From Students to Consumers: reflections on marketization of Portuguese Higher

Education

Sónia Cardoso*, Teresa Carvalho** & Rui Santiago** * University of Aveiro

** CIPES and University of Aveiro

Introduction

Although with a different character it is possible to identify, in developed

countries, the emergence of a set of public policies very similar in their strategies and

aims. These policies translate States’ attempt to transform its role on society, through

the transferring of market and private management mechanisms to public sector. This

tendency is usually known in the literature as New Public Management (NPM) or

Managerialism. The substitution of public service traditional values, such as political

democracy and public ethic, by values closer related to private management, such as

functional rationality, business ethos, cost efficiency and productivity, becomes a NPM

central dimension.

It is precisely in this context that the consumer or client notion appears as one of

the values mostly used by NPM rhetoric and that substitutes other notions, closer related

to traditional public administration, such as the one of user or citizen. This is not a

neutral or innocent displacement, since the institutionalization of consumer notion can

impose transformations on social perceptions in this field.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) did not escape to these political changes

occurring at the public sector (Amaral, Magalhães & Santiago, 2003; Meek, 2003;

Reed, 2002; Robertson, 2000; Santiago & Carvalho, 2004). Pressured, mainly, by

financial constraints and by market logic (emphasis on efficiency, effectiveness, quality

and competition), HEIs are placed on a new field of inter-institutional competition, of

which the effort to attract students represents one of its most structuring components. In

this sense, besides higher education supply diversification, institutions also tend,

progressively, to change the way they perceive education and students themselves

(Kogan et al., 1994; Pitman, 2000; Robertson, 2000; Sharrock, 2000; Newson, 2004).

This study embodies this last problematic. Considering the Portuguese case, we

are interested in understanding if there changes occurring in the way students are being

signified by HEIs (public and private universities and polytechnics), from students to

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consumers. We assume the supposition that it is possible to observe these changes on

HEIs’ external communication and information strategies in what concerns public

announcements of undergraduate courses. More precisely, we define as specific

research purpose that this announcements on press (representative national newspapers)

give us a pertinent sign about the intrusion of client and consumer notions on

institutional perceptions of student.

Based on literature review, first, we shall propose to analyse the client or

consumer notions in the managerial logics that underlies changes in State policies in the

public sector. Then, our reflection will be based on higher education (HE) field,

insisting, particularly, on what is the main object of our research concerns: the

emergence of new HEIs’ perceptions of student. Second, the evolution of students’

institutional and political position in Portuguese HE system over the last three decades

will be analysed. Third, we shall describe the method procedures elected to do the

empirical research. We describe the proceedings taken to select the sample and present

the categories created to make the content analysis of announcements publicised in

press. Finally, we present and discuss our findings, resulted from the content analysis of

the most relevant aspects of announcements and of its distribution by the different

institutions, regarding the type of HE network (university or polytechnic) and sector

(public or private).

1. The emergence of client and consumer notions in HE

One of the main managerialist rhetoric elements underlying the public sector

reform on developed countries is the emphasis on the services orientation towards the

client or consumer. By enthroning the public services user as consumer, or client,

managerialist policies withdraw from it the meaning related to citizenship and service

delivery, as a usufruct of a democratic right. In this context, individual freedom and

independency start to be based not on civil rights, but on individual and rational choices

made on the market. The redefinition of services users as consumers promises,

simultaneously, to increase their status, capacity of choice and, also, to assure the

organization accountability concerning the accomplishment of their needs (Exworthy &

Halford, 1999).

In this sense, governments and managers have been seeking to realize a set of

initiatives with the purpose to accomplish the aphorism of consumers’ sovereignty.

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Among those initiatives stand out the development of marketing and publicity strategies

with the intention to determine demand through a new configuration of supply’s field.

This is particularly notorious at the level of the use of a more intrusive and aggressive

rhetoric of services orientation towards the consumer logic. At the end, this rhetoric

contributes also to States’ role redefinition. The ultimate intention behind this is to shift

the socially dominant perceptions of State from the satisfaction of collective needs to

individual choices based on rationality principles. To put the citizen, now re-

conceptualized as client, in the epicenter of public administration translates a change of

process emphasis by the output emphasis (Bolton, 2004; du Gay, 1996; du Gay &

Salaman, 1996; Kirkpatrick et al., 2005).

