Her majesty the student: marketised higher education and the narcissistic (dis)satisfactions of the student-consumer
通过深度访谈分析英国本科生叙事，揭示市场意识形态如何放大学生的自恋欲望和攻击本能，影响其对教育的满意与不满，对教育管理者和政策制定者有启示。
Intensifying marketisation across higher education (HE) in England continues to generate critical commentary on the potentially devastating consequences of market logic for learning. In this paper, we consider the student-consumer prominent in these debates as a contested yet under-analysed entity. In contrast to the dominance of homo economicus discursively constructed in policy, we offer a psychoanalytically-informed interpretation of undergraduate student narratives, in an educational culture in which the student is positioned as sovereign consumer. We report findings drawn from in-depth interviews that sought to investigate students’ experiences of choice within their university experience. Our critical interpretation shows how market ideology in an HE context amplifies the expression of deeper narcissistic desires and aggressive instincts that appear to underpin some of the student ‘satisfaction’ and ‘dissatisfaction’ so crucial to the contemporary marketised HE institution. Our analysis suggests that narcissistic gratifications and frustrations may lie at the root of the damage to pedagogy inflicted by unreflective neoliberal agendas. We finish with a discussion about the managerial implications of our work.