Compassion in higher education: fashion or future for relational pedagogies?

This comment paper offers critical reflections on compassion as a core concern in contemporary higher education, positioned in the context of hybrid and relational pedagogies. The pernicious effects of neoliberal ideology and policy upon academic teaching practices and students' learning experiences have been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper problematises the concept and role of compassion in higher education to highlight the risk of it becoming a 'buzzword' or fashionable 'flavour of the month' solution that fails to adequately address underlying systemic problems. It challenges the discourse of compassion and associated language of suffering when applied to students and reveals the 'underside of compassion' as a mode of power. Conversely, from the perspective of academic staff, this paper draws attention to research undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic which shows that staff suffering needs to be acknowledged, voiced and heard. It advocates against overly simplistic and uncritically positive approaches to addressing the paradoxical nature of compassion in higher education. This paper concludes by arguing that cultivating critically compassionate learning cultures and campuses will: (a) enable relational pedagogies to thrive and (b) support the development of a more diverse, equitable and inclusive future for higher education.