The rhetoric of consumer orientation allows the State to achieve two precise

goals: reduce its responsibility and participation on society, and become more flexible

and agile, what is translated by the reduction of its social and financial duties, through

the adoption of a management strategy closer to private management (Clarke &

Newman, 1997).

This new political and organizational logic, along with its rhetoric, has been

trying to colonize HE. The private management and market languages have been,

gradually, conquering a strong presence at the level of public policies and, also, at HE

system and institutional level. Higher education seems to be increasingly signified as a

‘product’ or ‘service’ (subject to transaction and negotiation) delivered inside an

“educational market” environment. Concomitantly, students are no longer perceived as

beneficiaries of a public good, of an “unique social and cultural” experience, or as key

actors of the pedagogical process, and start to be represented as consumers or clients

(Kogan et al., 1994; Robertson, 2000; Sharrock, 2000; Pitman, 2000; Morley, 2003;

Newson, 2004). These notions are based on the assumption that students are conscious

actors of their own “educational rights”. This implies the capacity to define strategies

and make choices, supported by informed and improved decision making processes,

aiming to materialize a set of needs, motivations and expectations on the HE field

(Robertson, 2000; Newson, 2004). However, as Newson (2004), Sharrock (2000) and

Pitman (2000) emphasize, unlike conventional client, student do not have total freedom

or the ability to choose (knowledge/education), so the actions derived from his choices

do not always comprehend the totality of transactions occurring inside HEIs.

This set of questions, transversal to different HE systems, also assumes some

visibility at the Portuguese system. Portuguese HEIs (public and private) are under a

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strong competitive pressure, what, similarly to what can be observed in the majority of

the developed countries, seems to produce changes in the institutional traditional

perceptions of students. This change could be more visible in Portuguese HEIs due to

the fact that students have been detaining, since the 1974 democratic revolution, an

important decision power at institutional government and management levels.

2. From actor to client/consumer? The Portuguese case

Following the Portuguese 1974 democratic revolution, there was an obvious

democratization (yet mitigated) of the Portuguese HE system that contributed to its

placement in the itinerary of mass systems. Since then, the substantive increase in the

number of enrolled students resulted, partly (among other social, cultural and economic

factors), from the expansion of HE public network. In this time a binary system was

created (public polytechnic network), HE was opened to the private sector and new

public universities were also created.

This context has changed dramatically over the last three decades. In what

concerns the student’s enrolment by private HEIs it is becoming increasingly

problematic as a result of the combined effect of two variables: the sustained increase of

vacancies number offered by public HEIs and the decrease of HE candidates’ number.

This decreasing also interferes in students’ enrolment by public HEIs, and it is, again,

the result of two convergent effects: demography and more demanding rules – a

national minimum demand marks on examinations (9,5/20) was defined for all the

undergraduate courses running in universities and polytechnics (public and private).

This situation contributed to increase even more the competitive environment

between HEIs, already visible since the middle of the 1990’s, namely under the effect

of: quality evaluation of undergraduate courses; increasing restrictions of HE financing;

dissemination of the competitive rhetoric of the relation between HE, the

entrepreneurial field and economic competitiveness; institutions difficulties to deal with

the increasing institutional autonomy.

At present, other two reasons have contributed to a more evident structuring of

the competition field between HEIs: 1) the dependency of a large amount of the

institutional budget on the number of enrolled students and of the graduate annual rate

(along with other items, related, for instance, to teaching staff qualification); 2) the

ongoing implementation of the ‘Bologna Process’, which lead the great majority of

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HEIs to unrestrainedly spring forward to curricula and undergraduate courses

restructuring, with the intent of winning ‘competitive advantages’ to face up

‘competition’ – the modernity idea vis-à-vis to tradition, an increased massification of

different study cycles and a greater student rotation.

The Bologna example shows that the analysis of the structuring of this

competition field can not only be developed from the impact of governmental policies.

HEIs also produce and reproduce it according to their position – symbolic, economic,

cultural and technical capital (Bourdieu, 2006) – in that field and the strategies they

define to improve it. In this process, HEIs’ perception of student concept can be in track

to move from student as an institutional actor to an individualized one, which is closer

to client or consumer notions.

In the Portuguese case, this change can, eventually, emerge as a real

paradigmatic rupture. In fact, it is important to stress that the Portuguese student

institutional status constitutes, perhaps, an exception in the European HE landscape.

