Abstract
Universities across the world are currently preoccupied with student mental health and well-being. The reasons for this are multifaceted and the agenda is pushed by numerous and different actors. In the Danish context, one powerful actor is the Ministry of Higher Education which has implemented a policy in which student well-being is tied to its model of performance-based funding. Up to 5% of the institutional basic grant is adjusted according to a university’s performance on a national student survey that includes questions around well-being. Drawing on a Foucauldian discourse analytic framework we show how well-being is presented and understood in the student survey and discuss some of its implications. One implication, we argue, is that students and universities are now responsibilised for students’ well-being, so that the survey may both contribute to reconfiguring the role of the university in terms of its educational aims and its pedagogical concerns and practices, and to reproducing the problems it seeks to address.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2023 |
| Number of pages | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
| Event | European Reform University Alliance Summit 2023: Why Universities? Reimagining Higher Education and Research - Roskilde Universitet, Roskilde, Denmark Duration: 11 Oct 2023 → 12 Oct 2023 https://events.ruc.dk/eruasummit2023/program |
Conference
| Conference | European Reform University Alliance Summit 2023 |
|---|---|
| Location | Roskilde Universitet |
| Country/Territory | Denmark |
| City | Roskilde |
| Period | 11/10/2023 → 12/10/2023 |
| Other | Why Universities?<br/>The European Reform University Alliance (ERUA) was founded on a shared vision of<br/>universities as creative and experimental spaces and the critical function of the modern university in shaping more just, open, and inclusive societies.<br/>The conference investigates the role of alternative and experimental forms of higher education and research in a time of challenges: expanded student populations, technological disruption, the emergence of a global market of higher education, and the growth of social inequality and anti-scientific sentiment.<br/>We ask: How do - and how should - these challenges reconfigure the role of the<br/>university in the world? Why do we need universities today? |
| Internet address |