Three-D Issue 24: Reflections on the changing nature and circumstances of academic labour

 

 

Born in 1949, – a first wave ‘Baby Boomer’ – my generation has been nurtured on lashings of cod liver oil, orange juice, milk at school, high quality health care, social and welfare services, the anticipation of full employment plus a higher standard of living and longer life expectancy than our parents and, above all this, a free education at primary, secondary and even tertiary levels: a blessed and lucky generation.

Given this generational context, the views that I held when I bowled up for my first job in the Politics Department at York University in 1976, were perhaps fairly predictable. I believed very passionately (and still do) that Education should be organised as a public service rather than as a commodity for sale in a market place – education is quite simply ‘priceless’. I also shared the generational view of conservatives, social democrats and liberal politicians alike, – the famous Butskellite consensus – that education would prove a powerful engine of social mobility, corrosive in its effects on existing class structures.

But across my 4 decades working as a university teacher, academic life has changed markedly and some of these changes are at the heart of what I want to discuss here. I draw on personal recollections rather than the kinds of evidence which typically inform academic accounts; so this is my first stab at amateur auto-ethnography.

The changes I want to consider include, the shifting balance between teaching and research in academic life and, the creeping – then galloping – commercialism and the retreat from notions of public service in the academy.

My career, ‘brilliant’ or otherwise, reflects a brief post 1945 window of opportunity provided by an unprecedented amalgam of economic, political and sociocultural circumstances. That window is closing rapidly, if not firmly slammed shut, leaving those currently entering academic life, confronting a much bleaker landscape of academic opportunity, autonomy and freedom.

 

My Brilliant Career

But let’s start with a brief “Cook’s Tour” of my academic working life. It all began in the early 1950s when, aged four and a quarter, I went to the local primary school about 150 yards from my parents’ house. Here’s a picture of me at school with my sister when I was 7. It remains the only studio photograph of me taken to date, but in the mid 1950s paper shortages were so acute (as newspaper historians will confirm), that the photo was mounted on the back of an advert for orange squash.

In 1960, I passed the 11+ and attended the local grammar school. I left ahead of my 16th birthday, but in 1968 I enrolled at the local technical college where I surprised myself – and many others – by getting three A Levels. Then it was 6 years at Hull University for a degree in Politics and Sociology and a PhD in political theory supervised by Bhiku Parekh [an inspirational teacher and scholar].

By 1976 academic jobs were already scarce but I was lucky enough to be offered a post at York University. Two years later, I moved to Newcastle Polytechnic and in 1985 made a significant move to the Centre for Television Research at Leeds working with Jay Blumler. It was a hot house where I felt very much out of my depth. But Jay’s enthusiasm proved a great teacher and I learned a good deal about how to conduct and write up research, as well as how to enjoy it.

Between 1990 and 1994, I worked in the Politics Department at Keele, then on to Sheffield to help establish a new department of Journalism Studies, before moving to my current post as Chair in Journalism Studies at Cardiff. The School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies is a quite unique and wonderful place, awash with intellectual curiosity and energy, with ferociously bright colleagues across all generations. So I’ll close this Cook’s tour with photos of me in my office in Cardiff and offering my welcome to the fourth Future of Journalism Conference at Cardiff in 2013.

Changes in University Life since 1976

As I mentioned earlier, I want to consider two key changes to university life and briefly mention a third. The first involves the growing emphasis on research above teaching; the University’s insistence on certain kinds of research; along with the rather nightmarish levels of detailed monitoring of academics’ performance which this requires with the consequent loss of academic freedom.

 

Teaching

When I first entered academic life in 1976, the kindly advice offered by senior colleagues at York, was that new entrants should prioritise teaching above research. Teaching was the unquestioned priority and there were good reasons for this.

Academic Courses – not modules – were taught across three terms (not two semesters) and lasted for 30 weeks. A progression of ideas, themes and academic complexity/or level were built into all degree programmes. Concern with quality verged on the obsessional; internal assessment meetings and external evaluation were routine. Academics delivered all lectures and seminars on their courses (there were no TAs), so teaching loads were relatively high, but groups were much smaller than today – typically 25 or so in lectures and 6-8 in seminars. The upside was that I got to know all my students very well; both academically and socially. Like the hapless Jim Dixon in Kingsley Amis’ campus novel Lucky Jim, I felt lucky to be ‘allowed’ into university life. Universities were expanding; a mood of radical optimism and change was ubiquitous. Life was fun; the first RAE was ten years away.

 

Research

Across the subsequent decade, in the run up to that first RAE in 1986, we all became increasingly aware of a growing emphasis on research and publication; but this enhanced emphasis was modest. By way of example, it seems nothing less than extraordinary given current preoccupations that the very high impact research on televising Parliament, commissioned by the House of Commons and conducted by a leading international research centre – like The Centre for Television Research at Leeds – was not returned for the 1992 Assessment exercise. I can think of no better example to illustrate how low profile these audits of research were even in the early to mid-1990s.