Students associations always had an active political role, either at the resistance to

‘Estado Novo’ dictatorship, or at the HE transformations during the 1974 post-

democratic-revolution period. Universities and Polytechnics Autonomy Laws (Law

108/88 and 54/90) formally recognize that role by attributing to students an important

place in the institutional decision processes.

Students were given participation at all levels of institutional governance and

management and if they are not present in the strict setting up of HE policies, they still

have some voice in the process. With the exception for the scientific issues, students’

participation was institutionalized in the collegial decision process, namely at the

following HEIs’ governing and management boards: the university’s assembly or the

polytechnic’s council (students are decisive for the universities’ rectors and

polytechnics’ presidents election); the senate (the most important universities’

government body); the basics units assembly (at the faculty, school or departmental

level); the basics units management board (in some universities); and pedagogical

council (only with consultation functions). Despite this recognition, Portuguese

students’ formal power at HEIs’ governance and management has been suffering large

erosion. In practice, since the end of the 1980’s, their participation has been loosing

some relevance, along with the decreasing of students’ ‘capital power’ at HE policies

definition and implementation.

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3. Method

Taking the Portuguese case as reference, the main research question defined for

this study is to know how students are being perceived by HEIs in their current external

communication and information strategies. Is it possible to detect, at this level, a

displacement in ‘traditional’ perception of student as heir, actor or citizen to one based

on client or consumer notions?

It is expected that the institutional announcements of the undergraduate courses

diffused in the press translates, globally, changes in HEIs’ traditional perceptions of

student. It is also expected that the extending of this change does not express itself

either in the same manner or with similar intensity in all HEIs, depending on institutions

and undergraduate courses position in the HE field, which is mainly related to their

symbolic capital.

In this sense, it is possible to define as specific research hypothesis that change

in the perceptions of student, expressed by press announcements of undergraduate

courses, is more evident in recent institutions – some new and private universities and

private and public polytechnics – and less evident in ‘traditional’ ones.

The sample used in this study was drawn out from an information set composed

by press announcements (national newspapers) of undergraduate courses proposed by

Portuguese HEIs to 2006/07 academic year. The sample outline process was developed

as follows: 1) selection of a period of announcements publication between the national

HE entrance examination (May 2006) and the beginning of students HEIs’ admission

proceedings (September 2006); 2) subdivision of the sample by HE subsystem

(universities and polytechnics) and sector (public and private); 3) selection of

announcements based on their non-redundancy (diversified set of messages by

institution, avoiding their resemblance and proximity).

The information gathered was analysed accordingly to usual proceedings of

content analysis, and it was sustained on empirical strategies seeking to combine open

and close methods. So, the construction of the analysis categories was based,

simultaneously, in the research theoretical framework and in the meaning extracted

from the announcements.

In the analysis of these announcements, we can not ignore that they involve,

simultaneously, image and text associations that express connotative, thematic and

symbolic characteristics, corresponding to special construction codes. However, our

main concern was only to approach the announcements sociological meaning, in the

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sense that they can diffuse pertinent signs about changes on HEIs’ perceptions of

students’ institutional ‘status’.

As a result of the articulation between the theoretical framework and empirical

data, three major categories were defined to interpret text and image arrangements in the

announcements. These categories, that we have designated as “Neutral Information”,

“Hybridization” and “Miracle” express a continuum between HEIs’ traditional

perception of student and their perception as client or consumer.

Table 1 – Categories’ main elements Characterizing

Elements

Neutral Information Hybridization Miracle

Undergraduate Courses Information

- Neutral or institutional.

- Secondary. - Almost inexistent.

Institutional Information - Symbolic Capital; - Historical, cultural and academic tradition.

- School reconfiguration as a ‘safe capital’ for the future; - School connection to external environment; integration of theoretical and practical teaching and teaching staff qualification.

- Modernity stereotypes associated to school competitive advantages; - Entrepreneurial context (institution represented as an economic group) and use of managerial buzzwords; - Entrepreneurial University; - Individual advantages gained from the undergraduate course attendance.

Information about admission conditions and undergraduate courses

- Descriptive Information; - References to the Bologna process.

- Bologna highlighted and associated with modernity

- Bologna highlighted as a competitive advantage; - Individualized message.

Employability - Neutral information about professional exits.

- Evaluation results as an external legitimating source; - Tight relations between institution/undergraduate course and entrepreneurial sector; - Success at the labour market, including institutions’ former students.

- Highlight of the employer entities.

