Cultural regulation and the reshaping of the university

Abstract

This paper is set within the context of university change in the Republic of Ireland. Irish third-level institutions are increasingly situated, whilst situating themselves, in the global advance of the so-called ‘entrepreneurial’ university model. This model promotes knowledge as utilitarian and performative that, in turn, informs new organising principles that pervade mission statements, policy choices and inter-related cultural practices. Such a change force benefits from significant moral, financial and politico-ideological support at national, European and global levels. Symbolic and real links between education and the economy lie at the heart of this paradigm. Most visibly, rationalisation and innovation measures, rooted within the education–economy relation, powerfully pervade the daily life of the world's universities. These and other related cultural practices are presently legitimated by recessionary conditions and are progressively harmonised by the advance of multi-layered disciplinary technologies. Foucauldian insights into these illuminate how corporate culture is regulated within university and how teachers’ identities and work practices are shaped by, and simultaneously shape, new cultural practices. This paper concerns itself with providing a critical conceptual lens through which to explicate the power effects of corporate culture. Furthermore, this paper addresses possible resolutions to challenges and possibilities that ensue. In particular, Foucault's concept of problematisation is evoked as a direct challenge to a ‘normative allegiance’ to the cultural reshaping of the university.

Keywords:

• ‘entrepreneurial university’
• Irish and global change effects
• cultural regulation
• disciplinary technology
• Foucault's ‘problematisation’

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of a number of individuals who helped bring more clarity to this paper: Karl Kitching, Fiachra Long, Denis O'Sullivan and the anonymous reviewer who so deeply engaged with this paper's treatise on Foucault.

Notes

1. To illustrate, Robertson (2009, 26–7) highlights such projects as: the Dubai Knowledge Village (hosting Boston University, Harvard University, London School of Business and Finance, Michigan State University, Rochester Institute of Technology); Singapore's Global Schoolhouse (which is hosting or collaborating with some 18 Higher Education Institutions from 9 nations); the European Institute of Technology (a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-inspired project whose academics are drawn from across the European Higher Education Area); and the University of the People, ‘a non-profit, global, tuition-free internet university, launched by an Israeli entrepreneur’ (Robertson 2009, 35).

2. Standaert (2009, 41), for example, focuses on the identification of problems, not so much in the two university models, but between them. Barnett (2009) too speaks of the overlapping nature of traditional (what he calls the ‘research university’) and entrepreneurial models and the latter's ‘use’ of the former's knowledge base. Moreover, both models are not entirely coterminous, since ‘many universities that are not research intensive would still want to see themselves as “entrepreneurial” or moving in that direction’ (Barnett 2009, 108).

3. In an Irish context, An Taoiseach (former Prime Minister) Brian Cowen officially launched a landmark joint research initiative between Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin in March 2009. As a direct response to the government's Smart Economy economic strategy document, this ‘Innovation Alliance’ seeks to mainly target PhD (fourth level) students, develops the research potential for some 300 companies and, in turn, creates tens of thousands of jobs. This ‘entrepreneurial’ initiative, according to Ned Costello (chief executive of the Irish Universities Association), ‘confirms that the universities have a central role to play in accelerating our economic recovery’ (Irish Examiner 2009). More recently, a strategic alliance between the University of Limerick and University College Galway has been announced (18 February 2010).

4. Fitzgerald does acknowledge that increased resources were provided for research (though this is still relatively low by OECD standards). However, he points to the simultaneous squeezing of financial provision and subsequent quality damage in the area of undergraduate teaching (e.g., Fitzgerald 2010, 2). Undergraduate teaching is a case in point – financial provision for this mass student cohort remains squeezed despite a rise of 8.3% in the numbers of students accepting university places in 2009.

5. The link between competences and learning outcomes is not entirely clear. In one significant publication, ‘according to Tuning, learning outcomes are expressed in terms of the level of competence to be obtained by the learner’ (Tuning Project 2009, 11, original emphasis). In another: ‘Tuning makes the distinction between learning outcomes and competences to distinguish the different roles of the most relevant players: academic staff and students/learners. Desired learning outcomes of a process of learning are formulated by the academic staff, preferably involving student representatives in the process, on the basis of input of internal and external stakeholders. Competences are obtained or developed in the process of learning by the student/learner’ (Tuning Project 2010, 1). Despite this representative confusion, linkage appears to coalesce more clearly around the presentation of education as product – specifically its commodification, image and exchange (e.g., Brancaleone and O'Brien 2011).

