1 00:00:10,050 --> 00:00:13,260 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Well. Good evening, everybody, and welcome. 2 00:00:14,010 --> 00:00:18,900 It's an honour to open the first E.H. Holsey Lecture. 3 00:00:20,100 --> 00:00:26,520 Now, of course, I shall try to keep the introduction brief, because you're not here to listen to me. 4 00:00:26,930 --> 00:00:32,520 Uh, but I felt it would be, uh, fitting to just to say a few things about, 5 00:00:32,610 --> 00:00:37,710 actually, before we, um, before we commence with the main business of today. 6 00:00:37,980 --> 00:00:42,330 Now, there's no shortage, of course, of lecture series in British academic life. 7 00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:52,230 We all know that. But this one bears a name that still, I think carries some weight, not just for what A.H. Woolsey wrote, 8 00:00:52,710 --> 00:00:59,370 but also for what he represented a model of sociology that was empirically informed. 9 00:00:59,700 --> 00:01:07,380 And this addressed questions that were theoretically informed and relevant to the pressing questions of the age. 10 00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:15,770 Albert Henry Holsey, known to his friends and colleagues alike as Cheli, was the son of a railway porter, 11 00:01:15,780 --> 00:01:24,990 educated at Kettering Grammar School and formed intellectually in the post-war intellectual crucible of the London School of Economics, 12 00:01:25,170 --> 00:01:34,710 when British sociology was carving out its identity as a distinct discipline with its own characteristic problems and preoccupations, 13 00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:40,150 he became a leading figure in that formation itself. 14 00:01:40,230 --> 00:01:47,220 First of all, Liverpool, and then at Birmingham, and then finally here in Oxford, 15 00:01:47,550 --> 00:01:54,420 as Oxford's first professor of Social and Administrative Studies and as a fellow of Nuffield College. 16 00:01:56,920 --> 00:02:06,340 He believed in social mobility, but not necessarily in the myths that we told ourselves about mobility or meritocracy. 17 00:02:06,940 --> 00:02:16,390 He was a policy adviser, most notably to Anthony Crosland at the time was the Secretary of State for education. 18 00:02:17,200 --> 00:02:21,609 He was a builder of institutions, a progenitor, in fact, 19 00:02:21,610 --> 00:02:29,080 of two of Oxford University's social science departments, DCI and the Department of Sociology, 20 00:02:29,950 --> 00:02:39,790 and perhaps somewhat unfashionably today a believer that sociological knowledge could and should inform the work of the state for the common good. 21 00:02:41,750 --> 00:02:48,530 He also had a very keen interest in higher education, not just as a place where he plied his trade, 22 00:02:49,070 --> 00:02:59,600 but as an object of intellectual inquiry in and of itself, and in fact carried out two major empirical studies of academics in UK universities. 23 00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:06,980 So it's entirely fitting that the first lecture in his name is being given by Professor Rachel Brookes, 24 00:03:07,550 --> 00:03:12,560 who is professor of Higher education in the Department of Education in the university. 25 00:03:13,670 --> 00:03:17,069 Rachel is, and I hope I get all of this right. 26 00:03:17,070 --> 00:03:19,670 She will no doubt correct me if I if I get it wrong. 27 00:03:19,910 --> 00:03:29,240 Rachel is chair of the executive editors of the British Journal of Sociology of Education, a member of the editorial team of the journal sociology, 28 00:03:29,780 --> 00:03:39,230 and co-editor of research of the research into Higher Education book series published by Routledge and the society for research into Higher Education. 29 00:03:40,160 --> 00:03:44,390 She's been a member of Governing Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, 30 00:03:44,930 --> 00:03:51,980 and the education Subpanel for the UK's National Research Assessment exercise ref 2021. 31 00:03:53,590 --> 00:03:58,780 Last but not least, she's currently serving as president of the British. 32 00:03:58,810 --> 00:04:03,310 So it's a logical association position, which, as you will appreciate, 33 00:04:03,610 --> 00:04:08,860 comes with both distinction and I would imagine, a rather dependable stream of emails. 34 00:04:10,750 --> 00:04:15,450 Rachel's research focuses primarily on the sociology of higher education. 35 00:04:15,460 --> 00:04:21,790 Particular areas of expertise include international student mobility and processes 36 00:04:21,790 --> 00:04:27,160 of internationalisation and European ization in higher education more generally, 37 00:04:28,120 --> 00:04:36,460 student politics and protest, and ensuring equity in access to and outcomes within higher education. 38 00:04:37,330 --> 00:04:48,310 So what remains is to express my great pleasure on your behalf to welcome Rachel here tonight to deliver the inaugural A.H. Hornsey Lecture. 39 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:56,240 Professor. Great. You've picked up my note. 40 00:04:56,270 --> 00:05:01,070 Oh, so so so. Which I probably do need. 41 00:05:02,180 --> 00:05:05,920 Thank you very much. Um, the for such a, uh, a warm welcome. 42 00:05:05,930 --> 00:05:12,469 And it's really a real honour to be able to give, um, this, this, this, uh, first lecture in, in the series. 43 00:05:12,470 --> 00:05:15,980 And thank you very much for coming along today. Um, everybody. 44 00:05:16,490 --> 00:05:21,080 So, um, as you can see, um, could we talk about what is a student perspectives, um, 45 00:05:21,080 --> 00:05:26,450 from across Europe and I should say at the start line by focusing on higher education, 46 00:05:26,450 --> 00:05:31,190 um, students, because as you heard, that's my specific area of focus. 47 00:05:31,850 --> 00:05:39,850 And I'm going to start by, um, just outlining some of the kind of academic background to the study and why I became interested in this topic. 48 00:05:39,860 --> 00:05:46,760 Um, and in the first place, I know those of you, um, who work in education, and I can see quite a few familiar faces from departments here, 49 00:05:47,090 --> 00:05:52,410 um, or know that, um, a strong argument that has been made in the literature over, 50 00:05:52,460 --> 00:05:58,310 I guess, recent decades is that actually we're seeing the kind of homogenisation of higher education 51 00:05:58,310 --> 00:06:04,700 systems across the world as a result of processes linked to marketisation and neoliberal ization. 52 00:06:04,940 --> 00:06:09,620 Um, it's argued that hybrid fication systems are becoming much more similar. 53 00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:14,000 And as part of this, it's often argued that learning has been commodified. 54 00:06:14,630 --> 00:06:21,170 Now, when we turn, when we turn to students, we see quite similar arguments being made that, um, 55 00:06:21,170 --> 00:06:28,220 students within the literature are often discussed as instrumental, employment focussed consumers. 56 00:06:28,640 --> 00:06:36,020 And it's argued that this is because of specific policy technologies, the introduction of high fees in many countries, 57 00:06:36,020 --> 00:06:41,630 fees, and in a lot of countries policy discourses that kind of position them in that way. 58 00:06:42,050 --> 00:06:48,830 And also, it's argued, the redefinition of education as a means to various non educational ends, 59 00:06:48,830 --> 00:06:54,890 a shift of focus away from, um, knowledge, um, uh, generation and transmission. 60 00:06:55,160 --> 00:06:59,479 And I thought I just put up a quotation from, uh, Molesworth that I'll at the end of that slide, 61 00:06:59,480 --> 00:07:02,840 because this has been quite kind of well quoted in the, in the wider literature. 62 00:07:03,350 --> 00:07:05,420 And so they argued that the, um, 63 00:07:05,630 --> 00:07:12,050 inculcation of a consumer identity and here that talking about the UK has brought about a more passive approach to learning, 64 00:07:12,050 --> 00:07:19,670 in which students place much more emphasis on their rights rather than responsibilities and on having a degree rather than being a learner. 65 00:07:19,670 --> 00:07:23,720 And I think that sums up quite a lot of the literature. And in this area. 66 00:07:24,350 --> 00:07:28,370 And then when we move to thinking about the continent in which we're located, Europe, 67 00:07:28,580 --> 00:07:35,290 I think we can see similar kind of arguments played out in, in the literature, but also in, in policy as well. 68 00:07:35,300 --> 00:07:42,050 So for example, um, the Erasmus mobility scheme, which we just heard last week, um, hopefully Britain will be re-entering. 