Resource to advertisement announcements

- Absence of announcements advertising character; - Tradition and institutions’ symbolic and cultural capital.

- Notion of rational and individual choice; - Institution choice as the only rational and conscious possible one.

- Excellence notion; -Explicit references to individual choice and responsibility; - Employability and success at the international labour market.

Merit Ideology - Absence of references; emphasis on effort.

- Merits’ reward. - Speech tied to easiness; - Direct economical and financial rewards tied to individual effort or merit.

Institutions’ Images - Physical structures images related to symbolic capital.

- Modernity linked to Europeanization and Internationalization notions; - Link between modernity and technology.

- Institution traditional image replaced by the advantages student can obtain by attending the undergraduate course.

“Icons” Institutions’ traditional logo.

- New design associated to traditional logo.

- Images configure modernity, joviality and happiness.

Students’ Images - Absence of references, or students presented at school traditional context or that of academic traditions (extra-curricular activities and institutional symbolic capital).

- Context of active learning (including outside the class room context); - Student ‘happy’ and ‘satisfied’ for belonging to an elite.

- Stereotyped elements of a generation or of a target public; - References to the “irreverence” and the respect of individuality; - Individual competitiveness implicitly signified.

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A given announcement of undergraduate courses (or that of the institution) can

combine elements from the three categories, being retained to its typification only the

one considered as clearly dominant. The main traces that served to describe those

categories are stated in the previous table (Table 1).

Based on the analysis developed from these categories, it was possible to

withdraw some conclusions related to our research question and initial research

hypotheses which matters to discuss afterwards.

4. Signs of change: reconfiguration of the institutional perceptions of students

The data analysis suggests that the undergraduate courses announcements are

based on more ‘aggressive’ strategies of supply structuring, aiming to produce a strong

influence over demand. The symbolic dimensions assume a determinant role in that

dynamic, translating HEIs’ dominant perceptions of student1.

At the end, it is possible to suppose that the attempt to determine demand

through supply has the purpose to create individual pre-dispositions to make educational

choices, although institutional perceptions of student behind this attempt can be

differentiated. It seems to be this difference that, in a large way, constitutes one of the

major factors that can justify the shape and content diversity of the selected

announcements.

We now propose specifically to bring about that diversity, based on the three

previously identified content analysis categories: “Neutral Information”,

“Hybridization” and “Miracle”. In order to clarify and make more understandable the

findings, after the descriptive and detailed analysis of these three categories, we have

built a synthetic table (see Table 2) where is registered the dominant tendency in the

announcements’ distribution by intersecting educational areas and institutions.

4.1 “Neutral” Information

On this category, we have included announcements that publicize the pair

undergraduate courses/HEI2 designations only in a mere descriptive and denotative way.

However, this kind of record only means that the announcements enclose, in what

1 Along with the perceptions of students these messages translate, also, HEIs’ conceptions of HE, knowledge, and training, among others. 2 The choice to the admission in HE is made on a course/institution dichotomy basis.

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concerns image/text association, a low intensity load or rhetoric ‘aggressiveness’, vis-à-

vis the announcements analyzed by the other two categories. Despite this low intensity,

it is possible to identify an appeal to institutional symbolic capital – historical, cultural

and academic tradition – with the intent to condition demand, although with a total

absence of commercial aggressiveness. It seems that this capital was almost sufficient to

establish a safe warrant of students’ choices orientation of undergraduate

courses/institutions. The way the ‘real’ images and institutional icons are presented

(physical structures images and traditional institutional logos centrality), appealing to

academic traditions, illustrates well this strategy. Students are implicitly signified as

‘heirs’ and as capable of ‘reproduce’ these traditions.

In sum, at these institutions, the way supply is announced is based on a

‘traditional’ conception of HE and of student. Undergraduate courses are presented by

their current designation, included in an exhaustive list, which comprehend, in most

cases, all the supply possibilities proposed by the institution.

When announcements derive from institutional organic units’ initiatives, it is

used a similar logic. The same can be seen concerning references to Bologna process,

which as we have seen before, is now a critical event in the system and HEIs’ life.

The announcements typified in this category, reveal, as well, a total lack of

information related to undergraduate courses value for the labor market. This can

signify the existence of a dominant idea of HE that does not seem to assume the

connection between training and labor market as a central issue to the institution.

