Accountability, transparency, redundancy: academic identities in an era of ‘excellence’

Abstract

Higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK and elsewhere are having a hard time, pushed into the marketplace with the turn to ‘academic capitalism’ and now suffering the effects of the economic downturn. Increasingly, the discourse of ‘excellence’ is being invoked as HEIs are held to account and public funding for research is predicated on the basis of ‘impact’. What effect is this having on the long‐established ideals appealed to in the idea of a university (if such an idea can be said to exist)? This paper adopts an autoethnographic approach in order to examine the ways in which dominant discourses are operationalised in the university through everyday communications and how, in turn, this impacts on the development of academic identities. The aim of this paper then is to examine the often uncomfortable point of insertion between the personal and the institutional in and through which subjectivities and identities are constituted as a means to understand the state we’re in.

Notes

1. Over £1 billion was stripped from the UK higher education budget in the year 2009–2010 (THE Supplement, 2010d, p. 26), though the Scottish Funding Council announced an increase in HE spending for 2010–2011 (www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2010/02/26102543).

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jun/05/mandelson-to-run-universities

3. It is interesting to speculate on the role of a series of research assessment exercises in this.

4. Solitude, freedom to teach and freedom to study. The three ideals underpinning academic freedom, as set out by Wilhelm von Humboldt (see Lucas, 2006).

5. Since the election of the new Conservative/Liberal coalition government in the UK, this timescale is now open to change…

6. Apropos of capital, I read, while revising this paper (in response to the entirely fair and supportive comments of one of the reviewers) that I now need to worry about not only my academic, human and social capital, but also my erotic capital: ‘Being brilliant academically isn’t enough anymore—if you want your career to soar you need to cultivate your erotic capital assets’ (THE, 2010e, p. 37). So much for the grey cords and leather jacket I donned when I entered the academy and assumed an identificatory desire as ‘sociologist’ (see Watson, 2006).

7. http://www.webometrics.info/

8. http://www.businessballs.com/johariwindowmodel.htm

9. ‘Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know’ (Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence, 2001–2006) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3254852.stm)

10. Repo 105 is a manoeuvre whereby risky dealings can be veiled by offloading them temporarily from the balance sheet, making the company finances look sounder. They are then bought back at 105% making them look like legitimate sales. This was one of the accounting procedures used in the audit of Lehman Brothers accounts criticised by Anton Valukas. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2147842c-2e41-11df-85c0-00144feabdc0.html While there is probably no exact equivalent in academic circles, successive RAEs have given rise to a number of dubious practices as academic institutions attempt to subvert the rules of the game.

11. Thanks to Professor Richard Edwards for this link to the subprime mortgage idea.