Tag: rewarding

  • Finding a Rewarding, Remunerative Job in Creative Fields

    Finding a Rewarding, Remunerative Job in Creative Fields

    Daniel Grant, the go-to authority on the business of being an artist, recently published a fascinating essay, “The Art of Usefulness: Inside the Complicated World of Studio Assistants.” This piece is valuable not only for budding artists but for anyone who is interested in the role of internships and assistantships as stepping-stones into careers as creative professionals.

    Grant’s basic point is that these roles vary wildly in quality, compensation and outcomes. Not all assistantships offer mentorship or artistic growth. Many studio assistants do menial labor—cleaning, organizing, packing—without meaningful creative engagement. Some are subject to workplace abuse. It’s been claimed, for example, that the English artist Damien Hirst outsourced entire works to assistants.

    Grant contrasts today’s assistants with their historical counterparts, the apprentices, who were contractually trained and groomed into full-fledged artists. While echoes of mentorship persist, many contemporary assistants are hired more for manual labor or technical skills, with no promise of instruction or career development.

    According to Grant, some artists like Frank Stella, Susan Schwalb and Mark Tribe rely heavily on assistants, but their relationships tend to be professional rather than personal. Grant’s takeaway: Don’t romanticize assistantships. Yes, some provide opportunity, but others are exploitative and many are menial. While a few assistants benefit from proximity to power, most do invisible labor with little recognition.

    Grant also subtly critiques the blurred ethics of large-scale art production, where big-name artists rely on unseen labor to fabricate works they will claim as their own. This raises deeper questions about authorship, originality and fairness—issues not unique to visual art but present across creative industries. The art world, like many other fields, relies on invisible labor, and those who perform it are only rarely recognized.

    Professional success in creative fields is, in the end, a product of chance and connections. The romantic myth of the gifted assistant rising to stardom survives because it occasionally comes true—but for most, the reality is far more utilitarian.

    What the Heck Is a Creative Professional?

    Many college graduates—especially those with degrees in the humanities, arts, media studies or communications—aspire to enter the amorphous world of creative professionals.

    Unlike students in clearly delineated fields like engineering, nursing or accounting, these graduates face a job market where roles are loosely defined, pathways are nonlinear and success depends as much on networking, hustle and timing as on credentials.

    The category of creative professionals encompasses a vast and varied terrain: freelance writers, graphic designers, editors, content creators, social media managers, filmmakers, animators, musicians, photographers, arts administrators, game designers, copywriters, museum workers, marketing associates and more.

    Some roles are embedded in companies (in advertising, branding, media production), while others are entrepreneurial or gig-based.

    But what makes this group amorphous is not just the range of roles. It’s the fact that many of these jobs don’t have clear entry-level positions and rely heavily on connections and portfolios. Nor is it easy to locate job openings. Not only are these jobs precarious, with low pay, limited benefits and few clear growth trajectories, but they require self-branding, freelancing and juggling multiple part-time gigs.

    The Gigification of Creative Labor

    The romantic image of the creative professional—free-spirited, self-directed, thriving on inspiration—has long concealed the economic and structural realities of pursuing a career in the arts and media. For today’s college graduates who aspire to work in film, publishing, design, music, digital media or other creative sectors, the terrain is far less glamorous and far more uncertain.

    Their challenges are not unique but are emblematic of deeper transformations reshaping the 21st-century labor market. In an era marked by gigification, the erosion of stable entry points and the increasing importance of social capital, aspiring creatives are navigating a world of work defined less by ladders than by lattices, portfolios and side hustles.

    Long before Uber drivers and DoorDash couriers came to symbolize the gig economy, creative professionals had already been living in a world of short-term contracts, project-based work and multiple income streams.

    Freelance writing, illustration, video editing and even arts education often follow a feast-or-famine cycle, with creators constantly juggling gigs to make ends meet.

    Platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, Bandcamp and YouTube have made it easier to distribute and monetize creative work, but they’ve also intensified competition and pushed creators to prioritize content volume and algorithmic appeal over depth or development. These platforms demand constant content creation, personal branding and entrepreneurial hustle.