In general, our data analysis reveals that, in the way announcements are made, a

‘traditional’ notion of demand structure persist, based mainly on a traditional perception

of student. Indirectly, student is signified as an active and interested actor, with the

capacity and will to seek information concerning the institution and undergraduate

courses. In this way, he does not need to be especially stimulated through more

intrusive announcements that specify aspects sought as crucial to his choice. So, it may

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be possible to sustain that this first set of announcements transmit beliefs about the

existence of a certain homology between traditional perceptions of student, and the way

he organizes his preferences, and the traditional perceptions of the form and contents of

supply’s public divulgation.

Nevertheless, the announcements seek also to introduce some elements of

modernity, transmitted mostly in the way images are elaborated, frequently with slogans

that intent to stress the link between tradition and modernity. One of these messages is

particularly illustrative of that intent:

“Traditions of many centuries, a cosmopolitan and innovative

academy, international prestige. We are all that, but we go even

far” (Press Announcement of the University of Coimbra).

Finally, the traditional perceptions of student signified by announcements can

also be deduced by the total absence of references to individual merit and, concurrently,

by the allusion to effort notion. In some announcements, this last notion is explicitly

quoted through text, or implicitly signified through image: students are placed in active

learning contexts or in those of engagement in extra-curricular activities, where,

sometimes, there is an appeal to effort notion. This engagement withdraws the student

notion from an individual character (student only attends HE to get personal outcomes

or benefits) to bring it near of a more collective one, that translates the student

commitment to academic activities.

As we may see from table nº 2, this kind of announcements is mainly disclosed

by public universities, being equally concentrated on educational areas such as Arts and

Humanities, Social Sciences and Economics and Management.

The larger diffusion of announcements by this kind of institutions may be related

with their position on Portuguese HE field as public universities that maintain a strong

capacity to attract students. Contrary to research expectations, these announcements are

dominant in all public universities and not just at the most traditional ones. On the other

hand, these institutions may be more in line with traditional conceptions of HE roles and

purposes in society which they intend to hold institutionalized.

The educational areas where the concentration of this kind of announcements is

stronger are related to undergraduate courses that, due to the low costs they imply, have

constituting a strong bet of private institutions. The emphasis on the neutral and

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traditional character of these undergraduate courses announcements may, as well, be

linked to a withdrawal strategy of public HEIs towards the private ones.

4.2 Hybridization

In this category are classified the announcements which combines traditional

elements with new ones in the institutional perceptions of undergraduate courses and

HEIs, these last ones strictly connected with the idea of modernity. In the same logic,

the perceptions about students emerge with an ambiguous character, associating the

traditional notion to the one of client or consumer.

In the majority of the analyzed announcements in this category, is evident a

strategy of diffusion of undergraduate courses/institutions concentrated on a mitigated

conception of HE. Here, the symbolic heritage is associated to modernity scenarios,

being that association considered as a safe warrant to the future development of HEIs.

But none of these elements are dominant in the announcements shape and/or content,

trying instead to signify the possibility to assure a continuity which does not imply a

rupture with ‘tradition’. The institutions call upon their symbolic capital, signified, in

this case, by the excellence and quality notions, historically derived from social prestige

conquered trough the relation with external environment. Simultaneously, they attempt

to demonstrate the updating of that capital by the introduction, on the announcements,

of symbols related to the idea of modernity.

One of the distinguishable dimensions of these attempts can be identified

through the coexistence of traditional iconography of HEIs – for example, the

traditional logos – with a more modern one, symbolized by a more appellative and easy

to memorize design (the main goal is to create a ‘brand’, such as that of the commercial

marketing strategies). On the other hand, emerges, often, in the announcements

arrangements, some counterpoint between traditional and modernity images.

This is identifiable through the appeal to

the reproduction of situations where students are

represented in active learning contexts,

expressed by the utilization of information and

communication technologies or leading-edge

scientific research technologies. Still, the Bologna process is the most prevailing

element of modernity identified in practically all announcements.

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Europeanization and internationalization notions

are signified as a competitive advantage, given to

student in order to help him face, in a better way, an

increasingly global labor market. The emphasis on this

‘competitive advantage’ is such, that institutions

undervalue the information concerning available

undergraduate courses in the announcements.

Some slogans extracted from undergraduate

courses announcements illustrate well the crucial

importance attributed by institutions to Bologna:

“In vanguard to new European rules of Bologna” (University of

Lisbon).

“UPT welcomes Bologna” (Portucalense University).

