I Once Asked a Question in a Lecture Hall. “You Are Intruding into My Safe Space,” She Replied

According to Jonathan Holslag, the growing pressure on universities to attract more students and cater to their preferences puts critical thinking under strain. "Year after year, I am encouraged to make lessons easier, assign less reading, and spoon-feed everything," he says.

This essay was published on 9 November 2024 in De Morgen. You can find the original Dutch version here.

I was already halfway through an essay about the rise of feverish populism in America-about how the erosion of the new middle class has paved the way for growing insecurity, the weakening of civic engagement, susceptibility to extremism, and how all of this-this now nearly unfettered Trumpism-is likely to spill over into Europe. Even on this sleepy continent, it could inspire politicians, agitate people, and fuel nationalism, but a kind of nationalism that would not make Europe great but would instead divide and weaken it.

That's what I was writing about when a message arrived that made me almost as uneasy as what had happened in the United States that night.

The message came from my own university. It was phrased very politely, cautiously even-perhaps because my colleagues are slowly coming to realise that I am allergic to such messages. It tentatively questioned whether it was not too much to expect my students, in addition to attending lectures, to also read books, attend a few talks in the capital, and keep up with the news-and whether all of this was formally outlined in the course file. Student representatives had apparently raised concerns about this.

DIRTY LAUNDRY

It is indeed uncommon for such dirty laundry to soil the opinion pages of a newspaper just a few days later, and I am sure everything was well-intentioned. But in this day and age, during this creeping crisis of our democracy, I see few things more dangerous than what is currently happening in our education system.

And no, I make no claims whatsoever about being the perfect professor. Perhaps I place too much emphasis on mastering difficult content independently, and perhaps I compensate for that by demanding too much in my courses. That is all entirely possible, even likely. But what I have observed in our teaching practices over the past decade deeply concerns me. Colleagues are aware of this. What I am writing here is something I have raised internally year after year. Some agree with my diagnosis, others do not. But that one message on that fateful day, when Western democracy trembled on its foundations, was the final straw for me.

"In this day and age, during this creeping crisis of our democracy, I see few things more dangerous than what is currently happening in our education system."

Staying true to the mission of critical thinking means defending it by all means necessary. Writing an essay is one of the few tools an academic can resort to.

Critical thinking is primarily being suffocated by scale. Ten years ago, I mostly taught groups of forty students. This allowed for dialogue. We simulated negotiations, held debates, and went on excursions. There was time for personal conversations and an individual approach. Today, groups average 150 students. Lectures have become the norm, where the professor's ingenuity and performance take centre stage, rather than the student's learning process and skill development.

We speak of critical thinkers, but there is increasingly less critical thinking. During my teacher training, I was given one key rule: if you really want students to learn, never lecture. Yet, due to scaling up, exams increasingly focus on knowledge reproduction rather than understanding and critical thinking. Standardised questions, which can be graded by an army of assistants, have become the norm-or worse: multiple-choice questions.

I consistently hear that this is all due to the funding model of the Flemish government, which allocates university funding based on the number of graduates. This has put universities in an exhausting race where student numbers continue to grow, but resources do not keep pace. For instance, since 2019, the number of university students has increased by 11%. The number of lecturers has remained the same, while basic funding, adjusted for inflation, has decreased by nearly 10%.

MASS EDUCATION

The funding model partly forces universities into a damaging race to the bottom. Universities compete with each other for student numbers, pit faculties against one another to scale up, and faculties, in turn, pressure degree programmes to grow. The fact that universities continue to allow this, and professors increasingly let themselves be reduced to-pardon the expression-intellectual burger flippers, is perhaps the clearest evidence yet that critical thinking is not in a healthy state.

This maelstrom of mass education has all sorts of perverse effects. Professors are encouraged to secure additional funding to reduce their teaching load, to "buy themselves time." Yet by the time they manage to carve out that time, growing student numbers have already claimed it back.

The sheer scale also puts pressure on assessment. Not only does it become harder to evaluate critical and personal thinking, but maintaining quality standards also suffers. Woe betide the professor who dares to set a challenging exam for such large groups, let alone a difficult oral exam. They will face countless extra resits in August.

Moreover, students-rightly-have the right to receive feedback when they fail. But how can one manage that with, say, 150 students in a resit period? The mass forces every professor who values their mental health to make adjustments.

"Staying true to the mission of critical thinking means defending it by all means."

The same principle applies to master's theses, which should represent the crowning achievement of a degree programme. When I started, I guided about five students through the process, allowing me ample time to support them thoroughly and cater to their personal interests. Today, the standard is twelve students, and at some universities, I hear it is even as high as twenty.

The same university that indulges complaints from student representatives about the supposed burden of reading one extra book simultaneously expects professors to review, correct, remediate, and discuss hundreds of pages of text in multiple versions. The result is predictable: texts grow shorter each year, supervision becomes less personal, and evaluations are less rigorous. The mass lowers the bar. I may not have statistics to prove this, but I have witnessed enough in the academic world over the past ten years to stand my ground.

Moreover, while students are, in my view, receiving less and less personal guidance, they increasingly feel as though they are kings in this mass education model. This combination is utterly detrimental. For a certain group of students, PowerPoint-based lectures combined with multiple-choice exams appear quite appealing. There's no real need to attend class, leaving a vast amount of time for other pursuits. Once accustomed to this, critical thinking, independent reflection, and certainly reading books quickly come to feel like insufferable burdens.

Students Setting the Standard

Students effectively help set the standard, formally through evaluations. I can tell you that year after year, these evaluations encourage me to make lessons easier, assign less reading, and spoon-feed everything. The standard is also shaped by the power of numbers. As a young professor, you need to be exceptionally strong-willed to uphold your principles and ideals in the face of a vocal mass of hundreds of students, especially when nearly all university services and ombudspeople are focused on keeping students satisfied.

And let me tell you, it can be brutal. Defamation campaigns on social media, groups of students trashing your books en masse on review sites...

The Safe Space

Meanwhile, professors are expected to respect the concept of a safe space. At first, I had no idea what it really meant. That was until, in a packed lecture hall, I asked a student a question in a desperate attempt to spark some interaction.

"You are intruding into my safe space," she said. At first, I thought there might have been some unintended physical contact. But no, that wasn't it.

The student was clearly telling me to back off with my question because she found being asked a question in front of the group intimidating. And yes, she was supported by others. I was stunned.

At the start of every lecture, I tell my students that we are there to learn, that it's okay to fail, that we can disagree, but that choosing university means being willing to learn and step into the arena of debate.

If this trend continues-and I do dare to call it a trend-universities risk rendering themselves obsolete in terms of teaching. The professor's role will become so hollowed out that no one with real ambition will want to pursue it anymore.

I realise that this argument might offend some. Once again, I do not claim to be the perfect professor. I make mistakes and sometimes dig my heels in too stubbornly. But with all the monumental challenges piling up, I feel compelled to sound the alarm. Universities are quick to decry populism and authoritarianism, but I fear that with this educational model, they are paving the way for both.*

*This is a machine translation. We apologise for any inaccuracies.

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