Academic citizenship, collegiality and good university governance: a dedication to Associate Professor Julie Rowlands (1964–2021)

KEYWORDS:

• Academic citizen
• collegiality
• academic governance
• higher education
• gender
• Bourdieu
• neoconservatism/neoliberalism
• leadership

This issue of Critical Studies in Education is dedicated to Associate Professor Julie Rowlands, Deakin University, Australia, who was for six years editor of Critical Studies in Education. Julie with Rebecca Lund, co-editor, conceptualised this Special Issue, and Jill is now acting as co-editor fulfilling Julie’s expectations.

Julie was an internationally recognised critical education sociologist and feminist whose research focused on education governance as systems of organisation, leadership, decision-making and control. Julie first came to Deakin University in 1981, completing a Bachelor of Education and a Masters in Gender Studies (with Jill Blackmore as supervisor) focusing on gender equity. Living in Warrnambool, Australia, where the small regional campus of Deakin was located and often under threat of closure, she decided it was a more strategic career wise to move into university administration than seeking to become an academic. It was immediately recognised that she was a talented administrator, and she moved quickly into the higher echelons of administration to head the university-wide academic governance unit. Julie’s disposition for orderliness meant she was well suited to academic governance. She also took a clear ethical stance at all times, of which I (Jill) was aware when I worked with her as Academic Board Deputy Chair. She had a steely approach to procedure, a capacity to keep a straight face when provoked to laugh or protest, was a stickler for accuracy, and prone to writing (even when she became an academic) very directive and often stern emails which those who did not know her well found rather intimidating.

By 2009, over a decade, she had witnessed multiple restructurings of universities and Deakin which had undergone two amalgamations with Warrnambool and then Melbourne Teachers Colleges, leading to rapid expansion and then consolidation of campuses and disciplines, followed by severe cuts to the Faculty of Education. She became concerned about what she observed was the corporatisation of the Australia’s higher education sector as Vice Chancellors, now called CEOs, began to exert executive power through line managers. Her sense of being complicit with and her personal experience of this wielding of executive power led her to resign to undertake her PhD in 2009 with an Australian Post Graduate Scholarship, which she completed in 2012.

Inevitably, Julie’s doctoral (again with Jill as supervisor) and later research focused on what she had experienced first hand as head of Academic governance – the pressures of competitive marketisation and internationalisation of higher education and escalating demands of external accountability, the development of strong top down decision-making through line managers sidelining Academic Board, and the reduction on university Councils and Academic Boards of academic and student representation. Her thesis, drawing on Bourdieu, on whom she had become an expert, tracked this shift from intellectual to managerial capital (Rowlands 2013a). She observed:

… nowhere has the […] decrease in the value of intellectual capital been felt more sharply than at the academic board, where Australian boards (and perhaps to a lesser extent those internationally) are at risk of being left in the paradoxical situation of overseeing universities’ core business of teaching, scholarship and research, but, at the same time, being considered by their own university communities to do nothing of any great significance. (Rowlands & Rawolle, 2013, p. 1284)

Furthermore, she argued that Academic Boards, which had also become feminised numerically as more women moved into senior management and academic positions, were largely undertaking the ‘domestic labour’ of the academy. Gesturing towards socialist feminist theories of gendered division of labour, she writes:

While academic governance does not produce teaching and research, it provides the conditions that enable them to take place […] university governance represents gendered relations and that the role of academic boards is now largely procedural – the equivalent of housework – invisible unless not done well. Moreover, ‘done well’ is defined not by academic boards themselves but by university executives, whose masculine, managerial roles both replicate and control traditional academic board functions. (Rowlands & Wright, 2019, p. 297)

Consequently, Academic Board Chairs were experiencing a form of symbolic violence because they did not feel they had agency despite the organisational chart indicating otherwise (Rowlands, 2015a &, 2015b).

Bridging the so-called theory/practice gap, Julie would joke that becoming an academic meant she was ‘crossing over from the dark side’ of management. As an academic, she ‘cut through the bullshit and could explain the secret games at work in higher ed with clarity, economy and panache’ (Pat Thomson, Professor, University of Nottingham). While playing the game that academia has become in the corporate university, she adeptly managed the triple shift of mothering, family, community activity and work, all informed by her strong commitment to social justice.

Julie immediately became the first point of call across the higher education sector to find out what was going on in universities and impacted both in the field of scholarship and practice. In the field of academic governance research, a reviewer of one of her articles argued:

This paper presents a thought provoking historically informed analysis [of academic governance] … that is situated within a wider higher education environment. For all new entry academics, papers such as this should be required reading in their orientation programs. Deans/Heads of School who choose ‘academic capital’ over ‘intellectual capital’ should be exposed to this construction of their work. Members of Academic Boards should be exposed to this text.

