The discursive construction of short contract counselling in an Irish third level college This study uses a Foucauldian discourse analysis methodology to explore the discursive construction of student counselling in general, and short contract counselling in particular, in an Irish third level college. Short contract counselling is defined as a small standard number, usually no more than six or eight, sessions of counselling which is offered at the outset to most student counselling clients. This is a widely accepted but little researched model of delivery in student counselling. This study seeks to understand the discourses involved when student counselling and short contract counselling is spoken about. It explores the operation of disciplinary power and how the effects of the short contract model operate in practice. Thirteen students who had been offered more than the standard number of six sessions were interviewed. This group, who do not fit the ‘norm’, were selected based on the Foucauldian notion that it is at the margins of a phenomena that the elements which contribute to its social construction become more visible. A focus group was also held with student counsellors. Participants drew on a number of discourses which included stigma, risk, recovery, consumer rights, professional knowledge, managerialism, productivity and surveillance. Different positions were adopted in response to these discourses. For clients there was oscillation between the position of being dependent and stigmatised and inhabiting the discourse of a rights based entitled consumer. For the counsellors the positions adopted moved between the role of the expert to one of being influenced by a protocol driven managerial discourse of accountability. The discourse of productivity with its emphasis on promoting a rapid return to academic functioning suggests that student counselling functions in a Foucauldian sense, as a disciplinary practice. These developments suggest the increasing penetration of a neoliberal agenda into the sphere of student counselling.