Higher Education Timescapes: Temporal Understandings of Students and Learning

Abstract

This article draws on data from six European countries (Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain) to explore the higher education timescapes inhabited by students. Despite arguments that degree-level study has become increasingly similar across Europe – because of global pressures and also specific initiatives such as the Bologna Process and the creation of a European Higher Education Area – it shows how such timescapes differed in important ways, largely by nation. These differences are then explained in terms of: the distinctive traditions of higher education still evident across the continent; the particular mechanisms through which degrees are funded; and the nature of recent national-level policy activity. The analysis thus speaks to debates about Europeanisation, as well as how we theorise the relationship between time and place.

Constructing the Higher Education Student

“…For example, the time required to complete an undergraduate degree was shortened from five to four years in 2007, and then to three years in 2015 -although universities still have the right to offer a four-year degree if they wish. While these changes were controversial at the time of introduction (Phillips, 2008;Elias, 2010), they were commented on by only a very small minority of our interviewees, and appeared to have been largely accepted by the time of our data collection (see Brooks et al (2021a) for further discussion). In general, European policies have been viewed favourably by politicians and policymakers in Spain.…”

“…As in Denmark, there has been considerable opposition to these reforms, with students believing they are being rushed through their studies, and denied the freedom to decide on their own pace of learning. This opposition is often framed in terms of the Humboldtian principles upon which German HE was built and particularly the idea of Lernfreiheit (the freedom to learn) (see Brooks et al (2021a) for further discussion).…”

“…Furthermore, linked closely to the Humboldtian concept of Lernfreiheit (the freedom to learn), there has been a tradition in Germany of students taking a long time over their studies while combining it with other pursuits, including paid work (Ertl, 2013) (see Chapter 1). As a result, HE has traditionally not been conceived of as a short and self-contained period between school and work but, rather, a longer period that is not so tightly bounded (see Brooks et al (2021a) for further discussion). Thus, broadly, we find that the ways in which transition is made sense of in Germany is, as in Denmark, rarely linked to ideas of 'development' (in terms of reaching a particular life stage) and more closely aligned to Gale and Parker's (2014) understanding of transition as becoming, a lifelong process of self-formation.…”

“…And then there's the service providing, so if you see the university or the school as someone providing a service, you don't feel responsibility to change anything, because they've got to do it.' Staff also commented on the reduced time available for students to engage civically and/ or politically -because of the increasing amount of paid work they had to do to be able to fund their HE, and/ or as a result of reforms to incentivise quicker completion of their degree (Brooks et al, 2021a; see also Chapter 1). The following quotations are typical: 'They don't […] have time to be political, they do not have time to watch the news because they are so stressed about everything else.…”

“…Nevertheless, student complaints about feeling constrained in their ability to learn in the manner that they wished, and their attempts to distance themselves from instrumental learning styles they felt were exhibited by some other students, suggest that there are some overlaps between how staff and students conceptualised what constituted good education and an appropriate learner identity. Moreover, while an 'instrumental' approach to learning was decried by staff and students across all six countries, there was some variation between countries in terms of how it was felt learning ought to take place at the HE level, which related to national traditions of HE (see also Brooks et al, 2021a). For instance, in Denmark and Germany, reforms that have restricted students' ability to determine the length of their studies and to prioritise their own time during their degrees -features that have long characterised HE study in these countries -were discussed as impoverishing student learning.…”