A transactional or a relational contract? The student consumer, social participation and alumni donations in higher education

Souto-Otero, Manuel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8768-514X, Donnelly, Michael and Kanol, Mine 2024. A transactional or a relational contract? The student consumer, social participation and alumni donations in higher education. British Journal of Educational Studies 72 (1) , pp. 85-107. 10.1080/00071005.2023.2245441 Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

The relationship between students and higher education is seen to have become increasingly transactional. We approach the study of the student-HE relationship in a novel way, by focusing on students’ behaviour post-university, rather than on student narratives. Conceptually, the article builds on multidimensional views of student engagement and the differentiation between psychological transactional contracts - where students who achieve better academic results are more likely to donate - and relational contracts - where students donate more following engagement in social experiences. Making use of longitudinal data on donation behaviour from over 50,000 alumni from an English university over two decades, we find that while students who get better degree outcomes are more likely to donate, the association between participation in social experiences and donations is much stronger. This questions prevalent transactional models of HE and underlines the limitations of purely consumerist views of the relation between students and higher education institutions, even in the marketized UK context.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General)
Publisher:	Wiley-Blackwell
ISSN:	0007-1005
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	29 September 2023
Date of Acceptance:	2 August 2023
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2024 17:06
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/162394

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