ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the ideas of active consumption and consumer activism to discuss student as consumer complaints as an important but often overlooked mode of political agency in marketised universities. It introduces an innovative concept of student as ‘nudnik’, borrowed from Arbel and Shapira (2020a, 2020b), to question the extent to which student as consumer complaints constitute a new but increasingly powerful form of students’ political agency. The chapter starts by exploring business and marketing research to unpack the key characteristics of consumer activism and to define key terms such as boycotting and buycotting. The chapter will then situate consumer activism in the context of higher education and explore institutional processes that enable students to raise complaints. The chapter will conclude by discussing a variety of examples related to consumer complaints and their outcomes.
