ABSTRACT
We have only just begun to confront what it means for a higher education to be 'student centred'. The concept has until recently been generally interpreted (when not ignored or rejected) to mean a new strategy for helping students through an old rite of passage. Student constituencies have been recognised in the great majority of institutions as already or potentially much less homogeneous, but students have still been perceived mainly as 'recipients', making a scheduled journey through a curriculum, even where the degree of choice in the curriculum has increased. Student centring the experience of the curriculum (the rite of passage) has been seen as easing adjustment to it by a variety of teaching strategies and student feedback mechanisms. A more fundamental reinterpretation is not, or not just, related to customer rights or an even more learner-friendly 'delivery' of the curriculum. It has more to do with situating the higher education experience in a continuum of experience and need, including pre-entry expectations and preparation, and the anticipation of outcomes and the uses of a higher education - including, but not only, employment.