69 00:07:42,350 --> 00:07:47,989 Um, I think it's based on this kind of assumption that actually it's quite easy for students to move across national borders, 70 00:07:47,990 --> 00:07:55,040 because what it means to be a student is broadly similar across Europe, and certainly within the academic literature. 71 00:07:55,040 --> 00:08:02,240 It's been argued that recent policy initiatives, the Bologna Process and then the European Higher Education Area that followed, um, 72 00:08:02,420 --> 00:08:08,330 have in effect what's called like reverse engineered an Anglo-American model across Europe 73 00:08:08,510 --> 00:08:14,750 through an emphasis on kind of competition and marketisation and various associated policies. 74 00:08:15,500 --> 00:08:22,489 And so it's often argued, I suppose, within people who take this stance, that this is had an impact on student subjectivities, 75 00:08:22,490 --> 00:08:28,760 that there's a relationship between, uh, the views of policymakers and then how students understand themselves. 76 00:08:29,030 --> 00:08:33,560 And so Stavros Seales, for example, writes in relation to the Bologna process, 77 00:08:33,860 --> 00:08:38,509 has argued that it's had the effect of not only disintegrating the academic community, 78 00:08:38,510 --> 00:08:45,410 subduing the staff as a work force of the surveillance, but also positioning students as consumers. 79 00:08:45,890 --> 00:08:50,090 So we see these kind of arguments made quite widely across Europe. 80 00:08:50,930 --> 00:08:55,070 But there is a debate about this, some notes of caution to, um, alert you to. 81 00:08:55,580 --> 00:09:02,870 First of all, some scholars have contested that relationship between policy on the one hand and student subjectivities on the other, 82 00:09:02,870 --> 00:09:09,440 asking the arguing that this isn't always a simple translate, uh, translation, um, from one to the other. 83 00:09:10,220 --> 00:09:15,830 And then scholars have looked more specifically about European policy, have argued that actually, 84 00:09:15,830 --> 00:09:23,900 instead of nation states just sort of taking on board European policy, they often pick and choose what suits their national agendas. 85 00:09:25,010 --> 00:09:32,600 And then there's a body of work that has suggested that we shouldn't consider nations necessarily as coherent educational entities. 86 00:09:32,810 --> 00:09:38,209 There may be differences between institutions within the same country and between groups of students, 87 00:09:38,210 --> 00:09:41,480 even with the same, uh, within the same institution. 88 00:09:42,770 --> 00:09:45,220 But but I was kind of reading this literature. 89 00:09:45,230 --> 00:09:51,680 It struck me that there was actually very little empirical evidence to, um, judge these kind of competing, um, claims. 90 00:09:51,680 --> 00:09:53,270 There were lots of assertions made about. 91 00:09:53,300 --> 00:09:59,959 Students as consumers homogenisation across Europe, but actually very little empirical evidence to test this out. 92 00:09:59,960 --> 00:10:06,830 And so that's kind of what drove me to, um, to to pursue the research that I'm going to be talking about, uh, today. 93 00:10:07,340 --> 00:10:14,720 So, um, I received a grant from the European Research Council to undertake a project that's called Euro Students. 94 00:10:15,380 --> 00:10:20,360 And on this slide that are the four research questions that underpin this project, which I'll, 95 00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:23,899 I'll just read out because they're kind of quite fundamental to what I'm going to say. 96 00:10:23,900 --> 00:10:28,640 So. So firstly, how understanding that the higher education student produced, 97 00:10:28,850 --> 00:10:34,430 shaped and disseminated by policymakers, the media and higher education institutions. 98 00:10:34,880 --> 00:10:39,860 Secondly, to what extent do these understandings differ within and across European nations? 99 00:10:40,520 --> 00:10:46,070 Thirdly, how do students of different national and social backgrounds understand the role of the higher education students? 100 00:10:46,400 --> 00:10:50,450 And finally, to what extent are their understandings consonant with those produced, 101 00:10:50,450 --> 00:10:56,210 shaped and disseminated by policymakers, the media, and higher education institutions? 102 00:10:57,440 --> 00:11:03,530 So to try and answer those questions, um, we conducted, um, a six nation comparative study. 103 00:11:03,530 --> 00:11:08,960 So we collected data in Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain. 104 00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:14,749 And those countries, um, were chosen to provide diversity in relation to welfare regimes. 105 00:11:14,750 --> 00:11:20,780 Um, we wanted countries that kind of, you know, had different kind of assumptions about welfare and different policies in that area. 106 00:11:21,200 --> 00:11:27,650 Their relationship to the European Union, um, level of tuition fees charged to students, 107 00:11:27,890 --> 00:11:32,900 and also the nature of the student support um system, whether that was generous or not. 108 00:11:32,900 --> 00:11:35,660 So, um, I don't expect to look at all the detail on this slide, 109 00:11:35,660 --> 00:11:42,380 but this is kind of showing you the six countries and those four variables that that I was just talking about. 110 00:11:42,650 --> 00:11:45,140 Um, there's no need to, to take all of that in. 111 00:11:46,220 --> 00:11:51,230 And that in terms of our data collection, there were four strands which mapped onto those kind of four, 112 00:11:51,230 --> 00:11:56,030 um, social actors, um, that I outlined in the research questions. 113 00:11:56,030 --> 00:12:04,730 So first of all, to, um, examine policy constructions, we analysed policy texts, um, relating to higher education students across Europe. 114 00:12:04,880 --> 00:12:09,920 We conducted interviews with with policymakers in terms of media representations. 115 00:12:09,920 --> 00:12:15,320 We analysed quite a large number of national newspaper articles that had some kind of focus on students. 116 00:12:15,740 --> 00:12:26,330 And we also conducted analysis of, um, films or drama based TV programs that figured students, um, prominently to access institutional perspectives. 117 00:12:26,330 --> 00:12:34,130 We analysed institutional websites and conducted interviews with with staff members and then to explore student understandings. 118 00:12:34,280 --> 00:12:37,879 Um, we conducted um focus groups in each of the six countries. 119 00:12:37,880 --> 00:12:41,750 We chose three case study universities or higher education institutions. 120 00:12:41,990 --> 00:12:49,580 And in each of those, we conducted three focus groups with um undergraduate students and domestic students rather than international students. 121 00:12:49,760 --> 00:12:55,490 Uh, because we felt that there were different issues involved, both for postgraduates and for international students. 122 00:12:56,090 --> 00:13:03,499 Now, one kind of, um, I don't know, I kind of part of the project that's, um, one of my postdocs convinced me to do. 123 00:13:03,500 --> 00:13:09,890 I was a bit sceptical about the time, but actually I'm really glad we did. It was to use plasticine modelling in the focus groups. 124 00:13:10,190 --> 00:13:13,610 And so and what we did in the focus groups right at the start. 125 00:13:13,610 --> 00:13:20,750 So we hadn't asked me about questions. We got the students to make one model of how to represent how they saw themselves as a student, 126 00:13:20,810 --> 00:13:26,240 and a second one to represent how they felt they were seen by other people, um, as, as a student. 127 00:13:26,240 --> 00:13:30,710 And in the first slides in the presentation, I'll show you some examples of that. 128 00:13:31,010 --> 00:13:34,459 And as I said, I was a bit sceptical about how that would go, but actually that worked really well. 129 00:13:34,460 --> 00:13:37,070 And it would it was a really good kind of, um, I suppose, 130 00:13:37,070 --> 00:13:42,080 also a kind of an icebreaker for students who hadn't necessarily met each other before in the focus groups. 131 00:13:42,080 --> 00:13:45,170 So I would thoroughly recommend that. Okay. 132 00:13:45,440 --> 00:13:51,290 So, um, in, um, the book that we wrote of the project, we outlined, um, 133 00:13:51,680 --> 00:13:58,340 six common constructions of students based on the data that we gained, um, from those, those research methods. 134 00:13:58,580 --> 00:14:03,020 Now I'm going to outline these briefly now, but um, in the rest of the presentation, 135 00:14:03,020 --> 00:14:08,629 I'm going to be looking at some kind of common common themes and answering the research questions this that I set up. 136 00:14:08,630 --> 00:14:14,590 But I'll just briefly go through these tonight. So the first construction we talked about is students in Transition. 