Cristina Sá Carvalho

In January 2024, the cover theme of the Monitor on psychology paper, published by the American Psychological Association, stressed the 12 emerging trends for the year just started. All the issues highlighted are important – such as disinformation, Artificial Intelligence, minority rights, transformations in the world of work (or more specifically, the way in which companies face the workers needs on issues such as psychological safety and stability), the always worrying problem of drug consumption or how can be provided more psychological support in primary and secondary schools.
As often happens with North American editions, it’s wise to take into account that the assessments made and the arguments found regarding possible solutions are very focused on local realities. However, a European reflection can be fruitfully triggered by a certain anticipation coming from across the ocean and, despite the limitations that all organizations carry on, APA is undoubtedly the largest and best-equipped world think tank at the level of psychology.
The topic that attracted our attention was «the struggle for higher education». According to the APA editors, the «dramatic changes in society» are providing fuel for professor’s burnout and the development of intense feelings of insecurity and a high turnover among faculty. From a macro point of view, it doesn’t seem possible to ignore the pressure that comes from the threat’s academic freedom and research in higher education are now suffering, even if in some latitudes more than others. From a more institutional point of view, APA acknowledges that the critic situation higher education is facing is rooted in the economic instability of schools when, precisely, «students need more support than ever». Is this specific argument around students that we would like to focus on, knowing that’s related to the previous one, once education is always a dialogue between professors and students. Anyway, the APA’s starting point seems quite universal to us: higher education is facing generations of students who have experienced years of erratic schooling and the spread of a mental health crisis.
A more fragile achievement of secondary education and a more problematic developmental path can mean for many adolescents a more confused, and less optimistic, perception of their future possibilities, and a lower critical capacity to get involved in the university adventure. If this situation were to endure, would probably contribute to higher education – with the lack of interest and support from a cultural environment that considers less the value of formal education and some economic interests that ignore diplomas and prefers a smaller differentiation of the workforce – to deal sooner than later, with a significant loss of candidates.
On the other hand, students who are starting out in higher academic training surprise teachers with their lack of basic academic skills, such as autonomous management of time and personal work, as well as presenting more fragile foundations at the level of the knowledge necessary for the chosen areas of study. The APA calls it «the academic gap» which appears to arise from a real loss of three years of academic education and instruction, corresponding to the Covid19 pandemic. Still, and this question is extraordinarily important, what changes have occurred in secondary education that are becoming structural and cannot be easily reversed by repeating hitherto known higher education strategies?
The developmental and mental health consequences are not negligible. A study carried out across North America showed that at the end of 2023, 14% of higher education students had suicidal ideations and 40% showed depressive symptoms. It is expected that, among us too, students in vulnerable emotional, social or economic situations present higher risk factors than the identified sample.
The APA reports that higher education schools are investing efforts in changing teaching styles and working to connect students with support services before they are facing an established crisis, developing health promotion campaigns, counseling and new support systems but are limited by a lack of available funds.
It is clear that the issue of financing prevention and intervention actions with students in order to prevent and remedy their weaknesses in knowledge, personal management and ability to deal with – many – hardships of life, is relevant. As in all sectors, it is necessary to identify the most profitable actions and, certainly, learning difficulties or students humor, have not traditionally centralized the conversations of higher education professors nor mobilized immense resources to prevent possible personal or academics struggles, and that also poses a cultural difficulty.
As if that were not enough, an aging teaching staff – this is the Portuguese reality – who have not received any pedagogical training, and learned their teaching skills directly from their own mentors, in very different circumstances, and by trail and error, face the imperative need to abruptly and profoundly transform their modus operandi both in terms of planning, teaching and pedagogical evaluation, by the arrival of ChatGPT in our lives and, therefore, inevitably, in the classrooms. Still, after decades of a necessary massification of education, and a reduction of instruction to evaluable «goods», as we saw it in secondary schools, Artificial Intelligence systems can have an interesting secondary effect, by thus making absolutely necessary the systematic development of critical thinking. But this will probably not be done without deep discerning about the working conditions of higher education professors, namely what should count regarding their assessment – which is the simplest way of telling them what they should choose to do – and offering them back the possibility of enjoying teaching again, focused on the major good of students and society, and in an environment of freedom of thought that is not always imminently geared towards professional skills but a perspective of integral human development of the person and the society. We’ll be back on this again soon.
OpenEdition sugere que esta publicação seja citada da seguinte forma:
cristinasacarvalho (27 de Março de 2024). The University and its future, some first remarks. Desenvolvimento Humano Integral. Recuperado em 22 de Março de 2025 de https://doi.org/10.58079/w49f