    The Collapse of Clear Entry Points

    In journalism, the collapse of local newsrooms and the shift to digital-first business models have decimated entry-level reporting jobs. Once-traditional pathways—working a beat, rising to editor—have given way to freelance blogging, newsletter writing or content marketing. Writers for outlets like BuzzFeed, Vice and Gawker faced mass layoffs in recent years despite audience growth, illustrating the volatility of media employment.

    In music, artists once relied on record deals for studio time and distribution. Today, they must often self-produce, self-promote and rely on streaming royalties that pay mere fractions of a cent per play. Even high-profile musicians like Taylor Swift have spoken out against exploitative contract terms and the difficulty of maintaining artistic control.

    In publishing, editorial assistantships once served as springboards into long careers. Now, many of those jobs are underpaid or outsourced. Entry into major publishing houses increasingly depends on unpaid internships, elite connections or the ability to work in expensive cities without support. Aspiring editors and writers often cobble together freelance gigs, adjunct teaching and grant-funded residencies.

    Similarly, graphic designers and illustrators face a flooded marketplace where clients can access low-cost design through Canva templates or $5 commissions on Fiverr. While a few designers rise through agencies or cultivate niche followings on Instagram or Behance, many struggle to find full-time employment with benefits.

    In the art world, as Daniel Grant describes in his article on studio assistants, recent graduates often take jobs hoping for mentorship or exposure. Some are fortunate to turn these opportunities into gallery representation. But many more are relegated to menial labor with little visibility, let alone advancement.

    The Power—and Limits—of Connections and Credentialing

    With few formal entry points, connections play an outsize role in the creative industries. Jobs in film, media and publishing are often filled through personal recommendations, referrals and informal networks.

    This favors those with pre-existing access to elite institutions or cultural capital. Graduates of Ivy League programs or specialized M.F.A. programs (e.g., Iowa Writers’ Workshop, RISD or USC School of Cinematic Arts) often find themselves in better positions to land opportunities than those from less connected backgrounds.

    The disparities are also geographic. Being in New York, Los Angeles or London matters. These hubs concentrate industry gatekeepers, networking events and cultural institutions. Aspiring creatives in smaller markets face many hurdles simply to get noticed.

    The Growing Dysfunction of Academic Credentialing

    In a recent Substack post titled “The Professional-Managerial Class Has No Future,” Peter Wei offers a sobering, sharply argued critique of how America’s professional class has become trapped in a self-consuming cycle of institutional dependency.

    Wei begins with the Varsity Blues scandal—the 2019 revelation that wealthy parents had bribed college officials and fabricated athletic credentials to secure their children’s admission to elite universities. The irony, Wei notes, is that these parents weren’t trying to buy businesses or invest in their children’s talent—they were paying enormous sums just for the opportunity to pay even more in tuition.

    Why? Because in the worldview of the professional-managerial class, education is not just a pathway to opportunity—it is the only viable path. Knowledge, credentials and institutional endorsement matter more than social capital, which is why a degree from USC is seen as preferable to one from Arizona State.

    Wei argues that this dependence on elite institutions for status and opportunity has made the professional class uniquely vulnerable. Unlike traditional elites, who can pass down businesses, land or networks, this class has no durable assets to transfer—only a highly contingent form of symbolic capital that must be re-earned with every generation through a costly and competitive credentialing system.

    Wei likens this class to giant pandas—unable to reproduce without intervention.

    From elite preschools to graduate degrees and unpaid internships, Wei sees a system of “institutional parasitism” that extracts time, money and energy from aspirants, with no guarantee of upward mobility. The result is a bloated, extractive pseudomeritocracy that privileges wealth over talent and inertia over innovation.

    Implications for Creative Professions

    Although Wei focuses primarily on conventional high-status fields—law, medicine, finance—his insights carry powerful implications for the creative economy, where credentialism is more ambiguous in its outcomes but no less pervasive.

    Wei critiques the growing trend of formalizing creative careers through graduate and certificate programs. M.F.A.s in writing or fine arts, film schools, design degrees and other academic programs promise legitimacy and access. But more often, they function as status symbols and revenue streams for universities, not as meaningful gateways into sustainable creative work.