In this set of announcements it is still possible to identify an attempt to re-

configure students traditional perceptions of undergraduate courses and/or institutions,

resorting to the induction of new associations linked to the pedagogical dimension and

to the instrumentality of teaching. In a certain way, the announcements seek to publicize

an innovative conception of ‘school’ that, pedagogically, is more concerned with

students, and that, socially, veils for their insertion in the labor market. Through a close

relation between theoretical and practical knowledge, the quality of academic staff and

the institutional bounds to the entrepreneurial field, school is a device to realize life and

professional projects of each student through the appeal and insistency in the

employability notion.

These elements, stressed by announcements, seek to induce perceptions of the

existence, at the institution, of an external legitimacy capital – social prestige – to offer

to students, which is essentially based on the institutionalized relation with the

entrepreneurial field. This link grants undergraduate courses a safe value in the market,

that is enlighten, in most announcements, through the reference to the success of former

students and the appeal to explicit references to employers.

Furthermore, the institutional credibility that follows from external evaluation of

undergraduate courses functions, also, in many announcements, as an argument of the

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institutional reputation, intending to signify that the social prestige, acquired by this

way, reinforce even more the market value of training.

There is indubitably, in this context, an appeal to the notion of rational and

individual choice where the relation with the market, strengthened by social legitimacy

of external evaluation, is presented as a competitive advantage to students, either in

terms of economical capital acquisition, or in terms of cultural capital. The institution

wants to induce, in student, the representation that it is the only possible rational and

conscious choice in order to materialize that accumulation.

It is possible to identify, in this strategy, a distinct way to influence demand

which holds on hybrid pre-notions of student located between ‘heir’ and ‘consumer’.

Along with student images, that represents him in a de-contextualized way, happy and

satisfied for belonging to an institution with special characteristics, once it confers him

the access to an elite, emerge conceptions of traditional merit, which associate the

student presence at the institution with his learning effort.

This hybrid character is dominant in announcements from polytechnic

institutions (either public or private) and from educational areas like Economics and

Management, Sciences and Engineering (see Table 2).

The reasons that can justify this closer proximity between public and private

polytechnic HEIs can be expressed as follows:

They occupy a similar ‘segment’ in the HE field, namely concerning the

characteristics of students they intent to enroll;

They offer training with similar characteristics (more vocational orientation);

‘Academic drift’ strategies, which include a traditional perception of student,

based upon the perceived need to obtain social and academic legitimacy by

comparison with public universities;

High legitimacy and social prestige of the private polytechnic institutions

that, in some cases, were the first ones to offer training in especial domains,

as Education, Social Service and Nursing.

On the other hand, it is also notorious the presence of a strong homogeneity by

educational areas, independently of the institutions that offer the undergraduate courses.

So, it is possible to notice that, for the case of undergraduate courses in training areas

such as Sciences and Engineering, in almost all institutions, announcements with a

hybrid character are dominant. The main reason for these findings can be linked with

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the fact that the training offered by different institutions can be quite similar, which

increases, at this level, the competition for students enrollment.

4.3 The “Miracle”

The category defined as “miracle” reassembles a set of a more aggressive and

intrusive announcements from the choice stimulation point of view, quite approaching

itself to commercial advertisement. Basically, in these announcements, surpass elements

that: clearly emphasize the competitive advantages of individual choice (the

undergraduate course is conceived for student and he is the right ‘client’ or ‘consumer’

for it); seek to induce ruptures in the traditional perceptions of undergraduate

courses/institutions and of student, replacing them for new ‘marketable’ ones, using, for

instance, Bologna as a motive; insist on the manipulation of the supplied training as an

easier way to enter in the labor market; call upon competitive mechanisms, transforming

a given specificity into a surplus value in the labor market.

The main characteristics of this category are exemplified as follows:

“Social and professional recognition. High employable rate of

our students” (ISPA).

“ISCAL quality assures your employment” (ISCAL).

But, paradoxically, the strategies to build supply, transmitted by these

announcements, ignore, substantially, the production of information referring to

undergraduate courses. The information included on the announcements is basically

centered on the institution. Insisting on modernity stereotypes, these announcements

always emphasize a given school element that can be considered as a competitive

advantage in supply’s determination.

However, and contrary of what could be observed at the

previous category, the image of modernity emerges, now,

frequently associated with entrepreneurial context. The

institution is presented almost like an economical or financial

group, and, at the majority of the announcements, the rhetoric

used to signify the idea of modernity, comes near to managerial

rhetoric linked to the use of management buzzwords.