Contributing to this political, policy and practice governance work was Julie’s major comparative study of university governance in the USA, UK and Australia published as Academic Governance in the Contemporary University: Perspectives from Anglophone nations (Rowlands, 2017). Julie described the growing distance between academics and strategic decision-making and explicated the implications of this:

… institutional level strategy and strategy-based decision-making so as to determine research priorities and allocate resources accordingly, enabling universities to compete for an increased share of what is often somewhat limited research funding … are often not made by currently practicing academics. While positions such as deputy vice-chancellor (research) may be held by those who were once active researchers, the day-to-day demands of these roles are such that it is almost impossible to simultaneously maintain a research career. University executives, pro vice- chancellors and even deans can quickly lose touch with what is happening on the ground in teaching and research and therefore with what will work and what would not, potentially putting the successful implementation of important university strategies at risk. This risk is heightened by a reduction of academic voice within key academic governance bodies and by a reduction in the number of such bodies, discussed further below. (Rowlands, 2017, pp. 209-210)

A significant finding from that research was that Australian academics did not under current governance structures have a capacity to undertake intellectual debate and influence policy within the university through committee systems such as Academic Board which she argued here and elsewhere had become domesticated. Australian academics lacked a voice outside the structures of line management and academic board as for example in the USA (Rowlands, 2017).

Theoretically, Julie drew on multiple resources – feminist, critical organisational and political theory as well as her primary interest as a committed (and critical as a feminist) Bourdieuian scholar. She adopted new theoretical insights, for example, applying the political concept of new contractualism (Rowlands et al., 2016) by drawing from feminist work of political scientists such as Anna Yeatman to consider the increasingly contractualist nature of the university – contracts between researchers and industry, between universities, student and teachers, etc., and the assumptions embedded in these contracts as being transactional or relational. Julie, with Andrea Gallant (Deakin University) and Jill, drew on feminist organisational and leadership theory when working on issues of leadership and gender such as in the study of the Australian Rural Leaders Federation which exemplified a geographically distributed model of network leadership relying on a level of voluntarism by individuals.

Her concerns spread to consider how neoliberal policies had infiltrated the sector particularly in the Anglophone nations (Rowlands and Tuyet Ngo 2018)2013 and the impact these had on academic practices (Rowlands and Gale 2016). Others who were investigating the impact of neoliberal pressures of managerialism, markets and metrics in Nordic countries connected with Julie. Her work with Nordic colleagues explored issues that affect academic’s daily lives and practices – research assessment, datafication, and, of course, the much publicised paper on UK and Australian VCs’ outrageous salaries with Rebecca Boden, then of University of Tampere in Finland: ‘Paying the piper’, in which Rebecca and Julie were able to show how that the VC salary increase correlated with the shift towards market-based higher education governance regimes (Boden & Rowlands, 2020). They argue that VCs display rent-seeking behaviour, defined as actors extracting ‘a greater share of remuneration than is economically justified in terms of work undertaken or risks endured’ and pin point that this ‘is a consequence of having unchecked power’ (Boden & Rowlands, 2020, p. 264). Rebecca and Julie identify two ‘root causes for the rent-seeking behaviour‘:

The first relates to principals. University councils are de jure endogenous principals […] university councils are not sufficiently empowered or self-interested in the financial affairs of the university to act as effective principals – none of their actions have the potential to maximise their own financial position at the expense of vice-chancellors as agents and hence they are unable to exercise effective control as governors with respect to levels of VC remuneration. […] Exogenously, significant public funding to universities in both the UK and Australia justifies governments acting as principals but, in both nations, governments have currently restricted themselves to relatively weak, hands-off, market-based regulation, consistent with the shift to steering from a distance approaches […] where principals are weak or nominal, agents will maximise their own (economic) self-interest. We suggest this is precisely what has occurred in relation to VC remuneration.

The second root cause of the over-compensation of VCs in both Australia and the UK, as we have highlighted, is that many officially sit on their own universities’ remuneration committees. This is a clear failure of university governance and appears to have enabled VCs to secure remuneration for themselves at levels that exceed that which would serve as an appropriate reward necessary to ensure the appointment and retention of suitably talented people. (Boden & Rowlands, 2020, pp. 263-264)

Rather than the public shaming of individual VCs, the authors encouraged a national campaign by university staff and students demanding a change of the governance system. Looking back at her collaboration with Julie, Rebecca Boden recalls:

I knew Julie as a friend, collaborator and co-conspirator in making universities better. She was a warm-hearted and brave soul. Thorough and exact, creative and innovative … Julie was also much-loved and revered up here in the North, across many countries.

Julie undertook academic study leave at Aarhus University in Denmark where she collaborated with Professor Sue Wright, Director of the Centre for Higher Education Futures. Sue recalls ‘She was always so full of ideas, super-efficient, yet patient when I couldn’t keep up with her’ and she formed links to the Centre Higher Education and Equity Research at the University of Sussex. Professor Louise Morley, then its Director, recalled ‘She was a superb feminist scholar, and such a wonderfully kind, engaging, and engaged friend and colleague’. She continued to work closely with Professor Trevor Gale, University of Glasgow and Editor-in-Chief of Critical Studies in Education, on common issues confronting academics. This included the way workload was calculated and research assessments and how these shape academic practice and sense of self by creating conditions of control rather than professional autonomy (Rowlands & Gale, 2019).

