The University as a Stage: Academic Performance and the Transformation of Learning Practices

This article examines how university students construct and enact learning within an academic environment increasingly shaped by evaluation, visibility, and performance. Drawing on a dramaturgical perspective, the study conceptualizes the university as a performative space in which learning is not only acquired but publicly displayed and assessed. Empirically, the analysis is based on longitudinal written reflections collected over ten weeks and seminar discussions treated as naturally occurring focus groups. The findings show that students tend to prioritize performative adequacy over epistemic depth, organizing their academic practices around grades, recognition, and future positioning. This orientation is not experienced as disengagement from learning, but as a rational adaptation to institutional expectations and broader conditions of uncertainty. By highlighting the performative rationality underlying contemporary student behavior, the article contributes to sociological debates on higher education, knowledge, and subjectivity, offering an interpretive account of how learning is redefined under regimes of continuous evaluation.