Abstract
As part of a progressive change occurring in the way public sector beneficiaries are conceived, higher education students started to be more and more perceived as clients or consumers. This implies assuming them as rational and conscious actors aware of what to expect from higher education attendance and of its returns. Framed by the metaphor of students as consumers, this paper aims to discuss whether students behave as rational consumers when choosing to enrol in higher education. Based on the findings of a qualitative study analysing Portuguese students’ choices it is possible to conclude that they tend to behave as rational consumers when they decide to attend higher education and when they choose a given institution, but not when they decide on attending a specific study programme. In this last case, instead of comparing the diverse study programmes and collecting information before forming their preference, students first formed this preference and, only then, gathered information. Student socialisation process emerged as a key element in shaping the preference for the study programme and in the vocation to choose it.
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Notes
The first concept to emerge was that of client, during the seventies. It translates an objectification of the relation between the deliverer of the service and its recipient, whereby the power is held by the first and the latter assumes a passive role (McLaughlin 2009). In the eighties, two interchangeable notions rise in parallel with that of client: the consumer and costumer notions. These translate a relationship where the public service is conceived, respectively, as product to the consumer, managed by a provider mainly accountable to the state; and as a commodity to the costumer, delivered by a provider accountable mainly to the management of the service (Jung 2010; McLaughlin 2009).
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Tavares, O., Cardoso, S. Enrolment choices in Portuguese higher education: do students behave as rational consumers?. High Educ 66, 297–309 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-012-9605-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-012-9605-5