Higher Education has been described as “a key contributor to the development of democracy, human rights protection and sustainable growth” (Bologna Process, 2012). However, the importance of higher education, is increasingly justified in terms of economic gain suggesting a notion of the university´s role as a strategic rather than a democratic one (White, 2017). This marks, as claimed by critics, a shift from public good to private good (Englund, & Bergh, 2020) as well as increased government directions and monitoring of Higher Education operations (Hazelkorn and Gibson, 2018). In Iceland, the case in point in our paper, similar concerns have been expressed (Jónsson, 2011, Skúlason, 2015). Jónsson (2011) has pointed out that one of the challenges that the university is faced with due to various changes in society, is that the laws of the market seem to have a kind of "sneaked" into the very core of it (p. 160). Skúlason (2015) has also drawn attention to this very development, arguing that the "powerful trend" to look upon universities as business enterprises that should be managed in the same way as other profit-driven organizations, raises concerns about "what it might suggest about their nature and function" (p. 18).

In recent decades, the role of universities as responsible actors in facing contemporary challenges has been increasingly highlighted (Biesta 2009; Nussbaum 2002). In that very context, democracy, and democratic education has commonly been put at the forefront of the discussion (Sugrue & Solbrekke, 2020), part of which has been to emphasize academics´ role as key players in providing such education (Skúlason, 2015). Thus, the way of responding to those challenges has been linked to civic participation and solidarity which has been considered to call for institutional practices where students are provided with opportunities to develop competences which prepare them for responsible citizenship.

Democratic education has been defined in multiple ways based on different ideological, epistemological, and relational notions of the links between education and politics (Sant, 2019). Giroux (2016), for example, claims that such education must mobilize students to be critically engaged agents, attentive to important social issues and alert to the responsibility of deepening and expanding the meaning and practices of a vibrant democracy. While definitions may vary, the democratic role of university education is specifically addressed in legislation frameworks for Icelandic universities as well as within European and international policy discourses (Bologna Process, 2018) and strongly emphasized by the Council of Europe.  In 2018, the Council of Europe published the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) to strengthen the capacity of education institutions to sustain democracy in the wider society. The fourth volume of the RFCDC will focus on higher education and the competences students need to become engaged citizens (Council of Europe website. (2018).

In Iceland, the following statement was added to article 2. of the Higher Education Act 2006 No 63 in 2012: Higher education institutions shall prepare students for responsible participation in a democratic society. A recent discourse analysis of policy documents of higher education institutions in Iceland, however, revealed that there was no mention of democratic participation, or indication on what that participation might include (Bjarnadóttir, Ólafsdóttir & Geirsdóttir, 2019). In the light of this discrepancy, we decided to explore how academics perceive their role of preparing university students for responsible participation in a democracy, and the ways in which those perceptions translate into their teaching, by their own reports. The study is part of a larger research project on the democratic role of universities, funded by the The Icelandic Research Fund.

The paper presents an analysis of semi structured interviews with 26 academics, 14 females and 12 males, from three universities in Iceland. The selected universities, The University of Iceland, Reykjavík University, and the University of Akureyri are the three largest universities in Iceland. Although having different structure within schools, and departments, all three offer programmes in a) social sciences, and b) natural sciences, engineering, and technology. Therefore, the participants were selected from those two disciplinary fields. The interviews were conducted in December, January, and February during the school year 2019-2020. They lasted from one to nearly two hours each. In the interviews, the participants reflected on the democratic role of universities in society, the meaning of responsible participation in a democratic society (the addition to article 2), and how the university, and especially their respective disciplines prepared students for responsible participation in society. Moreover, the academics were asked if, and then how these ideas were reflected in the curriculum and their teaching practices. The authors of this paper conducted the interviews, either individually or collectively, adhering to an interview guide jointly discussed and developed. Most of the questions were open and threads were followed by probing questions (Brinkmann and Kvale, 2015). The study followed the ethical guidelines set by the University of Iceland Research Ethics Committee (2014). The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The analysis followed Braun and Clarke’s (2013) phases of thematic analysis, using what Braun and Clarke (2013, p. 178) call “top-down” approach. Thus, the analysis was interpretative, aiming to explore assumptions and meanings by identifying patterns in the participants' words. Through the analysis, the focus was on understanding the general patterns and themes rather than on presenting opposing views or contrasts in the interviewees’ perceptions.

Preliminary findings indicate that while academics stressed the important role of the university in modern society, their ideas of how to prepare students for responsible participation seemed vague and rather unclear. The democratic role of the university and its disciplines were reported as being rarely a topic of formal discussion within faculties although internal and external events sometimes did raise the need for such a dialogue. The addition in article 2 was unknown to the interviewees, and democracy as a concept was not seen as a part of common institutional discourse but its meaning was familiar to them, and seen as a part of normal, every-day educational practices. The findings also demonstrated that many of the participants found it difficult to elaborate on the connection between the democratic role of the university and the educational practices carried out within their courses. This might be explained by their unfamiliarity with the topic, i.e. that of discussing pedagogy and teaching practices in general. Educating the professionals was commonly claimed as being an important contribution of higher education to the society. Various other competences were however, of those, critical thinking was stressed by interviewees. Analytical skills, competences in working with others, data literacy, communication skills were also frequently mentioned as a part of democratic preparation, as well as values and attributes such as confidence, respect for the truth, reflexivity, open-mindedness, and being courageous and rational. Various teaching methods such as problem-based teaching were seen as feasible when preparing students for active participation in democratic society. While equity in teacher-student relations were stressed as a part of democratic processes, students input and agency regarding teaching and curriculum decisions were rare. This was explained by student characteristics, students´ lack of necessary knowledge, students´ lack of interest and time, and their unavailability due to distance teaching.

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