At the start of a course on Social Science Perspectives on Climate Change, I asked students to complete a short questionnaire.
The aim was simple: to understand their expectations and, in pedagogical terms, begin establishing a kind of didactic contract for the course.
One question was inspired by a debate that has become increasingly visible — especially in the US, but slowly in Europe too — around the crisis of the university, often condensed into slogans such as:
💬 “College is a scam.”
So I asked:
👉 What do you think is the main purpose of university education?
The results were revealing (n=37)
📊 47% answered that university should mostly cultivate critical thinking, reflection, and personal formation, not only prepare students for jobs.
📊 11% went further and embraced a more classical ideal of Bildung: that the university should primarily cultivate intellectual and personal formation, even beyond labour market needs.
📊 36% chose a balanced position: university should serve equally to prepare students for work and for intellectual/personal formation.
📊 Only 6% said that university should mostly prepare students for work, while still allowing room for broader personal development.
📊 And perhaps most strikingly: not a single student (0%) chose the option that the primary purpose of university is simply to prepare students for the job market.
So, 94% of respondents located the purpose of university at least partly beyond narrow labour-market preparation. Of course, this is not a representative sample of all higher education. Still, I think the pattern is meaningful.
What made these results feel even more significant was what happened just this week.
📚 Hartmut Rosa, one of the main contemporary references in Critical Theory, lectured at the University of Copenhagen (ironically, on the atrophy of judgment in modern society) and the auditorium was completely packed. In fact, some people, myself included, had to listen from behind the glass wall outside the room.
Taken together, both moments seem to point in the same direction.
At a time when universities are increasingly asked to justify themselves in terms of skills, employability, return on investment, and market value, these students still seem to expect something more.
🌱 Could it simply be that younger generations seek forms of thought and judgment not entirely subordinated to the logic of the market, efficiency, and performance that university boards still seem to uphold?
