SPECIAL ISSUE – Call for papers:

Customer, Collaborator or Co-creator? What is the role of the student in a changing higher education servicescape?

Across the globe, higher education (HE) is in upheaval. In the more advanced nations there is pressure on budgets, coupled with government intervention to steer HE in particular directions. In contrast, in many fast developing economies growth in HE provision is increasing rapidly. At the same time attitudes to HE are in flux; students are becoming more demanding of their institutions and yet these institutions are expected to deliver more with less. There is considerable debate and uncertainty about how to respond to these pressures and how to capitalise on the opportunities they present.

Higher education is essentially a service with particular characteristics. These include the high level of active involvement demanded of the individuals accessing that service; a prolonged service relationship; a great variety in the nature of the service offered, and considerable debate as to what this service is actually for. The combination of recession, government pressure, fee increases, student unrest and technology is fast re-modelling the ‘servicescape’ for HE. What are the implications for value creation and service delivery in HE? Whose value and what is it anyway? What are the changing expectations of service users? Just what is the ‘product’ that this service offers?

The co-editors of this special edition, Professor Toni Hilton of Regents Business School, Associate Professor Tim Hughes at the University of the West of England and David Chalcraft, Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster, are inviting well researched papers on the implications for value creation and service delivery of the changing relationship between students, universities and HE as a whole. We are especially seeking papers, conceptual or empirical, supportive or critical, which address the following key topics:

• The impact of Government reforms on relationships and value creation in HE
• The changing nature of perceived value of higher education – for students, employers and wider society
• Setting, managing and delivering the expectations of students
• The changing roles and relationships of the actors involved in HE service creation
• ‘After the event’. Graduates’ subsequent perceptions of the value gained from their education
• The nature of the changing HE servicescape
• In this period of rapid change, what is HE for; what should be its aims?
• Implications of current pressures for the ‘internationalisation’ of HE

All submissions should be made online at the Journal of Marketing and Higher Education’s ScholarOne Manuscript site: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wmhe. New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site submissions should be made via the Author Centre. Instructions for Authors can be found at this link.

Authors should prepare and upload two versions of their manuscript. One should be a complete text, while in the second all document information identifying the author should be removed from files to allow them to be sent anonymously to referees. When uploading files authors will then be able to define the non-anonymous version as ‘File not for review’. Articles should be between 5000 and 8000 words, double spaced, with ample margins. Each article should be accompanied by an abstract of 100-150 words in a separate document. Up to five keywords for online searching purposes should also be provided. All pages should be numbered.

The closing date for submission is: March 1st 2014, for publication in November 2014

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