ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to trace and illustrate the interplay between different images of the student, constructed within, and in response to, policy discourses in higher education (HE) in England. It explores students’ political agency, by which people mean their ability to challenge and alter policy discourses and sound their own demands, at the macro-level in terms of their engagement with government, the education sector, and the public, and at the micro-level in regard to their encounters with policy within their own institutions. The chapter provides a synthesis of student representation in a contemporary English HE setting. Students have often been merely the beneficiaries of policy aims, such as an increase in university places, or packages of finance and support. In parallel to the emergence of the student-as-consumer identity, a positioning of the student as a partner in HE has developed within the HE sector, without a clear articulation within government policy discourse.
