Over the past two decades, Student Life has emerged at the University of Toronto and elsewhere as a domain where various aspects of student life become subject to expert management with the aim of facilitating learning, enhancing well-being, minimizing stress, and promoting a healthy and productive university experience. Yet for most students at U of T, Student Life (like most parts of the institution) is a black box: they have no idea what goes on there. 

Students in the 2024 Ethnographic Practicum set out to address a deceptively simple question:  what does student life do? The website https://studentlife.utoronto.ca/  provides a list of programs but behind each of these, there is a story.  How did this program come to be? What are the problems to which this program is offered as a solution? How do student life managers and staff go about their everyday work? How do they explain, promote, evaluate, and defend their work to different actors (students, faculty, administrators, senior managers, auditors, rankings agencies, the media, parents, and other universities?).

Students from Prof. Tania Li’s fall 2024 course entitled ‘Ethnographic Practicum: Ethnography of the University’ compiled blog posts and documents from their experience conducting ethnographies of Student Life at the University of Toronto.