Finn, K, Ingram, N and Allen, K orcid.org/0000-0002-5583-8519 (2021) Student millennials/Millennial students: How the lens of generation constructs understandings of the contemporary HE student. In: Brooks, R and O'Shea, S, (eds.) Reimagining the Higher Education Student: Constructing and Contesting Identities. Research into Higher Education . Routledge , Oxford, UK , pp. 187-204. ISBN 9781000358827
Abstract
The massification of Higher Education (HE) has seen a significant rise in university participation over the last quarter century, meaning that young adults born between 1981 and 1996 – ‘Millennials’ – have generally higher levels of educational qualifications than previous generations. Millennials have ‘grown up with’ the marketisation of HE, and this generational label is often used interchangeably with ‘students’. Focusing on the UK, this chapter argues that the boom in HE participation, and the knock-on effect for conceptualisations of the millennial cohort, has led to narrow generational thinking about who HE students are and what they represent. Synthesising critical analyses of media commentary about HE and academic literature, this chapter argues that contemporary understandings about HE students’ values, responsibilities and outcomes often elide with broader narratives about generational change and crisis. Millennials are often portrayed as embodying a contradictory mix of privilege and precarity, hyper-sensitivity and indifference, and rampant self-interest. We illuminate how this generational concept operates to generate two dominant tropes within the construction of HE students: (1) as passive and entitled and (2) as fragile snowflakes. The discursive effect of these is to negate important differences in the student body, individualising and obfuscating the material and political difficulties students and graduates face.
Metadata
Item Type: | Book Section |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Editors: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Rachel Brooks and Sarah O'Shea; individual chapters, the contributors. This is an author produced version of a book chapter published in Reimagining the Higher Education Student Constructing and Contesting Identities. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Education |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Sociology and Social Policy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 04 May 2021 14:41 |
Last Modified: | 18 Sep 2022 00:14 |
Published Version: | https://www.routledge.com/Reimagining-the-Higher-E... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Routledge |
Series Name: | Research into Higher Education |
Identification Number: | 10.4324/9780367854171-12 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:173244 |