Quinlan, K.;
(2021)
Do higher education students really seek
‘value for money’?: Debunking the myth.
London Review of Education
, 19
(1)
, Article 03. 10.14324/LRE.19.1.03.
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Abstract
Although students are increasingly cast as consumers wanting ‘value for money’, this study empirically investigated whether students actively seek value for money. In Study 1, 1,772 undergraduates at a mid-ranked English university were asked open-ended questions about what they had wanted from their university learning experience and how that had turned out. Hopes were coded as fulfilled or unfulfilled. Responses were searched for key words related to ‘value for money’. Less than 2 per cent of students referenced ‘value for money’. Those students were significantly more likely to have unfulfilled hopes. In Study 2, 185 first-year science students were asked open-ended questions about why they chose their subject and their programme, and what they had wanted from their learning experience in that programme. None referenced value for money. Students’ reasons for choosing their subjects and programmes were analysed. ‘Value for money’ does not do justice to students’ hopes for university or their programme.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Do higher education students really seek ‘value for money’?: Debunking the myth |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/LRE.19.1.03 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.19.1.03 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2021 Quinlan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | consumers, higher education, expectations, England, student satisfaction |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10121460 |
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