This article first offers a survey of what has become an area of increasing interest in higher education: the rise of the so-called "student-consumer". This has been linked in part to the marketisation of higher education and the increased personal financial contributions individual students make towards their higher education. Drawing…

College rankings have become a ubiquitous part of American higher education. As the popularity of rankings has increased, so have the number of research studies attempting to better understand the impact rankings have on college/university admissions outcomes. In the past, these studies have focused almost exclusively on elite national…

Rankings are a powerful force in higher education, swaying the enrollment decisions of prospective students and affecting the opinions of parents, board members, and policymakers. In the words of one provost, "The rankings matter to our university because they matter to people who matter to us." Rankings are also a business--one that is…

The relevance of the researched problem stems from ecological issues that are a reflection of the contemporary culture crisis covering the whole range of people's interactions with each other, with society and with nature. In many respects, an ecological crisis is an ideological crisis and global environmental problems are impossible to solve…

For-profit colleges do not always recruit aggressively; nor do they always shortchange students. But the problem of colleges systematically overpromising and underdelivering, when it does happen, has largely been a for-profit phenomenon. The abuses have been the most widespread and most damaging when they have been fueled by government grants and…

Financial literacy, or understanding how money is made, spent, and saved in order to make informed decisions, is particularly important during the transition to and through college. Students who have a deeper understanding of finances and how they work are better positioned to make decisions regarding the college or university they attend, what to…

In nations facing austerity measures, students risk diminished quality in their higher education experiences. Universities function increasingly like corporations as they struggle to compensate for budget shortfalls caused by declining public support. As a result, students become positioned as consumers of a private commodity that exists to…

Research has suggested that changes in rankings have an impact on admissions outcomes at colleges and universities. This study incorporates organization theory to explain these mechanisms and other external forces driving the pursuit of prestige in higher education. Beyond updating and replicating previous findings related to the impact of college…

This paper outlines core features of what it terms "consumer-based learning" and relates this to the context of increasing utilitarian goals and values of higher education. It argues that this presents challenges broader than the immediate teaching and learning environment and student experience, which also potentially impacts the future…

For at least 30 years, professional work has been changing. Even such once-elite professionals as doctors, lawyers, and professors have become subject to significant control. Single-practitioner medical practices have given way to group practices subject to the rules of insurance plans; lawyers join mammoth firms where paralegals time the steps…

The author argues that a Higher Education Bill will be lacking in the future, as promised in the 2011 White Paper on HE; and hence the regulatory framework for English HE will, for the immediate future at least, have to evolve within the law as it is rather than via new legal powers. The essential issue is how to extract the benefits of market…

The purpose of this research is to analyze the attributes of top-tier public institutions and their host municipalities to determine if there are common factors in how the organizations are structured, how they interact, and whether a symbiotic relationship exists that can benefit both entities. This research attempted to determine if cities under…

It is well established that college students who participate in campus professional organizations report that their educational experience is enhanced and they are better able to make a successful transition to the world of work. In this study, family and consumer sciences students in three major areas of study--child and family development;…

Much emphasis is currently placed on the impact of marketisation on higher education and the damage it has caused to forms of academic and student identity. Evident is a concern that much of value in these identities has been lost amidst the pressure of audit, performance indicators and consumerism. This paper explores the changes to these…

Using online survey responses from 509 undergraduate students, three financial education methods (on-campus financial counseling center, online financial management resources, and in-person educational workshops) were examined. Using a social constructionist framework, the analysis controlled for various demographic and financial factors. The…