137 00:14:14,600 --> 00:14:17,270 So this was quite a common theme that actually, um, 138 00:14:17,270 --> 00:14:26,420 higher education was seen as a kind of little mister liminal space where people transitioned to being fully formed adults of the community. 139 00:14:27,560 --> 00:14:30,770 Secondly, another strong construction was students. 140 00:14:30,770 --> 00:14:34,130 As citizen students, it's quite important to political actors, 141 00:14:34,430 --> 00:14:40,489 other important political actors in the here and now during their time at university or as kind of future citizens, 142 00:14:40,490 --> 00:14:45,950 um, building the skills and knowledge to, um, allow them to participate in democracy subsequently. 143 00:14:46,700 --> 00:14:50,490 Thirdly, students as enthusiastic learners and hard workers. 144 00:14:50,510 --> 00:14:57,479 I think that sort of self-explanatory. And then. Students, says teacher workers that actually during their time at higher education, 145 00:14:57,480 --> 00:15:01,650 it was about preparing for the labour market and for subsequent employment. 146 00:15:02,700 --> 00:15:05,519 Then students have stressed this wasn't something we anticipated, 147 00:15:05,520 --> 00:15:09,900 but it came up very strongly in a lot of the data, and I'll talk a bit more about that later on. 148 00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:14,490 And then finally, students as threats and objects of criticism. 149 00:15:14,580 --> 00:15:20,010 And again, this came through quite strongly in ways that perhaps we hadn't anticipated. 150 00:15:20,010 --> 00:15:25,380 So so in the book we we discuss all of these one by one in some, some detail. 151 00:15:25,770 --> 00:15:32,730 But today, really, I want to go back to those research questions and consider the extent to which, um, 152 00:15:33,090 --> 00:15:40,800 the evidence that we gather does support the hypothesis that we are seeing this greater homogenisation of, of students, um, across Europe. 153 00:15:41,520 --> 00:15:47,190 First, though, I just want to talk about a little bit about the distinctiveness of a student identity. 154 00:15:47,580 --> 00:15:50,970 So when we asked our students to do the plasticine modelling, 155 00:15:51,150 --> 00:15:56,910 most of them were able to identify what they considered to be distinct characteristics of students. 156 00:15:57,180 --> 00:16:02,850 And they also, in the kind of discussion that followed, um, sort of suggested that they thought these were significant too. 157 00:16:03,120 --> 00:16:07,110 But it was really interesting that Poland was an exception. 158 00:16:07,380 --> 00:16:16,470 And in many ways, um, our various data sources suggested that in Poland this wasn't actually a very distinct social identity. 159 00:16:16,740 --> 00:16:22,059 So, for example, there were very few newspaper articles that we could find that focus specifically on students, 160 00:16:22,060 --> 00:16:28,590 whereas in all the other countries there were loads of them. Secondly, where we were looking for TV shows or films that that focussed on students, 161 00:16:28,590 --> 00:16:31,559 we couldn't find any at all and we had, you know, Polish contact. 162 00:16:31,560 --> 00:16:35,610 So we check this out with and then it was really interesting that in the focus groups, 163 00:16:35,610 --> 00:16:40,799 some of our students kind of alluded to this in the, um, in the models that, that they made. 164 00:16:40,800 --> 00:16:42,870 So just a couple of examples here for you. 165 00:16:42,870 --> 00:16:49,320 So the the red one, the student says, um, in a regular person because I think that every student is just a regular person. 166 00:16:49,530 --> 00:16:52,620 And the fact that you were attending university doesn't make you special in any way. 167 00:16:52,650 --> 00:16:56,070 That's it. And then the second one, the blue, um, the blue one. 168 00:16:56,080 --> 00:17:03,480 The student here said, um, I formed a person because I see myself as an outgoing person and someone that needs other people to feel good, 169 00:17:03,840 --> 00:17:07,379 and I'm always at the centre of attention. So nothing about kind of being a student. 170 00:17:07,380 --> 00:17:14,580 It's about the kind of personality trait. And it was only in Poland that we we saw students making these kind of portals where they 171 00:17:14,580 --> 00:17:19,530 sort of struggled to identify anything that they thought was specific about being a student. 172 00:17:20,070 --> 00:17:25,049 And I suppose, you know, we we thought quite a lot about why this this might be. 173 00:17:25,050 --> 00:17:32,129 And I suppose some of our tentative theories are that in Poland, unlike the other countries in our study, um, 174 00:17:32,130 --> 00:17:37,650 over the recent past, there had been a very sharp increase in the rate of participation in higher education. 175 00:17:37,650 --> 00:17:42,150 So when we collected our data, the the participation rate was broadly similar across, um, 176 00:17:42,150 --> 00:17:48,450 Poland and many of the other countries, but actually its rate of change had been very different and very sharp. 177 00:17:48,810 --> 00:17:53,030 And there is some kind of wider literature in Poland which would suggest that, um, 178 00:17:53,040 --> 00:17:58,230 that's a very kind of common social narrative that now that everyone is going to higher education, 179 00:17:58,530 --> 00:18:01,589 um, it's, it's less of this kind of a special identity. 180 00:18:01,590 --> 00:18:06,270 It's something that anybody could achieve and therefore it's not, um, socially very, very important. 181 00:18:06,270 --> 00:18:07,670 And so to me that that kind of, you know, 182 00:18:07,860 --> 00:18:14,070 it's a is a possible explanation that might also be something of the kind of egalitarian communist, um, legacy here. 183 00:18:14,490 --> 00:18:19,950 And also, I suppose, and while other research has found about the strength of students worker identities. 184 00:18:19,950 --> 00:18:27,570 So there's another research project that's all students across Europe, um, the extent to which they identify as a student, um, or as a worker. 185 00:18:27,780 --> 00:18:33,690 And in Poland, it's very different from other countries because of the high percentage of people who identify as a worker. 186 00:18:34,020 --> 00:18:38,280 And I think it links back to the point that I was talking about, um, that, um, 187 00:18:38,280 --> 00:18:45,540 the value attached to having a degree is now seen as as much lower in Poland because of the very fast mass expansion. 188 00:18:45,690 --> 00:18:51,810 And so people think that it's work experience that helps you get a job, um, afterwards, not necessarily your, your degree. 189 00:18:52,500 --> 00:18:55,740 And when we were doing the field work, it was quite interesting that we, 190 00:18:55,790 --> 00:19:02,669 we saw the kind of physical spaces of the university reflecting this to some extent in the Polish universities where we collected data, 191 00:19:02,670 --> 00:19:06,670 there were no social spaces, um, for students. So this was the kind of best we could come up with. 192 00:19:06,670 --> 00:19:11,040 The social spaces, a little bench and there's a vending machine and that's it. 193 00:19:11,040 --> 00:19:15,569 And we felt that that was kind of reinforcing this sense that, you know, it wasn't somewhere where you hung out. 194 00:19:15,570 --> 00:19:19,500 It wasn't somewhere where you kind of socialised as well. It had a quite a narrow function. 195 00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:24,959 But that's a kind of digression because, um, in the majority of cases, um, 196 00:19:24,960 --> 00:19:29,040 students did think that there was something distinctive about being a student. 197 00:19:29,040 --> 00:19:32,970 And, um, and, and we're very happy to, to talk about it. 198 00:19:33,480 --> 00:19:38,160 And so I'm going to go on now to talk about some of those kind of themes and the extent to which, 199 00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:45,240 first of all, we can see you're not see, um, um, homogenisation across nation states in Europe. 200 00:19:45,900 --> 00:19:50,040 So I want to start by saying that there were some commonalities across Europe. 201 00:19:50,040 --> 00:19:57,840 And perhaps the most, um, dominant one was the. Struction of students as future workers, and perhaps that doesn't surprise any of us. 202 00:19:58,350 --> 00:20:02,870 When we looked at the kind of policy text interviewed, policymakers looked at media discourses. 203 00:20:02,940 --> 00:20:09,599 This was very common in all six countries, and that was a typically typical sort of macroeconomic framing in which students 204 00:20:09,600 --> 00:20:13,620 were often positioned and understood as human resources for a knowledge economy. 