‘Peacekeepers’ and ‘machine factories’: tracing Graduate Teaching Assistant subjectivity in a neoliberalised university

Abstract

Guided by a Foucauldian theorisation, this article explores Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) experiences of their work and subjectivity in a neoliberalised higher education environment. By drawing on a research project with GTAs from one UK university, the article argues that GTA work is increasingly shaped by neoliberal reforms. The GTAs interviewed are critical of internationalisation, marketisation and client culture, and see these processes as acting on their subjectivity. The GTAs position themselves as mediators between demanding students and overworked academics: they have turned into much-needed ‘peacekeepers’ and ‘machine factories’. The findings also demonstrate that the subjectivity enforced by a dominant market ideology is further negotiated in the GTA experience. The discourses reveal that a lack of institutional control and coordination of graduate teaching provides the means for, and indeed enables, the GTAs to express some, but often limited, discontent with neoliberalism.

Keywords:

• Higher education
• Graduate Teaching Assistants
• neoliberalism
• subjectification
• Foucault

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Dr Sophie Ward for her time and generous feedback on this article. The author is also highly grateful to Dr Fiona Patrick for her support during the doctoral research project, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their incredibly helpful feedback on this article.

Notes

1. The University and College Union is the main trade union of the higher, further and adult education professionals in the United Kingdom (UCU 2017a).

2. The Academics Anonymous page is accessed February 10, 2017, available online: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/series/academics-anonymous

3. The Russell Group includes 24 UK universities ‘which are committed to maintaining the very best research, an outstanding teaching and learning experience and unrivalled links with business and the public sector’ (Russell Group 2015).

4. The Teaching Excellence Framework includes a number of mechanisms, allowing the UK government to monitor and assess teaching quality in English universities. It aims to incentivise teaching quality and to create a link between the Teaching Excellence Framework ratings and tuition fees (see DfBIS 2016).