    In practice, these programs frequently delay entry into the field, saddle students with debt and shift talent validation from peers and mentors to institutional branding. As Wei might argue, creative credentials offer prestige but little in the way of guaranteed opportunity.

    Mentorship and Networks Matter More Than the Actual Degree

    Creative careers have long depended more on networks and visibility than on diplomas. The most important variables often include whom you know, who advocates for you and how effectively you can showcase your work. Wei’s insight—that social and relational capital are more durable than formal credentials—is especially relevant here.

    Creative professionals frequently get their start through informal pathways: studios, internships, apprenticeships, artist assistantships or digital communities. What these avenues offer is not accreditation, but proximity to opportunity, mentorship and practice.

    Wei’s argument helps explain why so many talented graduates flounder despite having “done everything right.” They’ve invested in institutional validation in a field where validation rarely comes through formal channels.

    As Daniel Grant has documented, art school graduates can accumulate six-figure debt and still find themselves in low-paid assistantships or unpaid labor, hoping for a breakthrough. Many end up subsidizing the very systems that promised to launch their careers.

    Wei’s Call for Alternative Paths

    Wei’s broader point is that real security and sustainability come not from deeper immersion in fancy-pancy credential mills but from building independent capital—whether financial, creative or communal. For creative professionals, this means:

    • Leveraging digital platforms, such as Substack, TikTok, Patreon and Etsy.
    • Developing entrepreneurial skills.
    • Forming collectives or cooperatives with other aspiring creative professionals.
    • Building long-term relationships with peers, patrons and collaborators.

    These forms of capital—unlike credentials—can be scaled, adapted and passed down. They offer autonomy rather than institutional dependence.

    Wei challenges the foundational logic of credential-based class reproduction. He suggests that lasting success, especially in the creative fields, won’t come through elite validation but through independence, adaptability and networked collaboration.

    Toward New Models of Creative Work

    Wei’s essay is more than a critique—it’s a wake-up call. It suggests that many creative professionals have been sold a bill of goods—a narrow vision of success: climb the institutional ladder, get the right degrees, wait for permission. But this path is extractive and increasingly out of reach.

    Instead, creative workers—especially emerging artists, writers and designers—need to forge alternative models: ones rooted in craft, community, ownership and resilience. That doesn’t mean abandoning education, but it does mean resisting the illusion that credentials alone will ensure a viable creative life.

    In a world where institutions increasingly extract more than they offer, the most powerful move may be to step outside their orbit—and build something of your own.

    What Universities Ought to Do

    University programs for aspiring creative professionals—whether in writing, design, media, fine arts, filmmaking or performance—have a responsibility to ensure that their offerings are both educationally meaningful and practically valuable. Too often, these programs are exploitative or misleading, promising more than they can deliver. Here are several concrete steps institutions can take to fulfill their mission with integrity:

    1. Set clear, honest expectations. Avoid inflated rhetoric. Be transparent about what a creative degree can—and cannot—guarantee. These programs should not be marketed as guaranteed pathways to fame, prestige or financial security. Honesty builds credibility.
    2. Publish real outcomes. Share detailed, accurate data on employment rates, average debt, income trajectories and postgraduation paths. Transparency builds trust—and helps students make informed choices.
    3. Integrate career education into the curriculum. Creative students need more than artistic technique—they need tools to build sustainable careers. Programs should teach freelance business basics (contracts, invoicing, taxes) and grant writing, budgeting and pitching projects. They should also educate their students about copyright and intellectual property essentials and about branding, marketing and building an audience. Portfolio development starting early, not just at the end. The job is not just to teach skills—it’s to prepare students for a meaningful, rewarding career.
    4. Provide real-world experience. Bridge the gap between the classroom and the profession. This means partnering with professionals to create paid internships and mentorship opportunities and hosting public showcases, exhibitions and performances. Offer opportunities for leadership through student-run publications and collaborative studios. Assign project work that mimics client briefs and industry expectations. Follow the example of one of my cousins, who teaches in a leading film program: Have the students create pilots, then show the best to industry professionals.
    5. Foster industry connections while students are still in school. Help students begin building a creative network by creating alumni mentorship programs and hosting career fairs and industry mixers. Collaborate with local arts and media organizations. Also, encourage interdisciplinary collaborations—connecting writers with designers and musicians with filmmakers.
    6. Offer affordable and flexible credentials. Not every aspiring creative can afford a traditional two-year M.F.A. Institutions should offer more accessible alternatives, including stackable certificates, short-term residencies and continuing education for different stages of a creative career.
    7. Support the postgraduation transition. The first year out of school is often the hardest. Universities should offer “alumni launch” fellowships or microgrants and provide continued access to key campus resources—equipment, studios, software and advising—for recent graduates.
    8. Prioritize mentorship and community. Creative growth thrives on connection and feedback. To that end, programs should build intentional mentorship structures with faculty, alumni and visiting professionals. They should also support long-term creative communities—like writing circles, critique groups and production collectives—that outlast graduation.
    9. Redefine success. Success shouldn’t be measured solely by commercial visibility or gallery representation. Programs should honor diverse career paths in teaching, community arts, arts administration, arts and music therapy, and independent creative entrepreneurship. Help students see themselves not just as individual artists seeking recognition, but as contributors to a broader creative ecosystem.

