We write this book in a period of dramatic change in the policy and goals of higher education. There has been a fundamental shift in the ways in which higher education is now conceptualised: it is to be treated no longer as a public good, articulated through educational judgement and publicly financed, but as driven by students in their primary role as consumers. Within this context, the meaning of public engagement in higher education appears particularly problematic. Chapter One asks what public engagement means within this revised and shifting framework. Debates around the meaning of public engagement are connected to broader discourses of participation and deliberative democracy, which have been significant influences in the policy field in the last three decades. While reviewing these issues, Chapter One also questions the meaning of the public sphere and the diverse conceptions of how publics are mobilised, represented and developed. Chapter One concludes by outlining Burawoy's conception of public sociology, which then forms a thread that is developed throughout the book.

In relation to higher education, the withdrawal of block grants and the substitution of student fees as the main source of income – other than in the case of science and medicine, which still receive state support – is the major innovation introduced by the Coalition government (Freedman, 2011). This is part of a more long-term process of restructuring in higher education going back to the introduction of regulation in the 1980s and the Research Assessment Exercise in the late 1980s, when the University Grants Committee (UGC) was replaced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (Collini, 2010). The period from 1981 to 1999 was characterised by an expansion of student numbers in addition to a reduction in funding per student. Other milestones in this period include the Dearing Report (Dearing, 1997) and the introduction of student fees under New Labour with the Education Act 2004, when fees were set at £3,000, with some grant provision and retention of the block grant.

The Browne Report (Browne, 2010) explicitly articulated the new market model of higher education. It proposed the abolition of the block grant, with the main channel for funding through raised student fees.