But recollections of my early experiences at York, Newcastle and Leeds, were confirmed by Terry Eagleton’s collection of essays The Gatekeeper about his early days at Cambridge. He recalls that his supervisor, Dr Greenaway “did not stoop to do much research, though he produced the odd pedantic little edition” (Eagleton, 2001, 131). Greenaway was not alone. Eagleton remembers hearing about an older “Cambridge don who worked in a small department which had just acquired a new, zealous head who insisted that his colleagues produce some tangible evidence of research. In the Cambridge of those days, this would no doubt have been as stunning a demand as requiring the dons to have sexual intercourse in public with sheep”. In truth, “publication was in general regarded as a mildly vulgar, publicity seeking, affair” (Eagleton, 2001, 131-2).

Academic culture and practice concerning research have shifted radically across the six subsequent assessment exercises, which have placed intense pressure on individual scholars to deliver research-based publications of a clearly specified format and kind, suitable for publication only in closely targeted journals. As a journal editor, I can confirm how many young scholars complain about their academic mentors’ insistence that they publish only in highly ranked journals listed in the Thompson-Reuter’s Index.

The demands of successive RAEs have had a number of undesirable consequences for the scholarship embodied in peer reviewed journal articles. The RAE/REFs have: overstated and overrated the standing of peer reviewed articles compared to the research monograph; triggered a proliferation in the number of published articles; led to a Stakhanovite mentality among journal authors and reluctantly, reviewers and editors; prompted the ‘strategic’ fragmentation of research data to deliver multiple publications in different journals which; generates research studies which are incapable of ‘triangulation’ and the internal cross checking of findings; and finally, creates what Hanitzsch describes as “incentives for scholars to crank out papers” while simultaneously delivering “a disincentive to conceptual and theoretical work” which takes more time and effort to produce (Hanitzsch 2014, 705).

This instrumental targeting can encourage a McDonaldisation of research, in the sense of a narrowing of the range and diversity of scholarly conversation and the rise to prominence of a handful of mainstream journals to the detriment of others, typically those more eager to contest academic orthodoxy. Lee’s analysis of RAE 2008, for example, confirmed that; “of the 2676 journal articles submitted for … economics … only 3% were from what he calls ‘heterodox’ journals [i.e. not conforming to orthodox beliefs] with none being from radical journals” (Cited in Bonnett, 2011). Lee also argues that articles published in the 26 ‘mainstream’ journals tend not to cite research published in the 62 more heterodox journals. The significant finding here is that the scholarly conversation about economics is bifurcated with scholars talking past each other rather than to each other. The same may be true for other areas of inquiry.

Whatever the merits of the RAE/REF some consequences seem clear. Not being included in the department’s return is a serious career stopper; at least in the short run. Internal promotion seems unlikely while appointment to a post at another university is improbable without a substantially ‘improved’, publication record. Regrettably, being a highly effective and committed teacher is no longer sufficient qualification for holding an academic post. Marina Warner expressed all this with a brutal frankness which is perhaps too rare. “Everyone in academia has come to learn that the REF is the currency of value. A scholar whose work is left out of the tally” she claims, “is marked for assisted dying” (Warner 2014, p42). The recent unexplained death of Stefan Grimm, a Professor of Toxicology at Imperial College, illustrates the heightened pressures of academic publication. Read his final and very disturbing email to colleagues outlining details of the ‘academic review ‘of his work: https://www.dcscience.net/2014/12/01/publish-and-perish-at-imperial-college-london-the-death-of-stefan-grimm/

Let me end this brief section with a question: have you ever attended a REF meeting at your institution and felt awkward and embarrassed because you were aware of valued colleagues at the meeting whose research was NOT going to be returned?

Academic Life and the Market Place; The ‘Knowledge Business’

A second change I want to highlight is the emergence of the university as a market place where education is viewed as a commodity – and an increasingly expensive commodity – which is offered for sale. This reflects a retreat from notions of public service in educational policy; ideas that were so formative for my generation’s approach to academic life. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the ‘marketising’ or ‘corporatising’ of the university; I prefer Gaye Tuchman’s phrase, ‘the knowledge business’ (Tuchman, 2009, p174).

In 1970, when I began six years of full time education my assumption was that this wouldn’t cost me a penny; and it didn’t – there were no fees to pay; I received a full grant of £343 for each academic session and a University scholarship of £650 for each of the 3 years of my doctoral work.

The idea of charging for higher education was anathema to my generation; it was simply unthinkable. It was also unworkable; both personally and politically. As a mature working class student, I couldn’t afford fees or repayments on a loan; nor could my parents. Education was free for everyone as expectation and right. For their part, Politicians knew that introducing tuition fees would create moral outrage and consign them to a political wasteland. This marks the ideological distance we’ve subsequently travelled. I am clear that without free tuition and a maintenance grant, I wouldn’t have a degree or a ‘career’ as a university teacher – ‘brilliant’ or otherwise.

The emergence of the ‘Knowledge Business’ began with the election of the first Thatcher administration in 1979 which unleashed a radical and aggressive privatising agenda throughout the public services, although it seemed to take a decade or more before university managers and administrators stumbled across this agenda replete with its language of internal markets, cost centres, revenue streams, ‘impact factors’ and five years plans with their curiously reminiscent overtones of ‘Stalinism’. I still recall the moment in 1989 when the new Director of the Centre where I was working, described Students as ‘customers’ – on another occasion he referred to overseas PG students as ‘£5,000 on two legs’.

