Why universities should seek happiness and contentment / Paul Gibbs.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed June 26, 2017).

Cover; Half Title; Series; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; Part One What Are We Talking About?; 1 Happiness and Education: Recognizing Their Importance; One among a few or the only aim of education?; In pursuit of a happy edifying experience; What price happiness; Any evidence?; The marketization and marketingization of higher education; The market is a means not an end; Settled, but not passive; Striving the impossible task; Thrown into consumerism and blocked from critical appraisal?; Keeping the customer satisfied.

2 Finding a Pursuit: Is Higher Education for Students or Is It Its Students?1497243559018_22; What is it all for?; Evolution to revolution, Newman and Humboldt to Johnson1; The educated person -. ecco economius or ecco faber?; In conversation; What should graduates be able to do?; Transdisciplinary goals for education; Forging an ontological pedagogy; A resting thought; 3 A Short Epochal Contextualization of Happiness as Self-Fulfilment; 1497243559018_32; Aristotle, Augustine and Seneca; Boethius and Aquinas -. Summun bonum; Locke, Hobbes and Hume -. the British enlightenment; Locke; Hobbes.

HumeThose Europeans -. Rousseau and Kant; Rousseau; Kant; A very British and Utilitarian response; 4 Contemporary Literature on Happiness; 1497243559018_44; An explosion in world writing if not happiness; Happiness and well-.being; Codification and scientism -. the psychology of happiness; The epoch of scientism; Haybron and a preliminary understanding of deep happiness -. contentment; Emotions and dispositions; 5 The Language of Happiness and UK Higher Education; 1497243559018_52; Words do mean something, but we can't be bothered; Category mismatch?; Considering contentment.

Language of UK higher-.education policyMethod -. a qualitative content analysis; The Robbins Report; The Dearing Report; The 2016 White Paper -. Success as a knowledge economy; Analysis; Happiness and contentment; Flourishing; Market; Efficiency; Part Two Voices of Happiness, Satisfaction or Contentment; 6 What Has Been Written on Happiness and Higher Education?; It is not all fun -- ever!; The literature; Conflation breeds confusion; It is the market, stupid; It is more than hedonism; 7 Happiness and the Student Experience; Episodes and duration; Something empirical.

School leavers to go to university and be happyBackground; Future aspirations; How respondents define success; Content analysis of an open-.ended question -- happiness is what counts; Comparisons with job expectations; Discussion; Happiness at the centre of a quality student experience; Background; The student voices; So what?; Part Three Happiness and the Disposition of Contentment; 8 Contentment Explored; Passivity aspiration or control -- female or superfemale?; Emotions are not dispositions, but they might lead to them; The rational; Not so positive, positive psychology.

"The totalising effect of consumerism, well-being and satisfaction is a discourse which may negate the value of struggle and mastery of complex subjects and a realization of personal potentiality. Why Universities Should Seek Happiness and Contentment considers the consequences of a hedonistic and well-being centred model of student education as one of the goals of higher education and proposes an alternative goal for higher education. In a globalised consumer society where the anxiety for an identity leads to the fear of not reaching the standard, Paul Gibbs shows how anxiety can be harnessed to secure contentment with one's own future without the fear of consumer-induced emptiness. He conceptualises higher education in a counter-valued way to the current dominant discourse of higher education institutions and educational policy while placing students at the centre of their own educational activity. In doing so, Gibbs proposes contentment as a guiding principle of higher education."--Bloomsbury Publishing

Added to collection customer.56279.3