The nature and context of education has changed dramatically in recent decades, with increased prioritisation
of standardisation, performance indicators and metrics often at the expense of holistic, affective and wellbeing
education. Students identify experiencing higher levels of stress (Deasy et al., 2016) and potential burnout. Of
interest is that academic stress (often invisible in this debate) is also on the increase as is burnout (O’Shea and
McNamara, 2017). Mercille and Murphy (2015) have identified the pervasive and malign influence of neoliberalism
on higher education (Deasy and Mannix McNamara 2017). Decreasing funding of higher education in
Ireland has meant that universities have had to become more discerning as to where they place emphasis on
student recruitment. This has resulted in a significant emphasis on increasing postgraduate student numbers,
specifically Master’s and doctoral graduates. Postgraduate studies require intensive supervisory relationships.
Increasing postgraduate numbers has increased academic pressures and workload in addition to the
requirement for publications and research outputs. “New managerialist monitoring of performance (evident in
the recent instigation of performance appraisals) places ‘research output’ (colloquially synonymous for paper
publication in high quartile high-impact journals) on the performance agenda” (Deasy and Mannix McNamara
2017:62).
This paper will detail the results of recent research that examined stress amongst higher education students
and staff in the university setting. The research elucidates how student and academic wellbeing intersect in the
ever-increasing performative culture of higher education. It demonstrates the reciprocal dynamic of stress that
is becoming more and more evident among educators and students.