205 00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:23,850 And it could have more micro economic framing, where students were understood as rational cheeses seeking maximisation of labour market returns. 206 00:20:24,840 --> 00:20:30,450 And when we turn to the students, we also saw kind of, you know, lots of students, um, 207 00:20:30,450 --> 00:20:36,479 talking about themselves as future workers, but actually, um, having a slightly different take on it. 208 00:20:36,480 --> 00:20:40,410 So they objected to being seen as only future workers. 209 00:20:40,410 --> 00:20:47,850 That was very important. Um, and unlike some of the kind of staff and policy, um, perspectives, 210 00:20:48,210 --> 00:20:56,760 they felt that the focus on employment was entirely compatible with being a committed learner and an active citizen and developing personally. 211 00:20:56,760 --> 00:21:01,020 So this was a kind of a holistic sense that they had. But it wasn't one or the other. 212 00:21:01,020 --> 00:21:04,440 It was actually future workers as part of a broader package. 213 00:21:05,010 --> 00:21:12,600 But typically students emphasise credential ism and positional competition rather than human capital development. 214 00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:15,899 And that's where they differed from the other social actors in the study. 215 00:21:15,900 --> 00:21:17,280 And so this is the same model. 216 00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:25,649 Here is the student to the focus group talking about, um, a group of people, um, um, that it's difficult to get access to. 217 00:21:25,650 --> 00:21:30,650 It's difficult to get entry to unless you have to kind of keep up with a credential race. 218 00:21:30,660 --> 00:21:35,730 And that was a very typical understanding of, um, the future worker discourse. 219 00:21:36,210 --> 00:21:39,210 So some commonalities across the nation states. 220 00:21:39,510 --> 00:21:47,040 But I suppose the arguments I want to make this evening is that much more common was evidence of enduring national differences. 221 00:21:47,610 --> 00:21:52,110 And I've got a long list here of, um, some of the ways in which we might explain it. 222 00:21:52,110 --> 00:21:56,070 So I haven't got time today to go through, um, all of them. So I'm just going to talk about the, 223 00:21:56,370 --> 00:22:06,599 the top four as some kind of explanation of why I would say we do still see quite enduring differences at the level of the nation state. 224 00:22:06,600 --> 00:22:11,129 So so first of all, um, long term historical and cultural trends. 225 00:22:11,130 --> 00:22:16,140 And here I'm going to focus primarily on the influence of the Humboldt's hidden model. 226 00:22:16,410 --> 00:22:19,290 Um, as you may know, this is a kind of, you know, um, 227 00:22:19,920 --> 00:22:25,590 really important influence on the developments of higher education in Europe, originating in Germany in 19th century. 228 00:22:25,920 --> 00:22:32,790 Um, uh, putting forward the idea that, you know, research and education needed to be unified in um, universities. 229 00:22:33,150 --> 00:22:38,400 Um, and the research was kind of, you know, a key driver of what universities were all about. 230 00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:43,530 And an important part of, um, that the Humboldt's here in view was that actually kind of, 231 00:22:43,530 --> 00:22:47,549 um, an important, um, function of universities was personal development. 232 00:22:47,550 --> 00:22:49,950 And that personal development didn't just happen at universities. 233 00:22:50,070 --> 00:22:59,790 So a lifelong process that people went through and the, um, the, the, the phrase building is, is, um, used to, to um, encapsulates that. 234 00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:06,299 And we see that Humboldt in model feeding through not just, um, the data from, from Germany, 235 00:23:06,300 --> 00:23:10,680 but also from Denmark, which has been very influenced by the Humboldt's here in model two. 236 00:23:11,340 --> 00:23:15,480 So when we go back to some of those kind of, um, constructions that I was talking about earlier, 237 00:23:15,750 --> 00:23:21,300 there were very different views, for example, in relation how students in transition were well understood. 238 00:23:21,720 --> 00:23:27,960 So students from Germany and from Denmark and also um members of staff as well as other social actors, 239 00:23:28,170 --> 00:23:33,059 tended to be less likely to see higher education as this kind of discrete stage of life, 240 00:23:33,060 --> 00:23:40,590 very different from what were before and what came afterwards, but part of a process of ongoing personal development. 241 00:23:41,850 --> 00:23:51,240 And then when we turn to the construction of students as enthusiastic learners and hard workers, we also see differences in Germany and Denmark, 242 00:23:51,390 --> 00:23:57,780 in which students and other social actors put quite a lot of emphasis on the pace at which students learn. 243 00:23:57,780 --> 00:24:04,439 And so that was significant. And again, this links to the Humboldt in concept of learning Freiheit having freedom to, 244 00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:07,649 um, make your own decisions about the pace at which you learn. 245 00:24:07,650 --> 00:24:12,180 And this was brought into sharp relief, um, in both countries, 246 00:24:12,180 --> 00:24:16,709 because there had been national policies to encourage students to move more quickly through 247 00:24:16,710 --> 00:24:22,560 their studies as a result of sort of Bologna reforms so that they could kind of they took less, 248 00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:28,050 um, time. And so the government didn't have to pay kind of, you know, the cost of their study for so long, 249 00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:32,849 but also certainly entered the labour market more quickly. And I got to pay taxes more quickly. 250 00:24:32,850 --> 00:24:37,860 So so it was linked up with kind of policies, but they were drawing on this kind of, um, um, 251 00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:42,630 longer term kind of, I suppose, model of what learning in higher education is all about. 252 00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:52,220 Um, in Germany and Denmark, we also see when we talk about the future worker construction, um, building and. 253 00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:56,680 And the Danish equivalent else offered up its quite important counter discourses. 254 00:24:56,690 --> 00:25:00,950 So we could also say it in the in the plasticine models were in Denmark and Germany. 255 00:25:00,950 --> 00:25:05,390 We had lots of these models about, you know, what it means to be a student. You know, something to do with being a plant. 256 00:25:05,540 --> 00:25:11,720 Sunshine of the plant growing beautiful abstract growth which we didn't see in any of the other countries. 257 00:25:12,020 --> 00:25:18,580 Um, and so again, a bit and some of the students were quite explicit about the importance of this, um, 258 00:25:18,620 --> 00:25:25,849 in the quotations in the focus group, um, saying pursuing a university programme, it's also the shaping of your personality in Danish. 259 00:25:25,850 --> 00:25:30,220 We call it Daedalus. And so this was often offered up as a, as a kind of, you know, 260 00:25:30,230 --> 00:25:37,910 a counter discourse for what they saw was quite an instrumental, um, uh, future work, a discourse on the part of the state. 261 00:25:38,660 --> 00:25:46,520 So that's, that's the first and I suppose, um, reason, I think, why we see national differences a second and I guess I've been alluding to this, 262 00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:53,840 um, on the previous slide, uh, the specific communication policies that we see, um, in your different European countries. 263 00:25:54,110 --> 00:26:00,559 So we saw that the future work discourse was strongest in countries, um, where neoliberalism has been strongest. 264 00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:04,940 So particularly kind of, um, England, uh, where we've had high fees, 265 00:26:05,120 --> 00:26:11,120 high degree of marketisation for much longer, um, than um, uh, other European countries. 266 00:26:11,450 --> 00:26:20,810 Um, secondly, I suppose we saw how education policies feeding in to, um, the way in which some students talked about being an object of criticism. 