The UK higher education senior management survey: a statactivist response to managerialist governance

Abstract

In this paper we present results from an extensive survey of United Kingdom (UK) university academics investigating satisfaction with senior managers and university governance: the Senior Management Survey (SMS). 5,888 academic staff across the United Kingdom Higher Education (HE) sector completed the survey, and results were used to construct a league table of staff satisfaction with management. This table is a stark indictment of the current state of the UK HE sector, showing a mean satisfaction score of 10.54%. The SMS also collected qualitative data, and we extend the league table's insights using this data. Thematic analysis revealed seven major themes: the dominance and brutality of metrics; excessive workload; governance and accountability; perpetual change; vanity projects; the silenced academic; work and mental health. We conclude with a discussion of how this statactivist research can be used to bring about change in management and governance of UK HE.

‘Upon the gears and upon the wheels’: Terror convergence and total administration in the neoliberal university

“…But, by linking our collaborative account closely with a Marcusean analysis of broader historical and contemporary struggles over the idea of the university, we subscribe to Anderson’s (2006) model of ‘analytic autoethnography’. The struggle we faced is not an isolated example; there is a wide range of research indicating the progressive deterioration of university working conditions (Erickson et al, 2020; Morrish, 2019). Such has been the impact on certain disciplinary areas that some have spoken of an ‘attack on organization studies’ (Burrell, 2018).…”

“…There have been strikes (Burns, 2018), student occupations (Busby, 2018), votes of no confidence in senior leaders (Adams, 2017; Slawson, 2018) and thousands of university staff threatened with redundancy 1 or disciplinary action (Freedman, 2018; Gardner, 2014). A torrent of critical writing depicts universities as ‘toxic’, (Smyth, 2017), ‘at war’ (Docherty, 2015), ‘Stalinist’ (Brandist, 2017; Lorenz, 2012; Tucker, 2012), run undemocratically by administrative fiat (Erickson et al, 2020; Gerber, 2014; Ginsberg, 2011; Marginson and Considine, 2001), profit-driven and blinkered by the distorting commercial logics of metrics, league tables and journal rankings (Deem et al, 2007; Hussain, 2015; Parker, 2014; Sayer, 2015). Students and academics feel disempowered (Geppert and Hollinshead, 2017) and fear management reprisal for expressing critical opinions (Morrish, 2019; Reidy, 2020).…”

The autoimmunity of the modern university: How its managerialism is self-harming what it claims to protect

“…Put differently, the consequence of the bodily incorporation of the new corporative logic is that it is blurring the difference between the internal and external borders of the organization, between private and work, between work and one's network, and between free time and work time. This has constituted an extra autoimmune effect, namely the distressing feeling that, because of the repressive and omni-readable personal score, one always could or should do more, resulting in a high percentage of self-exploitation, stress-symptoms, and burn-outs among academics (Erickson et al, 2020;Holly, 2018).…”

Compassion in Higher Education Leadership: Casualty or Companion During the Era of Coronavirus?

“…Year on year the pressures and scrutiny have increased and other development, outside of the sector, such as social media for example, have only served to make this worse. Academics are increasingly suffering from stressrelated conditions (Erickson et al, 2020) and the plugging of holes with hourly-paid staff has not improved the students' educational experiences, although they may have served to stop the ship from sinking completely. The reality is that the pressures that have built up have created toxic environments in which people are suffering, but the need to keep the ship afloat and the concerns about its inherent structural fragility, has meant that few individuals want to admit to suffering themselves, or, in the case of leadership, that suffering is endemic in the institution.…”