CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Stirbyte, Aureja |
|---|---|
| Title | The Student at the Heart of the System: Rationalities of Student Loans in England |
| Summary | Abstract My thesis analyses political rationalities and justifications of student loans in England in major education reports and White Papers. I question what discourses in these documents created a common consensus on the necessity of the student loan system. Even though these education documents are a frequent point of analysis for economic or education policy papers, they are rarely embedded into larger neoliberal ideology and marketisation processes. In my analysis, they emerge as part and parcel of the neoliberal turn in English politics. Thatcher’s and the New Labour governments enabled student loans by embedding them into larger higher education marketisation processes. Justifications for student loans also utilize the notion of the student to create a common consent on the implementation of the loan system. I used thematic analysis informed by discourse analysis to analyse my data. My findings show that student loans were made possible by a reconceptualization of the aim of higher education as an economic asset for the state and the personal benefit for the student. Even though higher education is largely framed as a sector providing high economic gain for the state, the rationalities of student loans are largely focused on the benefits for the student. The conception of the student as the beneficiary, the investor and the customer are largely used to justify the necessity and the benefit of student loans. |
| Supervisor | Kowalski Alexandra |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/stirbyte_aureja.pdf |
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