267 00:26:21,170 --> 00:26:29,540 And here this was most pronounced, I suppose, in in Denmark, where students, um, receive their tuition fees are paid and they also receive a grant, 268 00:26:29,540 --> 00:26:35,870 quite a generous grant for the duration of their studies and are quite atypical, I suppose, in Europe, um, because of that. 269 00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:44,840 But I suppose a counter of that is that students often felt that they were talked about as being insufficiently deserving of the welfare, 270 00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,390 the generous welfare that the state was giving them. 271 00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:53,720 And actually, this certainly fed through the various policy documents and newspaper articles that we looked at and in Denmark. 272 00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:58,820 So here we can see that, you know, quite closely linked to, um, decisions about higher education, 273 00:26:58,820 --> 00:27:05,840 how higher education is funded in Denmark and then the construction of students, us in transition. 274 00:27:06,140 --> 00:27:12,530 This was, um, typically talked about as a kind of very personal transition in countries where fees were payable. 275 00:27:12,530 --> 00:27:14,480 So England, Ireland and Spain. 276 00:27:14,660 --> 00:27:20,569 And it was really interesting that in the other three countries, um, it was seen as much more of a kind of a societal transition. 277 00:27:20,570 --> 00:27:24,920 It wasn't about, you know, personal investment and on personal gain in the labour market. 278 00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:30,200 It was about kind of, you know, many more things to do with the public goods of of higher education. 279 00:27:32,900 --> 00:27:41,960 So the third, um, I suppose a third explanation for national differences related relates to points about European ization. 280 00:27:42,410 --> 00:27:52,790 And I suppose here, um, I'm focusing primarily on Spain because that's where, um, debate points about European ization were often made. 281 00:27:52,790 --> 00:27:55,939 It's perhaps no surprise, um, to us in, in England, 282 00:27:55,940 --> 00:28:00,950 that European ization was hardly ever mentioned by any of our, um, participants, um, from, from England. 283 00:28:00,950 --> 00:28:09,079 But it was a very strong theme in Spain. And comparisons were made between the situation in Spain and other parts of Europe. 284 00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:14,239 So, for example, Spanish students were often criticised by policy makers, 285 00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:20,330 by members of staff for being less independent than what they perceived to be their European counterparts. 286 00:28:20,330 --> 00:28:27,080 So the German student was often held up as this kind of ideal student who people thought was was very independent, um, engaged in paid work. 287 00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:33,680 So, so some Spanish students were kind of criticised, um, for their perceived lack of independence. 288 00:28:33,950 --> 00:28:39,320 Um, but Spanish students themselves were quite critical of the education they were receiving. 289 00:28:39,530 --> 00:28:44,929 And the Spanish students were the only students who pointed to what was happening in other parts of Europe and saying, 290 00:28:44,930 --> 00:28:49,280 well, actually, you know, we feel that our, uh, education needs to be much more work relevant. 291 00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:53,720 We know what's happening in this country, in this country. And we didn't really hear that in any of the other countries. 292 00:28:54,800 --> 00:29:03,560 And I suppose across all of our social actors, so many of them, there was a sense that, um, Spain has a lot to learn from other European countries, 293 00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:10,640 whether that's in the sort of the independence of the higher education students or the quality of education in, in universities. 294 00:29:11,090 --> 00:29:17,660 And I think here there are kinds of reflections of what has been argued in the wider sociology of education literature about Spain, 295 00:29:18,020 --> 00:29:27,620 um, that um within education Europe is often positions um by various education actors as a route to socio economic development. 296 00:29:27,830 --> 00:29:35,000 Um, I suppose coming from a sense that that Spain offers quite a peripheral position in that kind of European education space. 297 00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:42,230 And so although the study that um, I referenced is quite old now, we did see quite similar things coming through our data, 298 00:29:42,470 --> 00:29:47,900 which again served to sort of distinguish Spain from, um, the other countries and in some ways. 299 00:29:49,070 --> 00:29:53,719 And then the final explanation of national differences that I want to talk about is health policy. 300 00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:59,570 And that might seem like a really weird thing to be talking about, um, in relation to, to students in higher education, 301 00:29:59,900 --> 00:30:03,350 but it relates to the construction of students is stressed, which, as I said, 302 00:30:03,620 --> 00:30:08,540 um, was, was was quite a dominant theme, um, from many of our policy actors. 303 00:30:08,930 --> 00:30:15,649 And it was really interesting that, um, there was no discussion of stress at all by any of the actors in, 304 00:30:15,650 --> 00:30:20,750 in Poland, despite it being such a common theme in the other five countries. 305 00:30:21,170 --> 00:30:28,999 Now, this may relate to what I was saying earlier about, you know, students being seen as not particularly distinctive social actors in Poland, 306 00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:34,550 the few being that, you know, if they're just the same as everybody else, they're not going to suffer any more stress than everybody else. 307 00:30:34,910 --> 00:30:39,889 But I think when we look at the literature, um, on cross-national differences in relation to kind of, 308 00:30:39,890 --> 00:30:45,020 you know, health policy and health practices, um, it's all acute that, um, 309 00:30:45,020 --> 00:30:50,389 there's still quite significant stigma attached to disclosure of mental health issues in Poland, 310 00:30:50,390 --> 00:30:55,040 which differentiates it from many of its, um, you know, European, um, neighbours. 311 00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:58,999 And so we wondered if there was some, some of that going on here, which again, 312 00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:04,970 served to sort of differentiate Poland, um, from um, from some of the other countries in the study. 313 00:31:05,750 --> 00:31:10,520 So I suppose I for kids and hopefully convinced you that there are still quite 314 00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:15,709 significant national differences in understandings of what it means to be a student. 315 00:31:15,710 --> 00:31:26,900 Um, today I want to now move on, um, to look at the nation state itself and the extent to which we see convergence within nation states or actually, 316 00:31:26,900 --> 00:31:30,290 um, whether we we see different patterns, um, emerging. 317 00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:36,140 Now, this might have been kind of obvious from what I've been saying already, but despite some of those kind of, 318 00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:42,830 um, assumptions in the literature about national homogeneity as well as kind of international homogeneity, 319 00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:51,980 relatively few of the constructions that, um, uh, our participants talked about were shared across all social actors. 320 00:31:52,190 --> 00:31:56,929 The two exceptions to that, um, were students are stressed, which was kind of, 321 00:31:56,930 --> 00:32:04,110 you know, with the exception of Poland, something that kind of, you know, all of the different actors in a study talked about and also future Worker, 322 00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:09,230 but as I mentioned previously, that was kind of played out in in rather different ways. 323 00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:16,580 But I suppose a key difference that we saw in pretty much all of the countries was, um, 324 00:32:16,580 --> 00:32:24,080 differences between student perspectives on one hand and the perspectives of others, uh, other social actors on the other. 325 00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:30,290 And just some examples of this. So for example, um, the construction of students as active citizens. 326 00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:36,070 Now this. Was something that that students, um, felt, um, very strongly about. 