Aligning the market and affective self: care and student resistance to entrepreneurial subjectivities

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the ways in which higher education students negotiate contemporary global transitions premised on improving competitiveness and opportunity in a system driven by the ideology of the market-led, knowledge-based economy (HEA. 2011. National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030. Dublin: Department of Education and Skills; OECD 2004. Review of National Policies for Education in Ireland. Paris: OECD; 2006. Higher Education in Ireland. Paris: OECD; 2013. “Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators.” Accessed March 15, 2014. doi:10.1787/eag-2013-en). Using data from a large cohort of students (4265) in three very different types of higher education institutions (Public University, Public Institute of Technology and a private for-profit College), and through the analysis of recent policy developments, the paper shows that there is an explicit requirement on colleges to create entrepreneurial students in Irish higher education. However, the paper also demonstrates how this narrative is mediated and resisted by the students’ own educational and care imaginaries: they are expecting to be better cared for in colleges than they are currently; and their presumed future, and for some, current lives are not only defined in terms of occupational goals but in terms of care and nurturing (affective) relations. The data suggest that the affective domain of care or social reproductive relations (Federici 2012. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle. PM Press/Common Notions/Autonomedia) may constitute an emerging site of gendered resistance to the globalised commercialisation of higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Ireland
• higher education
• entrepreneurial students
• affective relations
• knowledge-based economy

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback to improve this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The concept of the knowledge economy implies that the generation and the exploitation of knowledge per se are central to the creation of wealth. ‘A number of separate discourses from economics, management theory, futurology and sociology can be identified as having contributed to shaping the present policy narrative of the ‘knowledge economy’ (Peters 2001, 4) all of which centre on the idea that knowledge and technical skills (advanced human capital) will be the drivers of economic advantage globally. Unfortunately, policy usage of the concept does not distinguish generally between knowledge and information or between the knowledge society (which would impute rights to advanced education as essential for all) and the knowledge economy (Peters 2001). The latter term is frequently used to refer primarily to those forms of knowledge that service multinationals. This is especially true in Ireland where the focus is on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects (HEA 2011) for the development of the economy.

2. Nurturing relations constitute a discrete site of social practice within and through which human beings are created as social persons. Primary, secondary and tertiary care relations operate as intersecting circles of care (or in the case of their absence, as systems of neglect or abuse) moving from the intimate to the institutional to the political. We have termed these the affective relations of love, care and solidarity, respectively (Baker et al. 2004; Lynch, Lyons, and Cantillon 2007; Lynch, Baker, and Lyons 2009). The affective world operates as a discrete system and is therefore a site of political import that needs to be examined in its own right while recognising its inter-relatedness with economic, political and cultural systems (Lynch 2013a).

3. As stated in Building Ireland’s Smart Economy (Government of Ireland 2008, 36): “a reliance on traditional manufacturing and low-skilled services will not be sufficient to allow developed countries like Ireland to remain at the forefront of economic and technologies curves”.

4. The Hunt report on the future of higher education clearly articulates that:

The educational level of the Irish population has to be raised. We need more graduates at every level. People who are already employed need to raise their level of qualification and broaden their educational base. Unemployed people need new educational opportunities that are attuned to the demands of the new economy and significant research effort has to be expended on priority areas where we, as a country, have the talent, experience and resources that will enable us to succeed on a global scale. (HEA 2011, 29)

5. The purposes of all forms of education are increasingly construed in market terms at national level as education is linked to skills’ needs within the economy (Expert Group on Skills Needs, 2015 Monitoring Ireland’s Skills Supply: Trends in Education and Training Outputs. Dublin Department of Education and Skills.

6. HECSU In 2005, HECSU launched a major longitudinal study, named Futuretrack, of all applicants to full-time UK higher education courses who applied through the Universities and Colleges Admissions service (UCAS) in 2006. The programme of research was designed to explore the process of entry into and through higher education. Due to the longitudinal aspect of this research, five different questionnaires were designed to capture different stages in the educational journey of learners. CIRP: The CIRP is a national longitudinal study of the American higher education system. Established in 1966 at the American Council on Education, the CIRP is now the nation’s largest and oldest empirical study of higher education, involving data on some 1900 institutions, over 15 million students, and more than 300,000 faculties. CIRP surveys have been administered by the Higher Education Research Institute since 1973. The CIRP longitudinal programme consists of the four surveys: freshman survey, first college year survey, diverse learning environment survey and the college senior survey. The Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) is housed in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

7. The questionnaire was designed to measure students’ goals and ambitions in higher education generally and was limited by the closed-end nature of the questions asked. This did not allow to focus in depth on students’ affective labour and the relationship between their current, and assumed care lives in the future. We relied heavily on the qualitative comments volunteered by students on this subject. It would be important to do further research examining to what extent students’ goals and choices in higher education are mediated by the need to engage in affective labour, and how gendered these decisions are. Second, it would be important to explore students’ need for care in higher education.

8. EUROSTUDENTSURVEY III Report on the Social and Living Conditions of Higher Education Students in Ireland 2006/2007.

9. EUROSTUDENT SURVEY IV Report on the Social and Living Conditions of Higher Education Students in Ireland 2009/2010.

10. HEA statistics 2004/2015 http://www.hea.ie/node/1557 (retrieved 25 August 2015).

11. Public funding accounted for around 80% of the Irish higher education sector’s core income in 2008; in 2015, the government contribution was reduced to 65% of higher education funding. Ireland is now out of line with most of its EU partners: 79% of funding in the original EU21 countries comes from public sources (OECD Education at a Glance 2013, Table B3.2.c).

12. This study found that that 41.6% of full-time students are working between 9 and 16 hours per week and a further 19.7% are working between 17 and 24 hours per week. On the other hand, 16.6% of part-time students are working between 25 and 35 hours and 71.8% are working more than 35 hours each week. Just 4% of full-time students worked more than 35 hours per week.