The most obvious symptom of the ‘knowledge business’ has been the introduction of student fees. Introduced in 1998 by a Labour government, they were initially capped at £1,000, but raised to £3,000 in January 2004 and again in late 2010, to £9000. At the same time, student grants to assist with the costs of study were replaced with loans, while maintenance grants were reserved for only the poorest and fixed at very modest levels. The first cohort of student fee payers will graduate in summer 2015 with average debts of £44,055 according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies; the Institute calculates that 73% of students will never fully repay the debt especially in circumstances of the worst graduate employment prospects for a good while. Meanwhile the VC of Oxford University is lobbying for a hike in student fees to £16K.

Across the last 20 years, these market driven narratives about students as ‘consumers’ have become more commonplace. The ability of degree courses to be ‘relevant to the needs of industry’ and ‘to place students in jobs within 6 months of graduation’ are increasingly judged as the yardsticks of a teaching programme’s success, while the cogency and quality of the academic content of courses are rarely trumpeted as loudly. Just reflect for a moment on the questions which parents raised at the last open day you attended, but also the controversy and prejudice concerning so called ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees.

The Administrative University

I wanted to consider a third and complementary change that Alan Ryan calls the “rise of the administrative university”’, but I risk committing the cardinal editorial sin of breaching my word limit, so I’ll just mention it briefly. Ryan identifies the emergence of an expansive, centralised and well-resourced bureaucracy in universities which seems to order academic life and dictate its priorities. This group has usurped academics’ traditional role in university decision making and creates problems because its goals are antipathetic to academic priorities.

The ‘Administrative University’ makes constant demands for information as well as compliance with its sometimes absurd regulatory protocols which, on occasion are merely frustrating, but at other times offend deeply held principles about the conduct of academic life and academic freedom. (Ryan 2014; Tuchman 2009). A final question; do you recognise these trends in the university where you work?

A Brilliant ‘Career’?

In conclusion, I’d say I’ve had a brilliant career less than a wonderful job which has provided incredible opportunities for personal growth and professional achievement way beyond anything I ever imagined. I love the work. I have really loved living the academic life as a member of the academic community. Even so, I’ve surprised myself by how hard I have worked at this job, often losing sight of the boundary which separates work from leisure and where work morphs into what I would choose to do anyway. At the risk of hyperbole, such ‘boundary blurring’ can lead to self-exploitation.

What disturbs and worries me most, however, is the degree to which the changes in the conditions and circumstances of academic labour, which I’ve briefly outlined above, have diminished the prospects and opportunities which I have enjoyed, for those more recent entrants into academic life (for more detail read Karen Boyle and Ruth Sanz Sabido’s eloquent accounts).

The increased emphasis on research, directed in ‘top down’ fashion since the first RAE in 1986, especially the associated monitoring, surveillance and oversight of research performance, has diminished academic privacy, autonomy and freedom, making research an increasingly stressful business. In tandem, the shifts in educational policy and legislation – exemplified by the introduction of student fees and the conversion of grants to loans – which form part of a broader marketising of the university, have encouraged the retreat from public service principles.

I was making notes to first draft this lecture on the day that Gordon Brown announced his intention to resign from parliament; I’m surprised to hear myself quoting him but Brown made a comment which struck a chord. “I still hold the belief in something bigger than ourselves” he said, “I still hold to a belief in the moral purpose of public service”. And so do I; perhaps it is a generational thing; I hope not.

I’ve also cited Marina Warner in this brief lecture – and with approval. I’d like to end by quoting her once more – but this time to disagree. Towards the conclusion of her essay in the London Review of Books she becomes pessimistic, if not apocalyptic. “I’m told” she claims, “that the tick of the death watch beetle is heard only when it is too late”. I certainly recall hearing that Tick when my colleague first offered his unacceptable description of students as “£5,000 on 2 legs”; that tick has become an increasingly loud accompaniment to the changing rhythms of academic life. But Warner – notwithstanding her eloquence and insight – is wrong on this occasion. It is never too late to change direction, policy, organisations and the zeitgeist currently informing and shaping academic life.

In conversations in the SCR, [an older generation’s term], the academic corridor and more recently the picket line, I find many other academics across ALL generations sharing the views and concerns I’ve sketched here. It’s time to claim our universities back!

 

References:

Bonnet, A. (2011) ‘Are Radical Journals Selling Out?’ Times Higher Education 3 November.

Eagleton, T. (2001) The Gatekeeper: A Memoir, London: Penguin Books

Hanitzsch, T. (2014) ‘Rethinking – and Resisting – the Logic of Scholarly Productivity’ in Journalism Studies 15(6) pp703-706

Ryan, A. (2011) ‘At The Heart of the Education Debate’ Times Higher Education, 1st December

Tuchman, G. (2009) Wannabe U; Inside the corporate University, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press

Warner, M. (2014) ‘Diary’ London Review of Books 11 September pp42-3