Since the launch of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, education policy has put increasing emphasis on quality education. However, the precarious working conditions and demanding research culture in academia beg the question of what counts as “quality.” UK universities rank highly on international league tables but fare poorly in terms of student mental health, with students reporting anxiety, burnout, feelings of isolation, and lack of support; It is difficult to say whether the UK’s higher education system is succeeding in providing quality. This ambiguity won’t be resolved while we continue to compromise academic success and personal wellbeing in a kind of zero-sum game. What we need are transformative and sustainable solutions to the wellbeing crisis in academia, recognising academic flourishing and personal flourishing as equally essential signifiers of “quality education.”
While it is laudable that most UK universities offer programmes for stress management, resilience building, and emotional wellbeing, such individual coping strategies distract from the root issue at hand. Academic workload hardly allows for engagement with support services and programmes. Looking after yourself presents yet another chore on the list; it feels like a battle against the work culture in which we find ourselves. It’s time we came up with interventions addressing the underlying problem, not just its symptoms.
The Student circulated a survey on the impact of university learning on student mental health. One respondent laments the lack of “time to reflect” and having to “[move] on to the next thing so quickly” in their learning. That “faster learning” is valued among students as the biggest benefit of AI illustrates this ever-accelerating research culture. In addition, respondents flag experiences of academic pressure, social pressure, pressure from family, and self-imposed pressure. Respondents mention wanting more time for friends and societies, reading and additional academic events, being outdoors and exploring the city, and cooking.
Considering some of the greatest ideas were born outside lecture halls and libraries, none of these leisurely ways of spending time need to impede academic development. The growing “slow scholarship” movement reminds us that time spent “just reading”, “just contemplating”, and “just observing” are essential for research. In Slow Scholarship: Medieval Research and the Neoliberal University, Catherine E. Karkov writes: “[slow scholarship] is a means first and foremost of reclaiming time.” Could the university systematically reclaim time for slow, deep, and informal learning?
The university struggles to reclaim time because it faces pressures as well. One of these pressures is the growing accountability regime around quality education. To secure top rankings—and thereby attract fee-paying students, external funding, and reputable staff—universities must meet various criteria. For instance, QS World University Rankings prioritise faculty citations, graduate employability, and an international profile. Meanwhile, student experience is reduced to student-teacher ratios, making up a mere 10 per cent of the overall evaluation. Krakov observes: “if we are kept busy […] trying to achieve ‘better’ (and demonstrating how we are doing it), we will not have time to think, talk, meet, plot, upset the status quo and […] to create the universities in which we would really like to work.” Gradually, the neoliberalised university has given up agency in determining its own work culture. In the process, it has shifted responsibility for maintaining wellbeing onto individuals who are “free” to engage in self-help programmes.
The neoliberal fix for deteriorating student mental health only goes so far. Concerning statistics must be viewed as a problem of philosophical nature. Rather than introducing more wellbeing programmes, we should ask: what is higher education for? What kind of education do we wish to achieve? And, importantly, how do we ensure student voice in the process of articulating answers to both? Open discourse about the issue, senior academics modelling healthy practices, and involving students in curriculum co-creation might be more transformative and more sustainable solutions to the wellbeing crisis in academia.
Photo by Becca Renouf-Laverack for The Student