Students' Experiences: Choice, Hope and Everyday Neoliberalism in English Higher Education (original) (raw)

Analysing a ‘Neoliberal Moment' in English Higher Education Today

LATISS—International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences Volume 3, Number 2, Summer/Winter 2010 , pp. 55-72(18), 2010

English higher education, like other parts of the public sector and higher education in other countries, is currently undergoing considerable change as it is being restructured as if it were a market in which universities, departments and academics compete against one another. This restructuring is producing new processes of subjectivity that discipline those who work and study in higher education institutions. Feminist poststructuralists have suggested that this restructuring is enabled partly through new forms of accountability that seemingly offer the 'carrot' of self-realisation alongside the 'stick' of greater management surveillance of the burgeoning number of tasks that academics, amongst others, must perform. This paper, located in the context of these changes, builds on Judith Butler's insight that processes of subjection to the dominant order through which the self is produced entail both mastery and subjection. That is, submission requires mastery of the underlying assumptions of the dominant order, which concomitantly introduces possibly subversive responses to subjection. This paper explores a 'neoliberal moment' I recently experienced when I had to fill out a form introduced for modules that failed to reach newly introduced marking 'benchmark' criteria. As I suggest, the process of being subjected to the disciplining that this new criterion demanded, brought me the mastery necessary to avoid such disciplining in future. However, individual subversion did not significantly challenge these forms of accountability; only a collective 'scholarship with commitment' could do so.

The neoliberalization of higher education in England: An alternative is possible

In this article, we provide a critical explanation and critique of neoliberalism. We attempt an innovative focus ranging from the wider contemporary political and ideological shifts, to the way in which neoliberal policy specifically influences higher education and the consequences thereof. We follow a narrative logic in three parts where we first explore the bigger picture, then concentrate on specific examples, finally taking a long-term perspective with regard to class struggle. In the first part, we lay out neoliberalism and explicate its basic principles in abstraction. This is necessary for part two, where we contextualize neoliberalism specifically within the English higher education system with specific reference to the policy agenda of successive governments since 1979. In the third and final part of the article we suggest an alternative higher education model that simultaneously exists and flourishes along with and against the neoliberal hegemony. We conclude by

Working in, against and beyond the neoliberal university

This paper explores some contemporary issues and challenges facing those working in Adult and Higher Education and possible responses: - contexts and critiques of the ongoing neoliberalisation of both university and wider society - possible responses rooted in critical educational theories speaking to the need for educations for eco-social justice

Neoliberalism in Higher Education: Can We Understand? Can We Resist and Survive? Can We Become Without Neoliberalism?

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 2017

Concern regarding capitalism, profiteering, and the corporatization of higher education is not new. A market focus that creates students as consumers and faculty as service providers has dominated global practices in colleges and universities for some time. Most recently, however, this more liberal market-driven focus has actually morphed away from a jurisdictional emphasis (with a potential focus on fairness) to forms of veridiction (neoliberal truth regimes) that legitimate intervention into all aspects of society, the environment, interpretations of the world around us, even into the physical individual bodies of human beings as well as the more-than-human. In higher education, this neoliberal saturation has led to changes that are of seismic proportion. The authors in this special issue describe their own research into, interpretations of, and life experiences as they attempt to survive within this neoliberal condition, and as they also generate counter conducts and ways of thin...

Yang, P. (2016) Figuring out the university and the student in neoliberal times: reviews of Learning under neoliberalism (Hyatt, Shear and Wright 2015) and Figuration work (Nielsen 2015). Social Anthropology, 24(2), 243-248

The university today is in flux, and so is the nature of learning and what it means to be a university student. While terms like ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘globalisation’ have been spoken of so frequently these days – both in academic and non-academic contexts – that they border on becoming hollow clichés, not engaging with these concepts and their implications for higher education transformations worldwide would not only represent a loss of a critical intellectual opportunity but, more seriously still, also the potential risk of seeing the university and the student slip into shapes and forms that we might retrospectively find unsettling and undesirable. Learning under neoliberalism, edited by Hyatt, Shear and Wright (2015), and Figuration work, authored by Gritt B. Nielsen (2015), are two good examples of such critical engagement. In this essay, I take turns to review these two recently published works, summarising their scopes and notable contributions for readers who are interested in an anthropological/ethnographic take on critical higher education studies from the Euro-American perspective.

THE CONSUMED UNIVERSITY: PROBING NEOLIBERALISM IN HIGHER EDUCATION

This study probes the influence of neoliberal ideas and ideology in Canadian higher education. In order to examine such an influence, this study subjected the texts and artifacts from 14 Canadian university recruitment websites to a critical discourse analysis. Along with the website analysis, eight ethnographic interviews with current professors were conducted to explore, in their experiences, how neoliberal ideology shapes their work as researchers, scholars, and instructors. This study investigated the ways that neoliberalism influences Canadian universities focusing on two specific areas. The first is how do universities include neoliberal discourse in their recruitment websites and if they do, in what ways? The second question is in what ways do professors, if at all, see the effects of neoliberalism in their daily activities as educators, researchers, and members of the university community? This study is a philosophical inquiry that deploys qualitative methodologies to examine the ideological influence of neoliberalism on higher education in Canada. The importance of this hybrid approach is that it will allow for a broad discussion of the valuation of education in society. This study shows that the influence of neoliberalism in Canadian universities is real and produces changes in the way university education is conceived and relates to the outside world.

Neoliberalisation of Higher Education

This paper seeks to outline in very simple terms the concept of 'neoliberalism' and how this is impacting all aspects of the Higher Education enterprise. It argues the in essence neoliberalism in HE offers as a false conception of freedom and is essentially about strengthening the power of the managerial class, weakening the influence of workers and exploiting students who are turned into consumers.

Mark Olssen on neoliberalisation of higher education and academic lives: An interview

Policy Futures in Education, 2015

This article is based on an interview conducted with Mark Olssen in October 2014, and the subsequent discussions. These conversations invited Olssen to reflect on his experiences of neoliberalism as a practising academic who has worked in the UK for some 14 years, and also to comment as a researcher and writer who is well known for his work on neoliberalism, especially in relation to higher education policy. While focusing on a question of how neoliberalism has changed the context in which academics work, following Olssen’s lead in his own research, in this interview he articulates a Foucauldian understanding of neoliberalism that can be seen as a specific mode of government rooted in economic discourses of competition ( Foucault, 2008 ). The accentuation of the competitive forces shaping higher education, linked in Britain to periodic audits such as the RAE and the REF, have become increasingly visible within higher education institutions through techniques, such as performance ind...

Searching for Authenticity and Success: Academic Identity and Production in Neoliberal Times

This discussion paves the way for the next chapter, Searching for Authenticity and Success: Academic identity and production in neoliberal times. Continuing from where the previous chapter left off, Özgür Budak investigates the relationship between neoliberalism’s impact on academic careers and the reshaping of academic identity. Based on ethnographic fieldwork incorporating cultural sociological perspectives, Budak convincingly reveals that similar tensions, fluctuations, and criticisms have been voiced by actors in the university environment at the other end of the European continent: Turkey. ‘The new era in higher education’, the author argues, ‘is frequently associated with increased feelings of insecurity and uncertainty’ (see Chap. 3, p. 56). Using interview data with academics at the beginning of their career, Budak demonstrates that, in order to position herself or himself as a meaningful player in the neoliberal university environment, the academic feels obliged to internalize ‘the sense of the game’ and develop sophisticated survival strategies.