The domestic labour of academic governance and the loss of academic voice

ABSTRACT

While academic governance does not produce teaching and research, it provides the conditions that enable them to take place. The principal academic governance body within universities, the academic board (also known as the academic senate or faculty senate), therefore plays a key role in enabling universities to conduct their core business. However, at the same time as doing things that are necessary, the role of academic boards has come to be seen as unimportant. This development is considered in light of empirical data from universities in the US, UK and Australia. The paper argues that university governance represents gendered relations and that the role of academic boards is now largely procedural – the equivalent of housework – invisible unless not done well. Moreover, ‘done well’ is defined not by academic boards themselves but by university executives, whose masculine, managerial roles both replicate and control traditional academic board functions.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• universities
• university governance
• gender
• power relations

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges The Warrnambool Collective group of researchers for their ongoing encouragement and support. The author thanks 3 Australian and 2 US universities that generously participated in this research and to all those who were interviewed; and also thanks the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University for the academic study program funding that enabled the US fieldwork to take place, to Professor Jill Blackmore for comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript, and to three anonymous referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Julie Rowlands is Senior Lecturer in Education Leadership at Deakin University. Her research takes a critical sociology of education approach to the examination of higher education systems, governance, leadership, academic work and organisational change.

ORCID

Julie Rowlands http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1664-4209