Students of Academic Capitalism: Emotional Dimensions in the Commercialization of Higher Education

Abstract

This article spotlights the emotional aspect of the commercialization of university studies. Whereas the literature on current challenges of higher education highlights the students’ customer role, we reveal how neoliberal studenthood combines a consumerist worldview with the discourse of emotional experience. The narratives of Israeli students in the present article show consumerist–emotional therapeutic duality in the ways they make sense of their encounter with the university. Students evaluate how their professors meet their emotional, therapeutic, and consumer needs and perceive the knowledge they acquire as providing them with both pragmatic skills and emotional experience. We argue that this duality is significant to the emerging culture of ‘academic capitalism’ and show how the commercialized feelings and pragmatics of self-development operate as a manifestation of ‘emotional capitalism’.