6. The Tuning Project, for example, benefits from two European Tuning Information and Counselling Centres at the University of Deusto, Spain and the University of Groningen, The Netherlands and around 32 National Tuning Information Points. In addition, each member nation's websites are replete with, inter alia: Bologna publications; associated national reports and conferences; information from working groups, seminars and European consortia engaged in implementing outcome-based approaches to learning; EUA publications; as well as reports and publications from the Council of Europe and the European Commission.

7. In 2010, over 20 million people viewed the QS University World Ranking system with more than 600 newspapers and other media publishing the results. European universities, in particular, are perceived as underperforming in league tables compiled by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Times Higher Education Supplement. In response, a new EU-created world ranking system is to be developed over the next three years (2010–2013). This project seeks to examine, inter alia, learning and teaching performance, regional impact, student mobility, knowledge transfer, as well as research performance. The project also seeks to examine how rankings might be represented at the level of the disciplines. Such a ranking system will undoubtedly validate the, particularly European, change agenda.

8. Presently, vocational training (typically perceived as ‘employment focused’) falls under the auspices of the two government departments – the Department of Education and Skills (further, higher and adult education) and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation (FAS programmes and now university–industry research alliances). Educational/philosophical debate about the intensified education–economy relation remains largely unproblematised, indeed silent, whilst many focus, ironically, on economic matters such as rationalisation priorities. On the issue of vocational provision, for example, even teacher representatives such as Peter MacMenamin (then Teachers Union of Ireland general secretary) substantially ignore the education–economy relation, instead calling for a ‘one-stop shop’ for provision to avoid ‘duplication and inefficiency’ (Education Matters 2009).

9. I refer to Jonathan Haskel's (Imperial College Business School) and Gavin Wallis’ (University College London and HM Treasury) study that states that 3.5 billion sterling of UK Government money invested in higher education research generates an output of 45 billion sterling for UK companies (see Haskel and Wallis 2010). This study's assertions contradict the influential McCarthy report (commonly referred to as ‘An Bord Snip Nua’ in Ireland), particularly the latter's position that research funding should be substantially reduced to the third-level sector.

10. In relation to Further Education – a sector that frequently feels the weight of the education–economy relation – the City of Cork (Vocational Educational Committee) and the Department of Social and Family Affairs have recently launched a new initiative. Known as ‘modular upskilling’, this is to provide learning opportunities for people who have recently become unemployed. Many modules have an ‘economy relevant’ focus; are at levels 5–6 on the National Qualifications Framework; comprise 40–50 hours' tuition each; and can be delivered in one or two 10-week sessions. One cannot but be struck by the force of economic priorities here – notably, the seemingly speedy reduction of teaching and learning to outcome skills; and the apparent sublimation of product at the expense of measured critical intellectual development.

11. Economists themselves are oft divided along such lines, that is being entrepreneurial or prudent. Nevertheless, as an assembly, they are instrumental agents of their metier. Thus, as conversations with a colleague of mine, Karl Kitching, highlighted, economic legitimation that appeared in times of economic ‘progress’ (as in the so-called Celtic Tiger era) is now interlaced with a rationing imperative that appears in current times of economic recession. In both so-called distinct ‘historical moments’, economic legitimation appears as the consistent mantra.

12. Incidentally, Phillip Moriarty hails from the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham. His views belie the, oft erroneous, assumption that many so-called ‘natural’ scientists are in favour of market forces and the commercialisation of research.

13. A recent report by Lord Browne (former chief executive of British Petroleum [BP] and official advisor to the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government in the UK) recommends that universities ought to be allowed to keep all the income from tuition fees up to an annual level of £10,000 (Guardian 2010).

14. Foucault was keen not to equate power and knowledge – ‘the very fact that I pose the question of their relation proves clearly that I do not identify them’ (quoted in Gutting 2005, 51, original emphasis).

15. I am reminded here of the Irish banks’ and the Catholic church's ‘reinvention’ of governance rules following respective ‘crises’, as well as the EU's commitment to ‘reforming economic governance’ which requires, inter alia, states to submit budgets for ‘peer review’. The obvious question in each case, at least from a Foucauldian perspective, is ‘how are these power effect shifts at once shaped by and shaping old or new “conditions of possibility”?’