Empowerment from a "student as customer" perspective : literature review and development of a framework in the context of higher education

Following an intense literature research, and including results from a qualitative study with 24 graduate and post-graduate students from 14 different universities, this paper systematically discusses the topic of student empowerment within the context of higher education. The underlying perspective is that of students as customers. The article presents a simple and robust framework, which includes eight antecedents of student empowerment, the construct itself and potential outcomes for students, lecturers and institutions, and concludes with a proposal for further research within at least four distinctive areas.