Abstract

[Introduction] It sounds like the start of a good joke: a sociologist walks into a student union somewhere in the UK, Das Kapital and a map of (all of) Latin America under one arm, a giant stack of unmarked essays under the other. She approaches a huddle of students engaged in deep conversation, assuming they have been inspired by a recent lecture on experiments in participatory economics and guerrilla warfare. Instead, they accost her with advertisements of jobs for which they will not be qualified after completing their irrelevant degree, tear their essays out of her hands in a show of collective self-respect, and assert their rights by completing all the appropriate opinion surveys. In the marketplace of learning, educational justice will surely prevail...