    Universities must resist the temptation to sell prestige and focus instead on empowering students with the skills, networks and resilience to live creative lives—not just earn creative degrees. That means reimagining programs not as talent showcases but as launchpads: places where craft is developed, careers are seeded and communities are built.

    The Rise of Precarity and the Myth of Passion

    Creative work has long been framed as a labor of love. But this framing often masks a more exploitative reality. The expectation that young professionals should work for exposure, accept unpaid internships or endure grueling hours in the name of passion has become normalized.

    Hollywood offers one glaring example. Aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers face a labyrinth of assistant jobs, script reading gigs and “general meetings” with no guaranteed outcomes. The 2023 Writers Guild of America strike underscored how even seasoned professionals struggle to earn a living wage in an industry increasingly dominated by streaming algorithms and franchise formulas.

    In digital content creation, influencers and YouTubers appear to bypass traditional gatekeepers—but the reality is a grind of content calendars, brand deals, metric tracking and parasocial labor. Few creators make a sustainable income, and many burn out trying to keep up with algorithmic expectations.

    Toward a More Sustainable Creative Economy

    Creative professionals have always been dreamers, but dreams alone can’t sustain a livelihood. In an era of precarity and gigification, the creative class is emblematic of broader economic shifts that reward flexibility over stability, connections over merit and visibility over depth.

    But this is not a reason for resignation. It is a call to action: to create new structures that honor the value of creative work, to build ecosystems that support risk-taking and reflection, and to ensure that the future of art, storytelling, design and media is not left to those who can afford to wait for luck.

    To do that, we must see the creative economy not as a lottery, but as a system that can be shaped—and improved—by collective effort, institutional vision and public investment.

    Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and recipient of the AAC&U’s 2025 President’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Education.

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  • The best and most rewarding study time possible

    The best and most rewarding study time possible

    About a decade ago now, there was a problem at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    Across a collection of STEM courses, there was a significant “achievement” (attainment/awarding) gap between marginalised groups (all religious minorities and non-White students) and privileged students (caucasian, non-Hispanic participants who were either Christian or had no religion).

    Psychology prof Markus Brauer had an idea. He’d previously undertaken research on social norms messaging – communicating to people that most of their peers hold certain pro-social attitudes or tend to engage in certain pro-social behaviours.

    He knew that communications shape people’s perceptions of what is common and socially acceptable, which in turn influences their own attitudes and behaviours.

    So he thought he’d try some on new students.

    He started by trying out posters in waiting rooms and teaching spaces, and then tried showing two groups of students a video – one saw an off-the-shelf explanation of bias and micro-aggressions, and another where lots of voxpopped students described the day to day benefits of diversity.

    Long story short? The latter “social norms” video had a strong, significant, positive effect on inclusive climate scores for students from marginalised backgrounds.

    They reported that their peers behaved more inclusively and treated them with more respect, and the effect was stronger for marginalised students than for privileged students.

