Abstract
ABSTRACT Through historically oriented critical discourse analysis this article considers how the messages regarding the purpose of higher education, as presented in prospectuses of four case study institutions, have been impacted by massification and marketisation in England between 1977 and 2018. The prospectuses of four higher education institutions of different status were analysed to trace how discourses relating to the value of an undergraduate degree could be identified in the prospectuses. The findings suggest that while the prospectuses presented multiple rationales as to why students should undertake degrees, there was a significant increase in focus on graduate transitions to employment and a parallel hollowing-out of information relating to course content. The study found that over the period the vocabularies drawn on to present the value of a degree have become homogenised, yet the rationales given for undertaking tertiary study became more numerous and complex, making diversity of institutional offers difficult for prospective students to differentiate.
Highlights
In the UK, there is increasing government enquiry into the expectations of students about undergraduate education and how the nature of degrees being offered are addressed in course prospectuses aimed at students during the process of choosing their degree and institution (Browne et al, 2010; Johnson, 2017; Tomlinson, 2018; Universities UK, 2016)
The findings suggest that while the prospectuses presented multiple rationales as to why students should undertake degrees, there was a significant increase in focus on graduate transitions to employment and a parallel hollowing-out of information relating to course content
Seven periods were selected through an extensive historical analysis (Knight, 2018) that were judged to have been after a significant policy moment (an ‘eventemente’ as termed by Goodson (2001)), the period after the policy moment was check against when the prospectuses were published and the publication following the event was chosen. These periods of collection along with their corresponding policy events which prompted their inclusion are displayed in Table 1: As a key issue was to see whether institutional pre-entry messages reflected differentiated provision and whether this had changed over the period of massification, it was important to collect prospectuses of institutions of different status
Summary
In the UK, there is increasing government enquiry into the expectations of students about undergraduate education and how the nature of degrees being offered are addressed in course prospectuses aimed at students during the process of choosing their degree and institution (Browne et al, 2010; Johnson, 2017; Tomlinson, 2018; Universities UK, 2016). In the context of a commodified higher education sector (Tomlinson, 2017; Woodall et al, 2014), there have been recent calls for the purpose of the undergraduate degree to be more extensively explained to all students (Tomlinson, 2018). This increase in clarity about diverse outcomes is important within a context of consistent social inequality arising from differential educational outcomes of different institutions (Naidoo & Whitty, 2014) and an ‘increased vertical stretch in stratification of the value of student places’
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