Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: The Emergence of a ‘Graduate Generation’
- 2 The Rise of Student Choice, and the Decline of Academic Autonomy
- 3 Generational Expectations and Experiences of Higher Education
- 4 The Changing Role of the Academic
- 5 A Mental Health ‘Crisis’?
- 6 Growing Up, Moving On? University and the Transition to Adulthood
- 7 Conclusion: The Generational Responsibility of the University
- References
- Index
6 - Growing Up, Moving On? University and the Transition to Adulthood
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: The Emergence of a ‘Graduate Generation’
- 2 The Rise of Student Choice, and the Decline of Academic Autonomy
- 3 Generational Expectations and Experiences of Higher Education
- 4 The Changing Role of the Academic
- 5 A Mental Health ‘Crisis’?
- 6 Growing Up, Moving On? University and the Transition to Adulthood
- 7 Conclusion: The Generational Responsibility of the University
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In the previous chapters, we revealed how the contemporary University experience requires both academics and students to navigate a number of contradictions. For students, these include: the tension between the compulsion and choice in the decision to go to University; the pressure to engage with studies instrumentally as a means to achieving a ‘good degree’ versus a desire for intellectual and personal exploration; and the question of whether the University experience should be defined in terms of one's emotional engagement and immediate ‘satisfaction’ with the experience, or a calculation about where the education and qualification is going to take them in their working lives. We have suggested that these contradictions are often experienced simultaneously, by the same students: it is rarely the case that student narratives are wholly instrumental, or wholly intellectual. Furthermore, the personal experience of these tensions can assume a pathological form. In this chapter, we suggest that one result is an uneasy academic identity, where students pursue their higher education but are often ambivalent as to what their degree is actually for.
Academics, meanwhile, struggle to balance the demands of the ‘student-as-consumer’ with their role in educating and supporting the ‘student-as-student’. Our interviews reveal that academics are sensitive to the ways in which the ‘student voice’ has been mobilised by government policy and Higher Education institutions to justify surveillance and the standardisation of academic practice, with everyday implications for professional autonomy and academic freedom. They experience a daily tension between the need to justify their job in terms of delivering an educational service, measured by quantifiable research outputs and particular student outcomes, such as high levels of recruitment, retention, satisfaction, wellbeing and ‘good degrees’; and their role as scholars and educators working as part of an academic community. An uneasy academic identity thus also characterises this state of working in the 21st century University.
In this chapter, we further develop the discussion outlined in Chapter 3, with regard to the positioning of Higher Education as the ‘expected next step’ in young people's lives. We have suggested that one effect of this has been to blur the distinction between the role and purpose of the University, and that of the school.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Generational Encounters with Higher EducationThe Academic-Student Relationship and the University Experience, pp. 119 - 146Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020