Absence of the academic from higher education policy

Abstract

This article argues that the individual academic is all but absent from the assumptive worlds of policymakers in UK higher education. It is taken for granted in research on academic identity that those who work in higher education as teachers and researchers refer to themselves as, and indeed are referred to by others as, ‘academics’. Evidence is drawn from a study of policymakers in the UK to demonstrate that the word ‘academic’ is not a part of the lexicon of higher education policymaking. Moreover, the concept of the academic is cast into shade by an overwhelming emphasis on ‘the student experience’, and, from another direction, by a location of professional academic accountability at the level of the higher education institution rather than the individual. The article concludes with an exploration of what work this absence of the academic in policy does in disrupting the possibilities for engagement between the worlds of academia and policymaking and in perpetuating the discourses of marketisation and new management in higher education. It also suggests understanding the assumptive worlds of policymakers is a crucial counterbalance to a growing body of literature on academic responses to change, some of which has tended towards the self‐referential.

Keywords:

• discourse/analysis
• academic identity
• higher education policy

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank Sharon Gewirtz and Alan Cribb for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, Mary Henkel for her support throughout the research process, and the 12 research participants for their time, and interest in this study. I am grateful also for the considered advice of the three anonymous reviewers of this journal.