The Evolving Role of the Student in Higher Education From Consumer to Co-Creator A Framework for Transformative Learning in the 21st Century
Abstract:
Most universities still operate as if students show up empty and leave full—faculty talk, students listen, and everyone pretends this works. It does not anymore. The world moves too fast for that kind of passivity. What we argue here is straightforward: students need to stop being consumers of education and start building it along side their teachers. That's harder than it sounds, which is why we developed what we call the Student Agency Development Framework. It covers five areas that feed into each other—how students manage themselves, how they question and analyze, how they work with others, how they communicate across different contexts, and whether they keep learning after the diploma. We drew on constructivism and self-determination research, sure, but what sets our study apart is that we actually looked at three institutions trying to do this work. The results are mixed, honestly. There's real promise, but also real barriers—some structural, some cultural, and some nobody wants to talk about. Like the fact that not every student arrives equally ready for agency, or that universities have built incentives to resist this kind of change. Our point is not that student-centered learning is a nice classroom technique. It's that getting this right—or wrong—shapes what kind of people universities send into a world that desperately needs them to think for themselves.
