The move towards a market-driven HE system in the UK and active policy promotion of students as consumers has generated much commentary on the ways in which students' expectations and experiences have been transformed. This article introduces and develops a conceptualization of contemporary higher students' views of their relationship to higher education within the new institutional conditions of marketization in the UK. This is based on a UK-based study which examined at the impacts of recent reforms on students' attitudes to HE, this study utilizes the concept of social ambivalence to illustrate the complexity of their perspectives. Focusing on three key areas in which ambivalence frames attitudes and perceptions, it shows that students' values and approaches are often characterized by competing and co-existent positions. Whilst the study found evidence of instrumental goals and values, often in contrast with developmental ones, there was also a discernible ambivalent ground between the two. The article argues that this may be largely influenced by the wider context of marketized higher education also operating at a time of wider structural changes.