Collegiality: can it survive the corporate university?¹

Abstract

This paper raises pressing issues regarding the present and future of the university. It is strongly critical of worldwide corporatisation and the response of academics to what the authors consider to be a crisis or impasse. As a mark of capitalist ascendancy, the university as corporate has, it would seem, lost its soul and its autonomy. The focus on collegiality invokes the communitarian and independent spirit which has for centuries been the foundation of university ideals, but which is presently undermined by managerialism and its profit-driven motives. A crass utilitarianism appropriates and 'brands' academic values to retain pseudo-prestige, while impoverishing the sense of vocation without which collegiality is rendered an anachronism. In their last section, the authors propose a way forward, indicating that a revival of collegial governance is both possible and imperative.

Academic Life-support: The Self Study of a Transnational Collaborative Mentoring Group

“…By the time of this 2012 presentation, members had made connections with additional female faculty who had a shared interest in mentoring. These members also sought mentoring relationships that confronted the primacy of deficit mentoring practices (Lumpkin, 2011) and transcended the collegial spaces operating within higher education institutions (Weinberg & Graham-Smith, 2012).…”

Department heads negotiating emerging managerialism: The Central Eastern European context

“…It has been established in the literature that managerialist practices are detrimental to academic working conditions, producing, for example, less freedom and autonomy, more structured and monitored time (Kolsaker, 2008), or a decrease in collegiality (Weinberg and Graham-Smith, 2012). However, we observed that academic middle managers also reconciled with their managerialist practices and promoted these concepts in their departments.…”

The role of transnational networking for higher education academics

“…For example, Clegg (2010, p. 360) has argued that there has been an increasing tempo of university life and that we need to be able to challenge the 'emptied-out timeframe of the present future' for harnessing knowledge. Indeed, Weinberg and Graham-Smith (2012) claimed that as a result of the advent of corporatisation in the modern era, time is an assessor rather than a manifestation of intelligent work. The extract above suggests not only an awareness of this assessment but also demonstrates a conscious determination to meet demands of both networking and teaching.…”