327 00:32:36,070 --> 00:32:39,190 Um, lots of their models. Um, refers to this. 328 00:32:39,190 --> 00:32:42,729 So this is actually a kind of, um, a fist that, um, some of these made to sort of. 329 00:32:42,730 --> 00:32:49,059 So, um, in Denmark to show, um, student um, power and the focus group, 330 00:32:49,060 --> 00:32:55,299 one of the focus group participants in Denmark was it was typical of many who said, we also learned to be critical. 331 00:32:55,300 --> 00:32:59,680 We learned to be critical of the state. We learned to be critical of society in general. 332 00:33:00,250 --> 00:33:08,559 And then we contrast that with, um, an interview from a staff member in the same country, um, which again, was quite typical of staff members. 333 00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:13,300 He talked about students saying that focus mainly on taking care of their own position, society, 334 00:33:13,570 --> 00:33:18,670 that they don't have to pay for their study program so they don't have to complete their studies too quickly. 335 00:33:18,670 --> 00:33:23,469 And there was a general sense amongst many of the staff that we spoke to across, um, 336 00:33:23,470 --> 00:33:30,760 many countries that actually students these days were much less politically engaged, um, than the students of the past. 337 00:33:30,850 --> 00:33:36,819 And whether they were politically engaged, it was generally to further their own interests, not to care about, uh, wider society. 338 00:33:36,820 --> 00:33:42,340 So there was a fundamental difference here, I think, between students and, um, other other social actors. 339 00:33:42,850 --> 00:33:48,580 And we can also see that played out in the way in which they talked about, um, students as learners. 340 00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:56,860 So. Overall, I would say there was a common view amongst higher education staff that students, typically contemporary students, 341 00:33:56,860 --> 00:34:01,540 were typically quite passive and quite instrumental in their approach to higher education. 342 00:34:01,550 --> 00:34:05,350 So reflecting those kind of arguments that I outlined at the start and within 343 00:34:05,350 --> 00:34:09,370 the literature that that sort of argued that this has had this kind of effect, 344 00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,940 these marketplace policies have had these kind of effect on on students. 345 00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:22,629 And when we looked at kind of policy across Europe, um, typically students will discuss much more as future workers then as learners. 346 00:34:22,630 --> 00:34:26,980 It was really fascinating that there were so few references to learning, um, 347 00:34:26,980 --> 00:34:32,140 in kind of these, these policy documents about students, um, that we analysed. 348 00:34:32,650 --> 00:34:39,730 However, when we talk to students and often in fairly unprompted ways, when we've gotten to these plasticine models right at the start, 349 00:34:40,030 --> 00:34:47,170 learning was kind of quite central to how they understood their identity as a student and how they spent their their time. 350 00:34:47,380 --> 00:34:53,800 So yes, jobs were important to them, but higher education was also really valued as a context for learning, 351 00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:58,330 for exploration, for self-discovery and self, um, development. 352 00:34:58,720 --> 00:35:06,100 And alongside this, lots of students stressed the kind of hard work and effort that they had to put in and that they wanted to put in to. 353 00:35:06,430 --> 00:35:10,120 And so this, um, plasticine model here is, um, 354 00:35:10,540 --> 00:35:16,149 a student who wants to show that it was attached to their head because they never they never left their laptop. 355 00:35:16,150 --> 00:35:20,530 They were always working on it. And so the students said, that's me with a laptop. 356 00:35:20,530 --> 00:35:24,249 That's basically what I do all day. That's how I fall asleep. That's how I wake up. 357 00:35:24,250 --> 00:35:29,440 Basically, I study, I program, that's it. There's not much else and there's not much time for anything else. 358 00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:31,330 So that's quite an extreme view. 359 00:35:31,540 --> 00:35:37,629 But um, the view that actually learning was quite central to what it means to be a student came through very strongly, 360 00:35:37,630 --> 00:35:44,800 um, in the student data and was and contrasted quite significantly, um, with what others, um, told us. 361 00:35:45,490 --> 00:35:52,240 So why why might that be? Why might staff in particular have this kind of very different view from students, 362 00:35:52,240 --> 00:35:58,690 because you'd expect them to be spending quite a lot of time with their students, um, on a daily, weekly basis. 363 00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:05,859 And I suppose one of the things that we've argued is this kind of critique of the student seemed to be, 364 00:36:05,860 --> 00:36:09,700 for some staff members, a means of critiquing broader phenomenon. 365 00:36:09,700 --> 00:36:14,290 So typically they were very sympathetic to students, but felt that students, you know, 366 00:36:14,290 --> 00:36:18,880 were exhibiting kind of problematic behaviours because of the wider policy context. 367 00:36:19,180 --> 00:36:24,370 So that was made definitely in England in relation to what people saw as the kind of high level of marketisation here, 368 00:36:24,550 --> 00:36:31,510 but was also made in, in many other European countries in relation to kind of policy reforms that staff were quite critical of. 369 00:36:32,590 --> 00:36:36,610 I think it's also bound up with a kind of generational critique, the kind of view that, 370 00:36:36,610 --> 00:36:41,200 you know, students these days aren't as political as we were when we were young. 371 00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:46,060 I think we see that kind of discourse played out, um, in different ways in society. 372 00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:52,719 But I think perhaps, you know, worryingly, it did seem to us to suggest quite a lack of knowledge of the realities of, 373 00:36:52,720 --> 00:36:59,920 of students lives, that they could be such a stark contrast between how students talked about their lives and how staff, um, saw them. 374 00:37:01,510 --> 00:37:04,210 So I suppose that leads us to kind of, you know, um, 375 00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:11,950 be quite kind of critical of those who've argued that we do see national homogeneity as well as, um, cross-national and what unity. 376 00:37:12,610 --> 00:37:17,679 And I think that's also, um, illustrated by some other axes of difference I've talked about, 377 00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:24,100 um, um, differences, um, within nation states by type of, um, social actor. 378 00:37:24,310 --> 00:37:27,670 But we can also see that in a number of different other ways too. 379 00:37:27,670 --> 00:37:31,960 So for example, we saw differences, um, by academic discipline. 380 00:37:32,230 --> 00:37:37,160 So the social science students in our study were typically more politically engaged and move 381 00:37:37,300 --> 00:37:42,550 more likely to sort of talk about themselves as significant political actors than students, 382 00:37:42,550 --> 00:37:45,280 um, from, from other academic disciplines. 383 00:37:45,610 --> 00:37:53,290 Um, but I suppose, perhaps more, more worryingly, there was also a sense that, um, those who are enrolled on Stem courses. 384 00:37:53,290 --> 00:38:00,369 So science, technology, engineering and math courses, um, were seen as superior learners. 385 00:38:00,370 --> 00:38:05,470 Now, this was kind of a perception of students, which isn't necessarily based on fact at all. 386 00:38:05,650 --> 00:38:12,400 But it was also, interestingly, something that, you know, was kind of made implicit in some of the policy documents as well, where Stem was kind of, 387 00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:20,170 you know, prioritised as, um, the most important kinds, of course, that that students, um, could, could take that wasn't so much in England. 388 00:38:20,350 --> 00:38:24,190 But we did see that, particularly in Spain and Poland. 389 00:38:24,850 --> 00:38:32,590 So discipline of study being another way in which um, students were under understood in a, in a, in a slightly different way, 390 00:38:33,220 --> 00:38:38,590 we also saw differences by the university or higher education institution that that students attended. 