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Abstract
There is a growing literature discussing the experiences and identities of academics working within the ‘new times’ of contemporary academia. Critiques have been levied at the impact of neoliberalism on the nature, organisation and purpose of higher education (HE), highlighting the negative consequences for ‘traditional’ academic identities and practices, and calls have been made for further investigation of the ‘lived’ experiences of academic workers. Most studies to date have focused on ‘older’ (mature) academics and their responses to the new performativity. But what about the ‘new’ generation of academics who have only experienced the current HE context and climate?
This article focuses on the identities and experiences of ‘younger’ UK academic staff—notably, those aged 35 and under who grew up during the 1980s (so‐called Thatcher’s children). It discusses their constructions of academic identities and questions whether they are the archetypal new subjects of audit and managerialism whose capacity for criticality is forestalled—or whether they carve out spaces for thinking otherwise? Attention is drawn to the ways in which these younger academics negotiate the pressures of contemporary academia, detailing their strategies of resistance and practices of protection. The article concludes by reflecting on whether it is possible (or not), to do without being an academic neoliberal subject.
Notes
1. Becher and Trowler (Citation2001) draw on Clark’s (Citation1987) historical charting of trends in the ways academics are positioned—emphasising that there is no singular ‘before’ and/or ‘after’ account.
2. Colley and James studied workers in further education (FE). Their notion of ‘unbecoming’ highlights the ruptures and conflicts within identity formation—whereby professional identities are not simply linear processes of ‘becoming’ but may also involve refusals and rejections.
3. The Quality Assurance Agency—the body that audits and reviews academic standards and quality within HE.
4. In short, studium refers to intellectualised readings, whereas punctum tries to capture emotional, ‘felt’ responses.
5. It also resonated with my own research with young people in difficult/disparaged spaces who find ways to generate self‐value (Archer, Hollingworth, and Halsall Citation2007). In these articles I argue that whilst the creative and agentic nature of such practices might well be ‘celebrated’, this should not detract from social justice arguments and debates around the continued context of inequalities (which necessitates them to engage in this psychic/identity work to ‘make do’).
6. My choice of terminology requires some comment: ‘younger’ is used rather than ‘young’ to reflect respondents’ relative positionings with regard to age. Within the context of the UK academic workforce generally they are relatively ‘young’ and are younger than many of the academics included within other studies. However, aged between 30 and 35, the respondents in this study are obviously not straightforwardly ‘young’ in other respects—hence the decision not to refer to them simply as ‘young’.
7. Funded by King’s College London.
8. Participants were directly asked about their views on the discourse of the ‘Golden Age’.
9. Interestingly, all but one of the respondents were familiar with the concept of neo‐liberalism and debates around the marketisation of higher education—this cut across subject disciplines, type of HEI and job level/ type—although the small size of the sample, and the bias towards social science disciplinary backgrounds, should also be borne in mind.
10. I am grateful to one of the referees for highlighting this point.
11. This particularly evocative (provocative) phrase (which constituted a considerable source of punctum in my own reading of Rose’s text) undoubtedly merits further deconstruction than space here allows—suffice to say that the dehumanised, ‘zombie’ like allusions within it are particularly striking, evoking a mass of ‘soulless’ academics engaging in competition/combat with one another.