Policy contexts and student identity/ies: a post ’92 university case study

Jacqueline Anne Boddington- Success in a knowledge economy? Drivers of student identity in a post-92 university environment: a case study.
This work concerned itself with the becoming and being of studenthood against a policy environment that appears to position the student as both watchman and inmate within the panopticon of the higher education system, prompted by a suspicion that the need to occupy both these roles problematise a sense of belonging and the benefits this offers for student success within the academy. The work positions its enquiry through phenomenological frames, and allows that the essence of modern studenthood in the context of one post-’92 university may thereby be extracted from common themes emerging from seemingly disparate existences. Drawing on nomadic constructs of identity that acknowledge the student’s academic citizenship as bounded in both space and time, the work explores the oscillatory themes emerging between policy texts, in-group identity performance and individual reflection. In this way it identifies the moments of pain and seeing that impact the lines of flight to the students’ desired selfs and begins to surface how these are represented in the being and becoming of student in both group and individual settings. This work identifies that the essence of studenthood as demonstrated by the individual within the academy is a commitment to an openness to change and flux that allows self-development. However, it adds a nuance to this and so extends our existing knowledge in suggesting that this individual ambition for change is disguised in-group by a social identity of studenthood firmly situated in consumer mode, thus allowing groups of students to belong to cohorts through the co-option of identities that place them in opposition to their places of study. In this it would seem that the policy rhetorics of employability and value for money offer readily assumed consumer and professional identity labels that provide useful handholds for cohorts to latch on to while navigating complex transformational landscapes.