Higher Education, Markets, and Emotional Values

Abstract

Reflecting on the generational changes in student movements and the echoes we find in student resistance in the UK in 2011 to the privatization of higher education, this paper argues for a wider understanding of the sources of stress, anxiety and uncertainty of young people. Engaging with the individualization of experience that is encouraged through a neoliberal culture, the effects of changes over time in universities, the increasing use of internships, and the differential effects across class, “race” and ethnicities, the paper goes on to argue that those engaged in the helping professions need to engage psychotherapy and politics in new terms. Thinking beyond the familial frameworks of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, the paper shows that the marketization of values encourages young people into an instrumental relationship with self and a fear of being “a loser” in ways that call for different terms of engagement with emotional lives. There are tensions between an instrumental relationship to therapy of younger generations and humanistic values that potentially challenge the market values and commodification of life fostered within a taken-for-granted neoliberal culture. The paper seeks to learn from the fundamental questioning of the nature of education, values and meaning of life that has been triggered in the UK with lessons that are globally relevant.