391 00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:43,840 Now, I'm certainly cautious about talking about this because it is kind of entangled with social class to some extent. 392 00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:50,380 So as you probably know, in many countries of the world, you know, um, we see quite a lot of. 393 00:38:50,500 --> 00:38:55,990 Differentiation by social class in the backgrounds of students who attend different types of university. 394 00:38:56,620 --> 00:39:03,099 But I suppose similar. But but I suppose putting that one side within our study, we did see quite, 395 00:39:03,100 --> 00:39:09,339 quite significant differences by institution, for example, in how transition was understood, 396 00:39:09,340 --> 00:39:15,819 whether this was seen as a family transition, something that was completely normalised or something that was actually quite atypical. 397 00:39:15,820 --> 00:39:20,379 And students attending more prestigious universities typically talked about it much more, 398 00:39:20,380 --> 00:39:25,660 as, you know, an unknown, um, something that the parents and grandparents had had done. 399 00:39:26,290 --> 00:39:33,519 There was also, um, there were also differences by institution in the degree of optimism that students had about their future efficacy as citizens, 400 00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:37,960 how how empowered they felt to make change when they left, um, university. 401 00:39:38,470 --> 00:39:43,120 And there were also assumptions about different types of learner and that, um, 402 00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:48,849 students attending kind of more prestigious universities, um, well understood as better, better learners. 403 00:39:48,850 --> 00:39:56,770 And this was um, this came across even in kind of flatter systems with less sort of hierarchically positioned institutions in, in Europe. 404 00:39:56,770 --> 00:40:03,070 And this was, again, kind of a perception that students kind of, you know, critiqued in terms of its, its reality. 405 00:40:03,340 --> 00:40:08,379 Um, but we also did see that kind of feeding through various of the documents that that we analysed, 406 00:40:08,380 --> 00:40:13,030 um, to in terms of, you know, people positioning more as a, as, as a kinds of reality. 407 00:40:14,620 --> 00:40:17,560 And then, I suppose, linked to what I've just been saying, um, 408 00:40:17,740 --> 00:40:25,090 the importance of socioeconomic status in differentiating what it means to be a contemporary higher education student. 409 00:40:25,510 --> 00:40:33,760 And so, you know, across our data, um, people talked about differences in capacity to devote yourself entirely to your studies, 410 00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:40,600 the kind of ways in which, for some students, the need to engage in paid work reduced the time that they had to study. 411 00:40:40,690 --> 00:40:45,530 And perhaps, you know, kind of, you know, reduce their learner identity, um, and, 412 00:40:45,530 --> 00:40:49,899 and fed into kind of, you know, how they understood, um, themselves, the extent to which, 413 00:40:49,900 --> 00:40:53,049 you know, they might position themselves as a kind of not just a future worker, 414 00:40:53,050 --> 00:40:57,520 but a worker in the present, as opposed to a fully committed, um, student. 415 00:40:58,690 --> 00:41:05,860 And then I suppose when we were talking about kind of the when people brought up the idea of stress and the construction of students as a stressed, 416 00:41:06,130 --> 00:41:10,390 certainly these kind of, um, pressures, um, were talked about quite a lot. 417 00:41:10,390 --> 00:41:14,709 The fact that actually, um, the students who are more likely to be stressed were the ones, 418 00:41:14,710 --> 00:41:18,460 you know, who had fewer kind of family resources to, to fall back on. 419 00:41:18,610 --> 00:41:23,440 So the kind of financial need to work, um, or to get for your studies as quickly as possible. 420 00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:27,510 But also, I suppose, what sociologists have talked about as kind of habitus disconnect, 421 00:41:27,510 --> 00:41:30,850 the kind of feeling of kind of, you know, not being in the right place, that, you know, 422 00:41:30,850 --> 00:41:35,709 the sense that universities are middle class institutions and that kind of disconnect, um, 423 00:41:35,710 --> 00:41:41,560 associated with with greater feelings of stress among students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. 424 00:41:42,730 --> 00:41:47,200 And then also in our discussion of students as objects of criticism, um, 425 00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:52,210 we see social class kind of coming through quite implicitly in some of the discussions. 426 00:41:52,300 --> 00:41:59,890 Uh, so, for example, in, in some countries, newspaper articles, but also some kind of policy documents talking about, um, 427 00:41:59,890 --> 00:42:07,870 the expansion of higher education, the diversification of the student body and associating with that with concerns about loss of quality. 428 00:42:08,170 --> 00:42:13,600 And, um, and I think, you know, it's our reading that actually, you know, the students that they're talking about here, 429 00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:19,570 that the ones that are being problematise are often those without a family history of, of higher education. 430 00:42:21,190 --> 00:42:27,249 So hopefully, having gone through all of that, I've convinced you, um, that, um, 431 00:42:27,250 --> 00:42:34,390 there are some questions to be raised about the academic literature that assumes this kind of homogeneity, um, across across Europe. 432 00:42:35,020 --> 00:42:40,239 But I suppose I want to argue, as I sort of get into the final stage of my presentation, um, 433 00:42:40,240 --> 00:42:44,709 that it isn't just kind of, you know, this data isn't just a kind of academic interest. 434 00:42:44,710 --> 00:42:51,400 There are also quite sort of, you know, um, material consequences that that follow from some of the things that that I've been saying. 435 00:42:52,510 --> 00:42:58,480 And so if we take a kind of materialist view of language that it doesn't just kind of represent reality well, 436 00:42:58,590 --> 00:43:06,850 it doesn't represent reality, that it actually imposes limits on what can be said and what can't be said and whose views are legitimate. 437 00:43:07,060 --> 00:43:14,950 Um, I think we can see that these kind of ways of talking about students might have kinds of quite practical, um, consequences. 438 00:43:15,610 --> 00:43:20,290 And indeed some of these were identified by students themselves in the focus groups. 439 00:43:20,590 --> 00:43:27,970 So, for example, um, students from Denmark who were often kind of critiqued by policy makers and by the press, 440 00:43:28,240 --> 00:43:34,690 um, as, as lazy, not kind of being fully deserving of the very generous welfare that they were receiving. 441 00:43:35,050 --> 00:43:42,040 They talked about how this kind of construction made, made invisible the hard work that went into their studies, 442 00:43:42,340 --> 00:43:47,710 and often for many of them, the kind of challenge of balancing their studies alongside paid work. 443 00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:55,089 And they felt that, you know, that they didn't see them. Selves recognised in these public debates, um, which they felt some felt angry about, 444 00:43:55,090 --> 00:44:00,639 some felt upset about as students in Denmark, but also in some other countries, 445 00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:05,799 talked about how they also felt under surveillance, that actually, you know, people were watching them to see whether, 446 00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:10,300 you know, they were worthy of the quite generous grants that they, they were receiving. 447 00:44:11,740 --> 00:44:17,590 Um, and then some students, I think this was particularly in Spain, I talked about, um, 448 00:44:17,590 --> 00:44:24,100 how they felt the impact of political action that they had taken was minimised because of the way in which they were. 449 00:44:24,100 --> 00:44:34,629 They were constructed. And so, um, they felt that, um, typically the media, um, but also, um, others in society, um, tended to kind of, um, 450 00:44:34,630 --> 00:44:40,240 not really engage with the substance when they of whatever political action they took if they were taking it, 451 00:44:40,450 --> 00:44:43,480 but actually were much more concerned about the methods they use. 452 00:44:43,500 --> 00:44:49,629 So and that was sort of backed up by, uh, meta analysis, which showed that actually, you know, there was a lot of attention paid to, 453 00:44:49,630 --> 00:44:56,170 um, violence used by students, but very little engagement with the substantive points that, that they were making. 