Student Engagement in Higher Education: Participation in Greek Student Elections (full text in Greek)

Abstract

The paper analyzes student participation in student elections in Greece in the period 1982-2012. It explores the relationship  between the framework that regulates university governance, the public mission of the university and the development of actual student engagement. To this effect, we compare two different modes of higher education governance and discuss the way they influence the development of actual student engagement. Drawing from Bourdieu and Habermas, higher education is viewed simultaneously as a relational field and a public sphere and the public mission of the university is analyzed vis-à-vis Olsen’s typology of universities, as “internally organized democratic communities” or as “enterprises”. The paper presents students’ disengagement from student elections and discusses the reasons for their apathy towards politics and indifference to participation in university life, a situation that prevails from 1989 till today. It concludes with the need to map power relations in the social and political fields and their refraction in the higher education field in order to understand student behavior and (dis) engagement from politics.