Even as an early career academic, Julie mentored colleagues and students because she lived and breathed and knew all the dark corners of the university and the secret business of administration. Julie will be remembered in particular for her leadership of the Warrnambool Collective designed for early and mid-career researchers to undertake writing workshops and build collegial relationships with the collective outcome being the text on Practice Theory: diffractive readings in professional practice and education. Julianne Lynch, now an Associate Professor at Deakin who worked with her on the Warrnambool Collective,¹ recalls her astute politicking and representations of the value of the Collective that was needed to convince the Faculty executive to gain continued funding. A research fellow in a research collaboration summed up her skill in mentoring and nurturing early career researchers.

I’ll remember the pointed efforts Julie made to validate and amplify my voice and efforts as an emerging scholar. She had the empathy to sense moments of doubt and worry in others, and tactfully assure and support them. She was an incredibly kind and wise presence, and a very thoughtful listener.

Colleagues also saw the other side to Julie – her warmth and humour and willingness to have a good time. Equally, in her teaching, she was extremely well respected because she made the courses meaningful for students, ‘encouraging them, developing new ideas and responding to them in detail, recognising their worth. She was exceptionally well prepared and innovative in her teaching’ (Student).

Julie maintained a strong interest in the translation of research into practice – not only through the provision of practical guidance on how governance could be improved but also on the role of universities in producing and promulgating knowledge to facilitate the achievement of more equal and just societies. She frequently presented her research to Academic Boards at Australian universities and the National Conference on University Governance (facilitated by the University Chancellors Council) and was actively involved in convening the conference. Julie co-authored resource materials for this association that remain in use today within many Australian universities. Indicative of the significance of her work, Julie was a consultant at the LH Martin Institute, University of Melbourne, which provides professional development on leadership to present to university executives on academic governance and was then commissioned by the Institute to develop university executive professional development materials. She worked for the Association of Australian University Secretaries and was often contacted informally by university executives on matters of governance as she was considered the foremost Australian expert in the field. Her research has informed practice through multiple keynotes in Australia and internationally. Julie acted as a critic and a conscience for the sector.

As a good academic citizen, Julie had an exceptionally strong moral compass, and she saw social justice as the primary reason for being in academia (Rowlands 2013a, 2013b). She stood up to the abuse of authority and executive power and had a capacity to think through the contradictions of academic work. Julie continued to be an advocate for organisational change, lecturing and researching within Deakin’s School of Education and as a core member of the Education Governance and Policy group of the strategic research centre: Research for Education Impact (REDI). While Julie frequently joked that university governance was not the sexiest of research fields, she would be pleased but not surprised that university governance has become a key issue in university reform in 2022.

Due to the incremental disenfranchisement of academics and students from decision-making through the processes of corporate governance over the last 20 years which Julie has researched, an alliance of academic and student organisations and the National Tertiary Education Union under the umbrella of Public Universities Australia (PUA) has put forward proposals to change the governance of universities legislated by each state to refocus more on teaching, research and service for the public good. One of the PUA’s organisational members, the Australian Association of University Professors (AAUP), has also developed an Academic Professional Ethics Framework which has been informed by Julie’s research on Academic Boards in particular and comparative work on academic governance generally and which underpins the AAUP Statement on the Academic Profession. The AAUP seeks, in line with her argument about good governance, to reinstate the voice of academics by reforming current modes of corporate governance (www.professoriate.org).

Julie in her last months was collaborating on a new project investigating the crisis in knowledge-state-society relations arising from the distrust in science, politics and the media. The project moved on from questions raised in this issue: How do researchers negotiate relations with ‘the public’ and multiple stakeholders and what does this mean in terms of what counts as valued knowledge, with particular regard to the humanities and social sciences (see Rowlands and Wright in this issue). Rethinking the role of the university in contemporary times has become even more critical for its survival in the context of knowledge-state- society relations.

The editors and associate editors of Critical Studies in Education, Julie’s colleagues at Deakin, and Rebecca and Jill as co-editors of this special issue acknowledge the significance of the life work and powerful and enduring legacy Julie has bequeathed us. We pay homage to Julie: for her incredible contribution to the field of higher education research, policy and practice, and also to her being a wonderful colleague and friend, the exemplar of a ‘good academic citizen’ in gifting her time and labour as an intellectual leader advocating for socially just education for the public good and of speaking truth to power.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jill Blackmore

Jill Blackmore AM Ph.D. is Alfred Deakin Professor in Education, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and Vice-President of the Australian Association of University Professors. She researches from a feminist perspective education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; leadership and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; and teachers’ and academics’ work, health and wellbeing. Recent projects are School autonomy reform and International students’ mobility, identity, belonging and connectedness, the Geopolitics of transnational student mobility. Her latest publication is Disrupting Leadership in the Entrepreneurial University: Disengagement and Diversity (2022, Bloomsbury).

Notes

1. The Warrnambool Collective was a research collaboration between junior and senior staff based on different campus of Deakin University, Australia. It was intended to foster research capacity among younger academics and resulted in at least two collected volumes of which Julie was co-editor. Julie was a key feature of the Collective, playing a key role in its agenda as well as in its social, non-academic side.