Time matters in higher education: How the ECTS changes ideas of desired student conduct

The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) is based on a
quantitative and accumulative understanding of time, which increasingly frames
academic practices and notions of learning in higher education (HE). By example of recent a Danish policy reform, the article explores the connections between the ECTS, new institutional practices, and altered ideas of learning and academic achievement in HE. First, it shows how the ECTS is entangled with a notion of learning and academic achievement as a linear and well-ordered practice, which is determined by the clock. Second, it exemplifies how institutions in Denmark have used the ECTS as a framework for micro-governing students’ time by prescribing activities that students should undertake on an hourly basis to meet the requirements of a 42-hour study week. Third, it calls for discussion of the functionalist image of learning and academic achievement as a clean and univocal process that is rational, foreseeable and finite, which the ECTS imposes on HE.