Students are not Customers of the University – The Analysis of Marketization and the Metaphor of Students in Higher Education

Abstract

In this article, it discusses the marketization of higher education, during which a metaphor of students appears. When students are viewed as customers of universities, the teaching of teachers will be influenced and students themselves will be deprived opportunities of being critical learners. The marketization in Chinese context is specifically analyzed to further demonstrate it is unnecessary to treat students as university customers. Although it will be hard and impossible for higher education to become complete public goods, there is no need to offer students some identities in advance which may cause the deprivation of students’ own choices and pure learning motivations. This article argues the unnecessity of viewing students as customers of university and urges more research to focus on students’ and teachers’ voices about their identities in higher education.