With neoliberal policy central to the many challenges faced within the education system including an increasing gap between rich and poor (Reay, 2017; Giroux, 2014), this article explores how an Education Studies programme, drawing on the principles of critical pedagogy, can help students to better understand and interrogate neoliberalism and its impacts on the wider education system. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, 19 participants participated in five focus groups. The article argues that participants demonstrate sophisticated understandings of neoliberalism's impact on themselves as students, future educators and the wider education system. They also engage in active inquiry, problematising their lives, studies and future as educators. However, students often felt a sense of hopelessness and disempowerment to change a 'fixed' system and were concerned about becoming 'part of the problem' once in practice. Consequently, we argue that whilst Education Studies programmes underpinned by critical and relational pedagogy have the potential to support student interrogation of neoliberalism, space needs to be created to foster student agency and hope for change agency once in practice. This could be achieved through students and lecturers building alliances with teachers and educators that disrupt neoliberal hegemony in practice to help students envision postneoliberal education, a deeper exploration of how neoliberalism perpetuates inequalities through classroom policies, educational materials and teacher-student relationships and greater lecturer critical reflection upon how they are complicit in the systems they wish to challenge.