Higher Education and Institutional Legitimacy: The Role of Student Consent

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 4:55 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Reimagining Student Autonomy and Voice (Table 12)

Abstract

Higher education institutions rely on student participation to achieve essential institutional functions. To ensure student participation, institutions exercise political authority over students mandating institutional participation via course requirements and institutional policies. This exercise of authority is illegitimate if students are coerced into consenting to membership within the institution. This paper argues higher education institutions as political authorities that are illegitimate in their exercise of power over students given the coercive conditions—lacking alternatives, fearing sanction, and ignorance—in which students consent to participate in higher education via enrollment, accepting federal student aid, or attendance.

Author

• Jamie Herman, The Ohio State University