Re-enchanting undergraduate education : on the project of metamorphosis in English higher education

Dominant contemporary discourse in English higher education is shaped by a disenchanted narrowly instrumentalist and economistic conception of the purposes of undergraduate studies. Though critics object to this narrowness, a lighter instrumentalism still tends to prevail within their own critiques. This chapter argues that we should embrace a re-enchanted and, indeed, Romantic sense of the purposes of higher education. To this end, it aims to explore what might be a directly experiential benefit of an undergraduate education which, though strengthened by the experience of learning, is not reducible to it. It suggests that one of these experiential benefits is the symbolic cordoning off of a space and time where the project of metamorphosis (i.e. a deep personal change) is fostered. Recognising that trends in contemporary English higher education weaken this symbolic cordoning off, this chapter calls for university educators to dedicate themselves to fostering nurturing classrooms where students can safely bring all of themselves.