{"id":47303,"date":"2019-03-27T03:25:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T10:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=47303"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:25:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T10:25:54","slug":"universities-increasingly-stressful-environments-taking-psychological-toll-heres-what-needs-to-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/universities-increasingly-stressful-environments-taking-psychological-toll-heres-what-needs-to-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Universities: increasingly stressful environments taking psychological toll \u2013 here\u2019s what needs to change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nEvery year, millions of international students\u00a0travel to different countries to study at university<\/a>. This, together with a\u00a0lack of public funding<\/a>\u00a0for universities, has created an increasingly competitive market in which universities work directly against each other to chase students and the money they bring.<\/p>\n

This shift was heralded by the introduction of a whole host of performance indicators across the global higher education sector \u2013 which has become increasingly \u201cgamified\u201d with\u00a0points and rankings<\/a>, and\u00a0winners and losers<\/a>. And just as universities play against each other for the \u201ctop spots\u201d on league tables, students are also taught to compete to be the most \u201cemployable\u201d.<\/p>\n

For universities the stakes in the game of the higher education market are high. But for students and academics, the stakes of a life transformed into a competitive game can be highly problematic.<\/p>\n

More students are dropping out of university\u00a0because of mental health problems<\/a>. And the mental health of academics is also suffering more than ever before. One recent survey found that 43% of academic staff exhibited symptoms of\u00a0at least one mild mental disorder<\/a>, with increased workloads, and pressures surrounding the job primarily to blame.<\/p>\n

Making knowledge production into a game also\u00a0puts academics in competition with each other<\/a>, as research is being measured mainly by who publishes first and in the \u201cbest\u201d journals \u2013 which actually slows the progress and\u00a0sharing of knowledge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A game to be won<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Framing education (and society) as a\u00a0zero-sum game<\/a>\u00a0can be directly tracked back to the 19th-century pseudoscience of \u201cSocial Darwinism\u201d and the\u00a0eugenics movement<\/a>. This reflected a view of life as a \u201cgladiatorial struggle\u201d, which has been dominant ever since \u2013\u00a0even when disproved by science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So despite all the evidence which shows the importance of\u00a0working together<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0cooperation<\/a>, many people still believe that competition is the most efficient way to organise society.<\/p>\n

This has led to the idea that education has to be competitive and only the best will win. And in terms of higher education, the myth of competition is perpetuated by a vision of education not as an element of the common good, but as individual, competitive advantage \u2013 a ticket to the top.<\/p>\n

The consequences of gaming<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Student attainment, as measured by student \u201coutcomes\u201d and graduate employment\u00a0after university<\/a>, is now fundamental to university rankings, which in turn influences student recruitment.<\/p>\n

To avoid being the \u201closers\u201d in these games, both students and lecturers are put under an extreme amount of pressure to relentlessly focus on outcomes instead of processes. This in turn impacts on another key factor, student satisfaction, as measured by linear scores in the\u00a0National Student Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Research has shown that the need to top the scoreboard pushes academics into providing entertainment and services to the \u201cstudents as customers<\/a>\u201d instead of challenging them to think critically.<\/p>\n

Think about the players<\/strong><\/h4>\n

My\u00a0research in the field of global higher education<\/a>\u00a0has shown me how entrenched this global \u201cgame\u201d has become. But\u00a0my research on playful learning<\/a>\u00a0has also shown me a possible way out.<\/p>\n

Play scholar Bernard DeKoven<\/a>\u00a0highlighted two different ways of forming a\u00a0community around any game<\/a>: \u201cgame community\u201d and \u201cplay community\u201d. The game community is all about winning: the game comes first, it is unchangeable, and decides who is a worthy player and who is cast out. This is what we are seeing now, both in education and in society as a whole. The play community is the opposite. It\u2019s about the involvement of the players. It\u2019s the players who decide if a game is worth playing as it is, or if it would be more inclusive to change it.<\/p>\n

Over the next few months I will run a series of workshops, with students, staff and partners all around the world, that will look into \u201cunpacking\u201d the\u00a0games we play<\/a>. The hope is that these sessions should help to provide solutions and raise some important questions for the sector, directly from the \u201cplayers\u201d.<\/p>\n

And given that a recent poll of almost 38,000 UK students suggested that rates of\u00a0psychological distress<\/a>\u00a0and illness are on the rise in universities, it is clear the sector desperately needs to reclaim its play community \u2013 and create an alternative, cooperative and inclusive \u201cplayground\u201d sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong>Luca Morini is a Research Associate – Education and Media at the Coventry University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, millions of international students\u00a0travel to different countries to study at university. This, together with a\u00a0lack of public funding\u00a0for universities, has created an increasingly competitive market in which universities work directly against each other to chase students and the money they bring. This shift was heralded by the introduction of a whole host of […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":47304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645,29],"tags":[295182],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-47303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-higher-education","tag-environments"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUniversities: increasingly stressful environments taking psychological toll \u2013 here\u2019s what needs to change - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/universities-increasingly-stressful-environments-taking-psychological-toll-heres-what-needs-to-change\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Universities: increasingly stressful environments taking psychological toll \u2013 here\u2019s what needs to change - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every year, millions of international students\u00a0travel to different countries to study at university. This, together with a\u00a0lack of public funding\u00a0for universities, has created an increasingly competitive market in which universities work directly against each other to chase students and the money they bring. 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