Adopting Consumer Time: Potential Issues for Higher Education

Overview & Synopsis

Time and temporality have received little attention in the consumerism, marketing or, until recently, higher education literature. This paper attempts to compare the notions of timing implicit in education as "paideia" (transitional personal growth) with that implicit in consumerism and the marketing practices which foster it. This investigation uses Heidegger's three notions of being and their corresponding concepts of time to understand the phenomena of education and consumerism. It suggests that the consumerist notion of time can changes what higher education might be through how individuals understand their being. In my conceptual discussion I challenge higher education to resist its being temporalized by consumerism. (Contains 1 table and 5 notes.)