STUDENT SUBJECTIVITY AND THE LAW*

Abstract

[This article examines the character of the university student in law in the context of wide-ranging changes to Australian higher education since the 1980s. The legal character of the student derives from two major sources: establishment of a university jurisdiction, primarily under State University Acts, and federal higher education funding legislation. With the rise of market/economic conditions in the sector, the student has become subject to tensions between these sources of law, increasingly resolved in terms of his/her existence as a “consumer” within a commercial university model. Alongside the older statutory university jurisdictions, the standing of the student is both increasingly complex and impoverished.]