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All these elements seem to configure the existence of a change in HE traditional

conception, which can be seen by the opposition between entrepreneurial and

‘traditional’ HEIs. The presence of entrepreneurial rhetoric in announcements can be

detected, for instance, in the discourse related to individual incentives and easiness

noticed for the attendance of undergraduate courses: tuition exemption, internal

scholarships, etc. On the other hand, still in the same logic, the substitution of

traditional curricula for those according to Bologna always appears as one of the most

valued arguments to the competitive advantage permitted by this substitution. The

curricular design in line with Bologna is definitely signified as a safe warrant for

employability and success in the labor market, especially in the international one. This

idea of employability is strengthen, in an implicit or explicit way, by the resort to

information which reiterates the straight connection of HEIs to economy and to

entrepreneurial field.

In this context, the enlightenment of the excellence notion of undergraduate

courses or institution, containing explicit references to individual choice and

accountability, rise as a correlative logic of a HEIs’ insight closer to business notions

(business like). In other words, a good choice, meaning the particular choice of this

institution or undergraduate course, facilitate the student access to immediate

economical and financial rewards (easier acquisition of educational services),

translating a form of recognition of his effort and individual merit. In this logic, the

immediate rewards are clearly overlapped to ‘traditional’ advantages, in terms of

economic, cultural and social capital, that the student may obtain through the institution

or the attendance of its undergraduate courses.

At last, the strategy to define supply that is possible to identify in this kind of

announcements, translates, also, a transformation of the

traditional conception of student, based on the

stereotyping of a generation or a target-public. In a closer

perception to that of client or of consumer, the student is

signified as unique, valued by his personal attributes

(identified with joviality, irreverence and merit)

considered as essential conditions to competitiveness and

innovation.

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This idea is reinforced by an association of images that intents to praise a given

idea of modernity, expressed by a performed individual and collective students

happiness, and the easiness they will experiment in facing academic life.

Mostly, these announcements are concentrated in private universities and

practically in all educational areas, with the exception for Sciences and Engineering,

which remain diffused by announcements with a hybrid character.

It seems that it is precisely this greater proximity to the market that determines

the existence of announcements of undergraduate courses closer to commercial

marketing. These announcements appear, mostly, as a result of a more fragile position

of these institutions in the Portuguese HE field.

4.4. Results’ Overview

The next table allows visualizing briefly the results. The conclusions this table

shows, confirm, in general, our research expectations. In global terms, there is a

tendency, in Portuguese HEIs, to the displacement of traditional perceptions of student

to consumer or client notions. This tendency is especially visible in HEIs that hold a

more vulnerable position in HE field: the polytechnic institutions and the private

universities.

Table 2 – Announcements distribution by educational areas and institutions Public Private Institutions

Educational Areas* University Polytechnic University Polytechnic

Arts and Humanities A A C B

Social Sciences A B B+C A

Economics and Management A B C B

Sciences B B B B

Health Sciences A A+B C B

Engineering A+B B B B

Architecture B 0 B+C A

A

B

C

Legend: A: “Neutral Information”; B: “Hybridization”; C: “Miracle”;

- High concentration; - Medium concentration; - Low concentration. * In general, educational areas correspond to one or several HEIs’ basic units placed at the same domain. However, these basic units present a great diversity of designations, making impossible to use them all in this table.

Nevertheless, in what concerns the differences between institutions, our

expectations were not totally confirmed, since there are no perceptible differences

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between old and new public universities as there are not significant differences between

public and private polytechnics.

In what concerns public universities (old and new) and public and private

polytechnics, the results reached in this study are in line with those of former empirical

researches (Amaral, Magalhães & Santiago, 2003; Santiago & Carvalho, 2004;

Santiago, Magalhães & Carvalho, 2005), which sustain the existence of a hybridization

process concerning NPM in HE policies and institutions’ government and management.

On the contrary, private universities seem to have internalized more widely the NPM

rhetoric. Yet, although with different degrees, in both cases, many HEIs have been

changing their student perceptions, approaching to client or consumer notions. This

change may be justified either by the position of the institutions in HE field or by the

fact that the students and families’ participation in educational costs have increased in

Portuguese3 HE in recent years.