    Then he tried it again. One group got to see the social norms video in their first scheduled class, and those students also got an email from the university’s Deputy Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion in week 7 of the semester, which reported positive findings from the university’s most recent climate survey and encouraged students to continue working toward an inclusive social climate.

    The other group had a short “pro-diversity” statement added to the syllabus that was distributed in paper format during the first class. That pro-diversity statement briefly mentioned the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusive excellence. Students in this group did not receive an email.

    As well as a whole bunch of perception effects, by the end of the semester the marginalised students in the latter group had significantly lower grades than privileged students. But in the norms video group, the achievement gap was completely eliminated – through better social cohesion.

    What goes on tour

    I was thinking about that little tale on both days of our brief study tour to Stockholm last month, where 20 or so UK student leaders (and the staff that support them) criss-crossed the city to meet with multiple student groups and associations to discuss their work.

    Just below the surface, on the trips there’s an endless search for the secret sauce. What makes this work? Why is this successful?

    Across our encounters in Stockholm, one of the big themes was “culture”. Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes’ Cultural Web isn’t a bad place to start.

    • Stories and symbols were everywhere in Stockholm – Uppsala and Lund’s student nations tell a story of deep-rooted student self-governance, while patches on student boilersuits mark both affiliation and achievement.
    • Rituals and routines were on offer too. Valborg (Walpurgis Eve) celebrations in Sweden bring students together in citywide festivities, and the routine of structured student influence meetings – where student representatives actively participate in decision-making – ensures that engagement isn’t just performative but institutionalised.
    • Organisational structures help too. A student ombuds system that provides legal advice and advocacy, sends the signal that rights – mine and yours – are as important as responsibilities. Students’ role in housing cooperatives demonstrate how deeply embedded student influence is too – giving students a tangible stake in their own living conditions. And plenty of structures that include circa 2k students feels “just right” in terms of self-governing student communities.
    • Control systems and power structures define the boundaries of student influence and how authority is distributed. Visibly giving student groups the job of welcome and induction – not “res life” professionals, “student engagement” teams or “events managers” – seems to matter. Causing student groups to lead on careers work – with professional staff behind the scenes, rather than front and centre – matters too.

    In conversation, culture came up in multiple ways. One of the things that lots of the groups and their offshoots mentioned was that they played a role in introducing students to Swedish student culture – for international students, home students who were first in family, or just new students in general who needed to know how things worked.

    It came up in both an academic context and a social context. In the former, the focus was on independent study and the relative lack of contact hours in the Swedish system – in the latter, through traditions like “spex” (comedic part-improv theatrical performances created and performed by students), students wearing boiler suits with patches, or “Gasques”, where where students dress up, sing traditional songs, and enjoy multiple courses of food alongside speeches and entertainment.

    But it also came up as a kind of excuse. As well as cracking out the XE app to work out how much better off students in Sweden tend to be, when we got vague answers to our questions interrogating the high, almost jaw-dropping levels of engagement in extracurricular responsibilities, both them and us were often putting it down to “the culture”.

    “It’s fun”, “it’s what we do here”, “we want to help people” were much more likely to be the answers on offer than the things our end expected – CV boosting, academic credit or remuneration.

    “Excuse” is a bit unfair – partly because one of the things that’s happened off the back of previous study tours is that delegates have brought home project ideas or new structures and plonked them into their university, the resultant failures often put down to a difference in culture.

    Maybe that’s reasonable, maybe not. But we can change culture, surely?

    Depth and breadth

    Whatever’s going on, the depth and breadth of student engagement in activity outside of the formal scope of their course in Sweden is breathtaking.

    At Stockholm’s School of Economics, the student association’s VP for Education told us that of the circa 1800 students enrolled, about 96 per cent are SU members – and 700 of them are “active”. I think I thought he meant “pitching up to stuff semi-regularly”, but on the next slide he meant ”have a position of responsibility”.

    At the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the volunteers we met from Datasektion – the “chapter” for students studying data science courses – had similar stats, nestled in a much bigger university. We met them in their “chapter room” – something that felt like it was theirs rather than a page from a furniture catalogue. As they presented their slides, I started surfing around their website to count the roles. I soon gave up. There’s even a whole committee for keeping the chapter room clean – it’s their home, after all.

