Metric Power and the Academic Self: Neoliberalism, Knowledge and Resistance in the British University

Abstract

This article discusses the experience of being an academic in the UK in the contemporary climate of neoliberal capitalism and 'metric power' (Beer 2016). Drawing on existing literature and our own practice, the first portion of the paper explores the relationship between neoliberalism, metrics and knowledge. We then examine how neoliberal mantras and instruments impact the university's structures and processes, and reflect on consequences for the academic self. We take as a starting point the context of increasing workloads and the pressure on academics to excel in multiple roles, from 'world-leading' researchers to 'excellent' teachers and 'service providers' to professional administrators performing recruitment and (self)marketing tasks. Neoliberal academia, we suggest, promotes a meritocratic ideology of individual achievement that frames success and failure as purely personal 'achievements', which encourages a competitive ethos and chronic self-criticism. This article insists that these problems need to be understood in the context of neoliberal policy-making and the corporatisation of knowledge, including funding cuts and grant imperatives, the low status of teaching, the cynical instrumentation of university league tables, and increased institutional reliance on precarious academic labour. The article goes on to focus on responses that resist, challenge or, in some cases, compound, the problems identified in part one. Responses by dissatisfied academics range in style and approach -some decide against an academic career; others adopt a strategy of individual withdrawal within the system by trying to create and protect spaces of independence -for example, by refusing to engage beyond officially required minimums. This article argues that opportunities for positive systemic change can be found in collective efforts to oppose the status quo and to create alternatives for how academic labour is organised. Therein, solidarity can act as an instrument of opposition to the individualisation of the neoliberal academic self.

Political Ideology and Research: How Neoliberalism Can Explain the Paucity of Qualitative Criminological Research

“…The Research Excellence Framework (REF) uses these metrics in order to assess the quality of research in each subject coming from universities (Stelmach & Von Wolff, 2011). This has the aim of comparing the quality of subject areas across universities and looking at the impact of the universities research overall (Feldman & Sandoval, 2018). The information can then be used to form league tables, which Thornton (2013) argues are a consequence of the competition enforced by neoliberalism.…”

“…Feldman and Sandoval (2018) argue that the REF providing this information allows people to discipline universities and academics. Resultantly, academics are required to consider journal rankings when planning to publish an article (Cluley, 2014; Willmott, 2011).…”

“…Neoliberal capitalism thrives on competitiveness, and this thinking has implanted itself within the university framework (Wigger & Buch-Hansen, 2013). Feldman and Sandoval (2018) suggest that the recent surge of a need to quantify and measure the impact of research stems from the publics’ distrust in academic’s knowledge of the real world. This is so severe that people are willing to listen and trust the likes of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.…”

The neoliberal turn in Higher Education

“…An important subliterature in this critique details and/or advocates the academic resistance to the forces of neoliberalism invading Higher Education (e.g., Cone, ; Giroux, ; Ingleby, ; Mott, Zupan, & Debbane, ; Quinn & Bates, ; Saunders & Blanco Ramirez, ; Shahjahan, ). Some of these writings display considerable rhetorical flourishes: for example, Feldman and Sandoval () decry ‘the hegemony of metric power’, while Giroux () writes of ‘bare pedagogy’.…”

Intellectual endogamy in the university

“…Academics in this study believe that because publications are pre sented in another language and outside Chile, it is difficult to communicate the knowledge being constructed within Chile, which then creates a dis connection between the universities and society itself. Further, the neoliberal regulation of knowledge positions teaching in higher education as the work that steals precious time from research, depressing the status of teaching in the academic profession (Feldman and Sandoval 2018).…”