Kogan et al. (1994) and Morley (2003), for instance, note that the perception of

student as client or consumer is quite disseminated in HE systems where students (and

their families) participation in education costs is higher. Pitman (2000) and Robertson

(2000) stress, also, that this situation had been contributing to the reconfiguration of

students’ position inside HEIs. Thought as client or consumer, student is increasingly

taken into consideration both in terms of curricular organization, and of the definition of

institutional policies and strategies (Pitman, 2000; Robertson, 2000).

In this logic, like in other countries, Portuguese HEIs resort, frequently, to

external communication mechanisms, such as external relations offices, mass media and

direct publicity. This may translate that, in Portugal, this phenomenon also tends to

generalize itself. HEIs have professionalized more the work on institutional

information, to influence student’s decision making process (Pitman, 2000; Robertson,

2000 Morley, 2003). But the form and content of this professionalization have been

changing progressively, beginning to approach to the strategies and mechanisms of

products or services commercialization.

3 In respect to private institutions, students pay for the totality of education costs (tuition fees). The State only provides scholarships, as in the case of public institutions. In respect to public institutions, tuition fees had increased significantly in the last four years.

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Conclusions

The main supposition assumed in this study was that the announcements of

Portuguese HEIs’ undergraduate courses try to influence demand through more or less

aggressive strategies of supply organization. It was assumed, as well, that the way

institutions try to structure demand (based on these announcements) give us signs about

the perception they have of student as a social actor.

In NPM context there is a tendency to promote the replacement of citizenship

and public services user notions by that of consumer or client. In HE case the logic of

this change is the same. In this extent, and given recent changes in the Portuguese HE

system and management, we have tried to understand how the announcements indict a

change in HEIs’ perceptions of students.

The announcements content analysis allowed the identification of different

HEIs’ perceptions of students. These perceptions can be framed at a continuum between

‘tradition’ – signified through ‘neutral’ institutional information, which uses more the

symbolic capital as a reference – and the rhetoric settled in to the supposition that

training constitutes a new ‘service’, social and economically more efficient for the

concretization of students’ professional and personal projects. In the first case,

traditional perceptions prevail; in the second case, signs of change emerge in those

perceptions in the sense of signifying student as client or consumer; between these two

poles there is some hybridization, which combines these two sets of perceptions. In this

way, announcements simultaneously appeal to perceptions of student as heir, actor and

client or consumer. Still, the general tendency goes in the sense of a closer

approximation to consumer or client notions, which is mostly determined by

announcements of polytechnic institutions and private universities.

In almost of these institutions, undergraduate courses announcements are more

aggressive because of their more instable position in HE field. They also translate

stronger attempts to, through the economic and symbolic manipulation of supply,

interfere more actively in demand. These announcements also seem to express the

surviving effort of these HEIs as a result of new State roles and policies towards HE –

change of strategies in the sense of HEIs’ greater autonomy, assumption of supervision

roles (Neave & van Vught, 1994).

It is this increasing vulnerability, expressed, mainly, in the competition for

students’ enrolment, that contributes to open spaces to the internalization of the market

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game in the supply’s and in consumer rhetoric structure in the information made

available to students.

The elements contained in these announcements result from HEIs’ perception

not only of student, but also of HE, labor market, economic, cultural and social impact

of curricula and of training in general. At the end, institutions expect to obtain students’

adhesion to the rhetoric argumentation about hypothetical and unique advantages of

HEIs’ curricular ‘product’, under the pretext of informing and helping them to realize

their professional and life projects. In this case, is also possible to identify this

orientation in HEIs with less academic ‘tradition’, especially public polytechnic and

private institutions.

In sum, constrained to compete for students, many HEIs, mostly the private

ones, started to diffuse more aggressive and intrusive announcements of undergraduate

courses, in order to influence student choice. However, although in the perspective of

these HEIs emerges the possibility to impel a choice with this kind of announcements,

higher education characteristics, as a public and social good, are complex and do not

allow the conclusion of the existence of a direct influence over students preferences.

These characteristics may constitute an obstacle to the assumption of higher education

as a consumption object, submitted to the same laws applied to any other marketable

product. The meanings ascribed to undergraduate courses by students and their families,

along with the undergraduate course/institution symbolic capital and place they occupy

in the academic and social hierarchy, may constitute a combination of factors that

strongly determines demand, subtracting the choice of undergraduate course to market

and consumption ‘classic’ laws. It could be interesting to explore these study findings

enquiring about the potential impact of these announcements in the choices effectively

made by students.

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