    Chatting to the tiny crew of staff at Stockholm University’s SU was a humbling experience. Every time we thought we’d got a grip on their structures, another set unfurled – councils, forums, sports groups, societies, project groups and hundreds of university-level reps shouldn’t be sustainable in a university of 30,000 students – but it is.

    Even at Södertörn University just south of the city – a former Högskola (university college) that’s as close as Sweden gets to a post-92, the numbers are wild. There’s reps for departments, reps for subjects, reps for university boards and working groups, reps that run the careers fair, and reps for the SU’s work environment, archives, finance and administration, graphic design, sustainability, communication, project management and student influence and impact.

    There’s even 30 odd students that run the pub – without a “grown up” in sight.

    It was probably the Doctoral chapter back at KTH that really did it for me. I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that extracurricular activity and student representation for PhD students in the UK is fairly thin on the ground – in Sweden, not only is there a vision for PGR student life beyond the research and the survival, there are formal time compensation arrangements that support it.

    Maybe that’s why there’s branches, projects, EDI initiatives, careers support, international student events, ombudspeople, awards nights, trips, handbooks, student support and highly sophisticated research and lobbying. Actually, maybe that’s why Swedish PhD students are salaried at a level approaching those that supervise them – while our “New Deal” says nothing on student life or representation, and frames stipends equivalent to the minimum wage as an achievement.

    There’s many a student leader that’s returned to the UK and decided that they need an elected officer for every faculty, or to create a PGR “officer” or whatever, only to find that the culture in said university or faculty gives that student nothing to work with and little to organise.

    One of our new Swedish friends described that as “painting a branch a different colour – the tree will still be brown when the tree grows and the branch falls off”, as she impressively explained the way that students were recruited first to help, then later to take charge, building their confidence and skills along the way.

    Causes and effects

    Back in the UK, the sector often talks of how students have changed – as if their desires, preferences, activities or attitudes are outside of the gift of educational institutions – something to be marketed to rather than inculcated with.

    But every student I’ve ever met wants to fit in – to know the rules of the games, to know how things work around here, to know how to fit in. Maybe how they’re inducted and supported – and who does that induction and support – matters.

    Maybe it’s about age – students enrol into higher education later in Sweden. Maybe it’s about pace – in the standard three years, only about 40 per cent of bachelor’s students complete – add on three years, and “drop out” is as low as in the UK.

    Maybe it’s about a wider culture of associative activity – the UK always has been useless at sustaining mutuals, and our participation rates in them are near the bottom of the European tables.

    Maybe it’s the legislation – law that has given students the formal right to influence their own education and a panoply of associated rights without the tiresome discourse of consumerism or “what do they know” since the 1970s.

    Maybe it’s about trust. You soon spot when you visit a country how much its people are trusted when you jump on a train – “it must be because it’s so cheap” is what we tend to think, but maybe that lack of barriers and inspectors is about something else.

    Less than 4 in 10 staff in Swedish Universities are non-academic, far less than in the UK. Maybe we do so much for students in the UK because they need the help. Maybe we’ve convinced ourselves – both in universities and SUs – that they can’t or won’t do it on their own – or that if they did, they’d mess it up, or at least mess the metrics or the marketing up.

    In that endless search for the secret sauce, the research doesn’t help. In theses like this, the most common reasons for student volunteering in Sweden are improving things/helping people, meeting new people/making friends, developing skills, and gaining work experience/developing their CV. Like they are everywhere.

    International students, particularly those studying away from their home country, are more likely to volunteer as a way to make new social connections. Younger students tend to volunteer more frequently than older ones. And universities could encourage volunteering by increasing awareness, linking it to academic subjects, and offering rewards or networking opportunities​. We knew that already.

    But actually, maybe there’s something we didn’t know:

    Swedish students tend to volunteer because it is seen as normal rather than something extraordinary.

    And that takes us back to Wisconsin.

