The psychological turn in higher education and the new taxonomy of attitudes and emotions: Denmark as a case study

Abstract

This article explores the increased concern with students’ well-being in higher education as a mode of governance that goes hand in hand with new mechanisms of exclusion. Focussing on a new student survey in Denmark that measures students’ well-being, we show how the well-being agenda is entangled with a new ‘taxonomy of attitudes and emotions’ that align with neoliberal ideals about the self-efficient and self-governing individual. Implied is a notion of learning as a smooth and effortless process, which may lead to individualization of structural challenges. With particular although not exclusive reference to the Danish case, we suggest that this new entanglement between well-being and learning represents a narrowing view on the role and purpose of higher education, which devalues the educational value of doubt, bewilderment and moments of uncertainty. Paradoxically, the well-being agenda may therefore lead to the pathologization of widespread student experiences.