branding with the views of leading exponents of branding in different contexts and across a range of higher education institutions. Expert contributors from research and practice provide relevant and varying perspectives allowing readers to access information on international trends, theory, and practices about branding in higher education. Readers are exposed to the critical elements of strategic brand management, gain insights into the planning process of higher education branding, and gain a solid understanding of the emerging research area of branding concepts in higher education. Advanced students, and researchers will find this book a unique resource and it will also be of interest to brand practitioners in both education and public sector markets.

The marketisation of higher education is a growing worldwide trend. Increasingly, market steering is replacing or supplementing government steering. Tuition fees are being introduced or increased, usually at the expense of state grants to institutions. Grants for student support are being replaced or supplemented by loans. Commercial rankings and league tables to guide student choice are proliferating with institutions devoting increasing resources to marketing, branding and customer service. The UK is a particularly good example of this, not only because it is a country where marketisation has arguably proceeded furthest, but also because of the variations that exist as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland increasingly diverge from England. In Everything for Sale, Roger Brown argues that the competitive regime that is now applicable to our Higher Education system was the logical, and possibly inevitable, outcome of a process that began with the introduction of full cost fees for overseas students in 1980. Through chapters including: Markets and Non-Markets The Institutional Pattern of Provision The Funding of Research The Funding of Student Education Quality Assurance The Impact of Marketisation: Efficiency, diversity and equity; He shows how the evaluation and funding of research, the funding of student education, quality assurance, and the structure of the system have increasingly been organised on market or quasi-market lines. As well as helping to explain the evolution of British higher education over the past thirty years, the book contains some important messages about the consequences of introducing or extending market competition in universities’ core activities of teaching and research. This timely and comprehensive book is essential reading for all academics at University level and anyone involved in Higher Education policy.

Although higher education institutes are not typically thought of as a business, colleges and universities utilize marketing strategies in order to compete for students. Information and communication technologies have enhanced and changed the nature and context of communication exchange, allowing for a broader range of competition. Marketing Strategies for Higher Education Institutions: Technological Considerations and Practices provides different aspects of marketing management and technological innovations in all parts of education, including K-12, non-formal, and distance education. Highlighting research studies, experiences, and cases on educational marketing, this book is essential for educational planners, administrators, researchers, and marketing practitioners involved in all aspects of educational development.