Growing Up, Moving On? University and the Transition to Adulthood

This chapter expands on the discussion of generational encounters with Higher Education, by indicating some ways in which current and prospective students articulate their expectations, hopes, aspirations and experiences of ‘going to University’. It discusses the implications for the relationship between academics and students in a context where transition to adulthood is delayed. As Universities have become more explicitly situated as institutions geared towards socialisation and the inculcation of a distinct set of values and attributes, relations between academics and students have become increasingly formalised. The concern that students’ need for pastoral support and concessions is both provided and regulated has added layers of bureaucratic restriction and accountability to interactions between staff and students. The chapter explores the ways in which these processes impinge on the interaction between academics and students, interposing a distance between the generations.

The Changing Role of the Academic

This chapter examines the curious disappearance of the academic voice, and its implications for those teaching in Higher Education institutions. Current policy on Higher Education constructs academics as providers of a service to the student consume via mechanisms which explicitly incorporate metrics of student satisfaction and experience into the governance of academic practice. The chapter explores how the threat of the litigious student consumer in a competitive market is wielded to discipline the academic. While the imposition of market forces and new forms of governance on academic practice represents an important constraint, the process examined in this chapter is more complex: academics internalise the demands of the new Higher Education, and the sentiment that students’ expectations and experiences pose a threat to their academic practice. Moreover, the split between teaching and research is leading to an increasingly instrumental approach to both. Finally, the chapter discusses how the notion of Higher Education as an extension of schooling has gained traction among the academic community, and where this logic is resisted.

Introduction: The Emergence of a ‘Graduate Generation’

This chapter outlines the unique approach taken by this study of the changing academic-student relationship in the context of both massification and the marketisation of British Higher Education. The book explores how the meaning of the ‘University experience’ is produced and interpreted by prospective and current undergraduates, by those working in Higher Education, and by wider networks of family and friends. It considers how the purpose of the University, and the role of students and academics, has been framed by politicians, over successive waves of policy making, and the disjuncture between these narratives and the ways in which those working and studying in Universities articulate what they do and why. By taking a generational perspective, the book considers how discussions about the University today are contextualised by historical experience.

Generational Expectations and Experiences of Higher Education

This chapter draws on qualitative data from the Mass Observation Study and interviews with students to explore how members of the general public, and prospective and current students, frame the meaning of Higher Education, both in policy terms and according to their own experience. This analysis highlights a central contradiction within the position held by the 21st century University in the public imagination. On one hand, expansion is regarded as a progressive development, and there is a striking generosity and optimism in the ways that the provision of this experience for more young people is discussed. On the other, there are widespread concerns about the motivations and effects of massification, including the normalisation of student debt, the diminishing value of degrees, and the quality of education provided.

The Rise of Student Choice, and the Decline of Academic Autonomy

This chapter critically evaluates the balance between compulsion and choice in contemporary narratives around the University, as scripted by policy documents and critiqued in the literature. Specifically, it analyses the cultural script of the ‘student- as- consumer’, and its impact on the academic– student relationship. For young people making the decision about whether to go to University, where to go, and what to study, the process is replete with choices – reflecting the landscape laid out in the 2010 Browne Report, which presented the increase in tuition fees as enabling students to benefit from an enhanced range of choices offered by a competitive marketplace. Yet, the study reveals that this choice is limited to decisions about where to go to university rather than deeper considerations about whether to proceed to Higher Education. This reflects tensions within the logics of massification, marketisation and politicisation. The analysis reveals an iterative reconfiguration of the purpose of Higher Education, through the augmentation of the ‘student- as- consumer’ and the gradual disappearance of the academic as central to the work of the University. As such, the chapter argues that deprofessionalisation and waning autonomy are not unintended consequences of policy developments, but critical prerequisites for the situation of Higher Education as the expected next step for increasing proportions of school leavers.

Conclusion: The Generational Responsibility of the University

The concluding chapter draws together the themes of the book, establishing that the University continues to offer students the opportunity to realise their academic potential and is characterised by academic commitment to this project. Yet, the elevation of the student and the disappearance of the academic is linked to the emergence of uneasy academic identities for both. The chapter summarises the wider factors that shape expectations and experiences within the academy and contextualises and explains the current mental health ‘crisis’ and the impact that this has on academic workload and responsibility. The chapter highlights the impact of the rise of accountability, governance and surveillance and shows how these processes, driven by the imperative to standardise, stymie creativity and reconfigure the generational transaction at the heart of the University, with implications for the academic– student relationship.

A Mental Health ‘Crisis’?

This chapter maps a framework for understanding the rise of mental health disorders in the undergraduate population, drawing a connection between broader social, cultural and educational change, and individual psychological malaise. The structural inconsistencies wrought by high expectations, contrasted with actual opportunities and experience, provide the basis for an insecure and individualised approach to Higher Education. Students experiencing high levels of anxiety are encouraged, both by the pressure to succeed and the procedures now in place within Universities to manage high levels of mental illness, to conceive of and present their distress in medicalised terms. The chapter explores the implications for the academic– student relationship, both in terms of the growing expectation on academics to act in loco parentis, and the extent to which the practice of study and the pursuit of knowledge itself comes to be considered potentially damaging to students’ mental health and emotional wellbeing.