ABSTRACT
Academics in the fields of social, political and educational theory have recently turned their attention to the situation in contemporary higher education institutions (see Calhoun, 2006, 2009 and Holmwood, 2011, for instance). Concern about a ‘decline of the public’ has led some writers to point to a structural transformation of the university, shifting away from an institution oriented towards the public and turning instead towards a private good. Such concerns have been raised against a background context in countries like the USA, Australia and the UK of rapidly increasing tuition fees, intentions by the state to sell the student loan book, grade inflation, increased ‘transparency’ attached to ‘key information sets’, league table positions, bureaucratised research assessment and higher education as a form of social prestige.
