Following rhythms and changing pace: Students’ strategies in relation to time in higher education

Studies of time and higher education emphasize how macro-level changes influence everyday university practices and how time is experienced and perceived in various ways. This paper adds to these studies by looking at time as infrastructure. We explore how students relate to time and unpack the challenges caused by the temporal structure of higher education. The analysis presents material from ethnographic fieldwork carried out with students following three Bachelor’s programmes. Treating time as infrastructure directs attention to the ways in which temporal structures serve to both enable and constrain practices. We found that the students related to several temporal horizons and that these required different paces, so that the horizons sometimes clashed. However, students also adopted strategies disrupting the pace and direction of the scheduled time, using cracks and openings in the temporal infrastructure to create time for immersion and reflection.