ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the tensions and dilemmas marketisation brings into the educational environment for academics, students and academic leaders and managers the price of engaging with students and supporting their development whilst in higher education. It argues that tensions can be managed through re-balancing the relation between the market dimension and the educational dimension. The book focuses on what the authors term the logic of the market, which often seduces policy-makers, university leaders, regulators and even students to act without a critical understanding of the conditions required for efficient markets to operate and with very little recourse to empirical evidence. Joanna Williams focuses on student charters and their use as marketing material and the effect they have in shifting students from learners to consumers. The book attends to the student experience in this marketised environment.
