TY  - CHAP
AB  - Abstract Is the aim of the university to prepare citizens to contribute to civic and social life as well as to travel flexibly and successfully through a rapidly changing work world? Or is the purpose of higher education more narrowly to advance students’ individual economic interests as they understand them? Should we think of students as citizens or consumers? Many analysts argue that, in recent years, the notion that higher education should serve to advance students’ individual economic position has increasingly taken prominence over broader notions of the purpose of American higher education. In this paper, we examine whether and to what extent a shift from considering students-as-citizens to students-as-consumers has occurred in US higher education. We provide a longitudinal analysis of two separate and theoretically distinct discourse communities (Berg, 2003): higher education trustees and leaders of and advocates for liberal arts education. Our data suggest a highly unsettled field in which commercial discourse as measured by the student-as-consumer code has surely entered the US higher education lexicon, but this code is not uncontested and the more traditional citizenship code remains significant and viable.
VL  - 46
SN  - 978-1-78560-831-5, 978-1-78560-830-8/0733-558X
DO  - 10.1108/S0733-558X20160000046007
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20160000046007
AU  - Kleinman Daniel Lee
AU  - Osley-Thomas Robert
PY  - 2016
Y1  - 2016/01/01
TI  - Codes of Commerce and Codes of Citizenship: A Historical Look at Students as Consumers within us Higher Education
T2  - The University Under Pressure
T3  - Research in the Sociology of Organizations
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 197
EP  - 220
Y2  - 2024/09/21
ER  -