    Normal for Norfolk

    In this terrific podcast, Markus Brauer urges anyone in a university trying to “change the culture” to focus on the evidence. He says that traditional student culture change initiatives lack rigorous evaluation, rely on flawed assumptions, provoke resistance, and raise awareness without changing behaviour.

    He critiques approaches that focus on individual attitudes rather than systemic barriers, stressing that context and social norms – not just personal beliefs – shape behaviour. Negative, deficit-based framing alienates. And it’s positive, evidence-based, and systematic strategies – structural reforms, visible institutional commitments and peer modelling that really drive the change.

    Maybe that’s why each and every student leader we met had an engagement origin story that was about belonging.

    When I asked the International Officer at the Stockholm Student Law Association what would happen if a new student didn’t know how to approach an assignment, he was unequivocal – one of the “Fadder” students running the group social mentoring scheme would do the hard yards on the hidden curriculum.

    When I asked the Doctoral President at KTH how she first got involved, it was because someone had asked her to help out. The Education VP at the School of Economics? He went to an event, and figured it would be fun to help run it next time because he’d get to hang out with those that had run it for him. Now he runs a student-led study skills programme and gets alumni involved in helping students to succeed. Maybe it’s that. School plays sell out.

    Belonging has become quite important in HE in recent years. The human need to feel connected, valued, and part of something greater than ourselves has correlations with all sorts of things that are good. Belonging shapes students’ identities, impacts their well-being, enables them to take risks and overcome challenges with resilience.

    But since we’ve been putting out our research, something bad has been happening. Back in the UK, I keep coming across posters and social media graphics that say to students “you belong here”

    And that’s a problem, because something else we know is that when a student doesn’t feel like that and when there’s no scaffolding or investment to stimulate it, it can make students feel worse. Because the other thing we’ve noticed about how others in Europe do it is that it’s about doing things.

    Doing belonging

    The first aspect of that is that when students work together on something it allows us to value and hope for the success of others beyond their individual concerns. They want the project to succeed. We want the event to go well. They smile for the photos in a group.

    The second is that when they work in a group and they connect and contribute they’re suddenly not in competition, and so less likely to lose. When they’re proofing someone’s essay or planning a route for a treasure hunt, they’re not performing for their success – they’re performing for others.

    But the third is that they start to see themselves differently. Suddenly they’re not characterised by their characteristics, judged by their accent or ranked by their background. They start to transcend the labels and become the artist, the coach, the consultant or the cook.

    The folklore benefits of HE participation are well understood and hugely valuable to society. They’re about health, wellbeing, confidence, community mindedness and a respect for equality and diversity.

    In every country in the process of massifying, the debate about whether they’re imbued via the signalling of those that go (rather than those that don’t), or whether they’re imbued via the graduate attributes framework variously crowbarred into modules, or imbued simply via friendship or via the social mixing that seems so scarce in modern HE rages on.

    My guess is that it’s partly about having the time to do things – we make student life more and more efficient at our peril. It’s partly about giving things back to students that we’ve pretty much professionalised the belonging out of. It’s partly about scaffolding – finding structures that counterintuitively run against the centralisation rampant in the management of institutions and causing students to organise their communities in groups of the right size.

    Maybe it’s all of that, or some of it. Maybe some good social norming videos would help.

    But my best guess is not that higher education should show new students a manipulative video tricking them into the social proof that helping others is fun. It’s that seeing other students do things for them – and then asking them to get involved themselves – is both the only way to build belonging and community, and the only way to ensure that the benefits of participation extend beyond the transactional.

    When students witness peers actively shaping their environment, supporting each other, and making tangible contributions to their communities, they don’t just internalise the value of participation – they embody it. Creating the conditions where reciprocity feels natural, expected and rewarding is about making it natural, expected, and rewarding.

    The more HE massifies, the more the questions will come over the individual benefits to salary, the more the pressure will come on outcomes, and the more that some will see skills as something that’s cheaper to do outside of the sector than in it.

    If mass HE is to survive, its signature contribution in an ever-more divided world ought to be belonging, community and social cohesion. However hard it looks, that will mean weaning off engineering individual engagement from the top down – and starting to enable community engagement from the ground up.

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