454 00:44:56,410 --> 00:45:02,319 And we saw that actually also in kind of in England in the kind of, um, the media concern about, 455 00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:06,280 you know, students being snowflakes, um, concerned about trigger warning, 456 00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:10,260 safe spaces without really kind of engaging with the substantive, um, 457 00:45:10,270 --> 00:45:15,819 points that some students were trying to make by arguing for, for safe spaces, for example. 458 00:45:15,820 --> 00:45:20,830 So there was a sense across Europe of, of, you know, have these, these constructions, um, 459 00:45:20,830 --> 00:45:26,770 minimised, um, the, the impact of political action that, that students sometimes took. 460 00:45:27,250 --> 00:45:32,290 And then the students in our sample who weren't studying Stem subjects took to that kind of have. 461 00:45:32,290 --> 00:45:36,159 Basically they were worried about their futures because they felt there was such a dominant national 462 00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:41,709 conversation about the value of Stem degrees that they were very worried about getting jobs afterwards. 463 00:45:41,710 --> 00:45:47,860 Whereas, you know, the, the, the actual data would show that, you know, that that isn't problematic at all, but because of the discourse, 464 00:45:47,860 --> 00:45:55,360 they felt very concerned about, um, that and so just on the right hand side, these, these come from, from Denmark. 465 00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:56,919 Um, the idea that, you know, 466 00:45:56,920 --> 00:46:03,370 they were under a lot of time pressure to get through their studies quickly because of the cost to the taxpayer having very material effects, 467 00:46:03,370 --> 00:46:08,049 um, on them and the students talking about having to defend themselves, um, 468 00:46:08,050 --> 00:46:13,510 all the time because of the way in which they were talked about in public debate and in Denmark. 469 00:46:13,720 --> 00:46:19,690 So that was some of the kind of ways in which these material effects were talked about by, by students themselves. 470 00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:25,690 But I think we can also speculate that there might be other, um, effects which students aren't aware of themselves. 471 00:46:25,690 --> 00:46:31,000 And so one thing we we thought about was about kind of, you know, that the pedagogies that are used in the classroom, 472 00:46:31,180 --> 00:46:37,450 all of these underpinned by basically quite wrong assumptions about what motivates students if they're seen as kind of, you know, 473 00:46:37,630 --> 00:46:46,540 instrumental in their approaches to learning, perhaps that leads staff to use pedagogies that try to motivate them in ways that aren't necessary and, 474 00:46:46,750 --> 00:46:53,590 um, and don't kind of engage with, with what students talked about is that kind of, you know, genuine love of learning in many cases. 475 00:46:54,670 --> 00:47:00,620 And I think we would also say that, you know, perhaps some of the, the, the attitudes, um, held by, 476 00:47:00,660 --> 00:47:06,160 by some staff, but also that came through quite strongly in some policy documents and newspapers, 477 00:47:06,460 --> 00:47:11,620 perhaps reinforce social inequalities by positioning of students from, um, 478 00:47:11,620 --> 00:47:16,780 lower socioeconomic groups as kind of problematic in the ways that I was, was talking about. 479 00:47:17,020 --> 00:47:24,129 And similarly, we could argue that some of the kind of assumed generational differences that I've outlined perhaps also reinforce, 480 00:47:24,130 --> 00:47:31,810 um, social division, if they're repeated, um, by people with, you know, significant, um, power in societies. 481 00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:39,620 But I think it's also important to recognise, and perhaps more positively, that students aren't passive recipients today. 482 00:47:39,670 --> 00:47:47,620 So to go back to that kind of, you know, debate in the literature about to what extent student subjectivities, um, are informed by, by wider policy. 483 00:47:47,620 --> 00:47:52,120 And I think our data suggests that they're not passive recipients by any means. 484 00:47:52,390 --> 00:47:57,640 So many of the people, the students we spoke to were conscious of the kind of constructions that, um, 485 00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:03,610 the others held of them and were able to articulate quite clearly without any prompting from us how, 486 00:48:03,610 --> 00:48:07,690 um, these kind of constructions were odds with their actual experiences. 487 00:48:08,230 --> 00:48:14,590 There were also various acts of resistance. So, um, contesting the economic way in which they were positioned. 488 00:48:14,590 --> 00:48:18,460 I was I was talking about by drawing on the discourses of building and tunnels, 489 00:48:18,790 --> 00:48:24,070 um, and also by setting themselves as enthusiastic learners and, and hard workers. 490 00:48:24,370 --> 00:48:29,889 And so I think here there's some support for that body of work that I was talking about earlier, um, 491 00:48:29,890 --> 00:48:36,940 which, um, suggests that that policy constructions don't simply transfer over to student subjectivities. 492 00:48:37,780 --> 00:48:40,030 So to conclude, um, 493 00:48:40,240 --> 00:48:48,819 hopefully I've convinced you that there are data raises quite significant questions about assumptions within the academic literature about, 494 00:48:48,820 --> 00:48:56,650 um, European. Ization, and about the reconfiguration of European hierarchy around an Anglo American model, 495 00:48:57,310 --> 00:49:06,700 and that student understandings cannot simply be read of policy pronouncements and that nations aren't necessarily coherent educational entities. 496 00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:10,390 But I think there are some questions that that remain. 497 00:49:10,660 --> 00:49:15,610 So, for example, will national differences endure in the face of policy shifts? 498 00:49:15,820 --> 00:49:19,480 One of the things that I've kind of alluded to, but not really discussed explicitly, 499 00:49:19,660 --> 00:49:25,030 was the shift in Germany and Denmark to get students to move through their studies, 500 00:49:25,240 --> 00:49:29,350 um, much more quickly when those are no longer seen as kind of threatening to students. 501 00:49:29,350 --> 00:49:32,800 They're just embedded in the system. There's no knowledge of kind of what went before. 502 00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:39,760 Will the emphasis put, put on, learn Freiheit, for example, you know, become much, much less important or not important at all? 503 00:49:40,390 --> 00:49:44,469 There are also various changes in the European policy space that might affect this. 504 00:49:44,470 --> 00:49:52,270 There's obviously Brexit. Um, but also, um, the European Universities Initiative, which is um, um, seeking to um, 505 00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:56,680 develop like European universities by getting um institutions across different 506 00:49:56,680 --> 00:50:01,420 countries to collaborate very closely and to facilitate student mobility between them. 507 00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:06,280 Will that help reduce some of the kind of national differences that I've been talking about today? 508 00:50:06,940 --> 00:50:12,670 And then also there's the impact of Covid 19. Most of the data collection, um, that we did was prior to Covid. 509 00:50:12,940 --> 00:50:19,960 And I guess when people were talking to us, they were assuming that what it means to be a student, it's a kind of embodied, communal experience. 510 00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:23,469 Has the experience of online learning and some of the kind of legacies of that, 511 00:50:23,470 --> 00:50:27,879 that are still with us had an impact on conceptualisations of students. 512 00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:30,520 So I think those are those are open questions. 513 00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:38,530 So I'd like to leave it there, um, for today with, um, I've got a website and, um, the book that we wrote for the project is published, Open access. 514 00:50:38,530 --> 00:50:42,729 So if you'd like to look into things in more detail, please do have a look at the book. 515 00:50:42,730 --> 00:50:46,750 But thank you very much for listening. I'm happy to answer any questions that you've got.