Let our Profs be Profs
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2462
This contribution traces the impact of research and teaching audit on university life in UK. It focuses on how the audit regimes generate an entrepreneurial subjectivity among academics, thereby transforming what it means to be a “Prof”. It argues that anthropology has a role to play in drawing attention to the significance of these transformations of subjectivity.
application/pdf
2239-625X
2462
1
en
Jon P. Mitchell
Anuac
Let our Profs be Profs
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac
5
Forum: Anthropologists in/of the Neoliberal Academy
2016-08-13
2016-08-06
2016-08-13
87-90
1
Jon P. Mitchell
2016
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2462
87
University of Sussex, United Kingdom
2239-625X
1
en
90
Let our Profs be Profs
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac/article/download/2462/2094
5
                                                       2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 1, GIUGNO 2016: 41-90




                                                                                                      FORUM




Student-led demonstration, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, February 4, 2015. Overpass Light Brigade, Joe Brusky
photographer. Source: overpasslightbrigade.org/love-light-for-uw-fight-the-cuts/.



Anthropologists in/of the neoliberal academy
Edited by
Tracey HEATHERINGTON & Filippo M. ZERILLI

Contributions of
Cris SHORE & Susan WRIGHT, Vintilă MIHĂILESCU, Sarah GREEN, Gabriela VARGAS-CETINA
& Steffan Igor AYORA-DIAZ, Tracey HEATHERINGTON, Dimitris DALAKOGLOU, Noelle MOLÉ
LISTON, Susana NAROTZKY, Jaro STACUL, Meredith WELCH-DEVINE, Jon P. MITCHELL.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © TRACEY HEATHERINGTON, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)
Anthropologists in/of the Neoliberal Academy
2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 1, GIUGNO 2016: 41-90.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2437
TRACEY HEATHERINGTON, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)                                                   87




Let our Profs be Profs
Jon P. MITCHELL
University of Sussex


ABSTRACT: This contribution traces the impact of research and teaching audit on university life in
UK. It focuses on how the audit regimes generate an entrepreneurial subjectivity among academics,
thereby transforming what it means to be a “Prof”. It argues that anthropology has a role to play in
drawing attention to the significance of these transformations of subjectivity.



    On May 3rd 2016, an organisation called Let Our Kids Be Kids called a national
strike of primary age (5-11 years) school children in England, in protest at the in-
creased pressures of schooling in contemporary England. The main target of the day-
long strike was assessment, and particularly the so-called “SATs” tests which children
take at ages 6/7 and 10/11. Ostensibly designed as audit – to test schools, rather than
pupils – Let Our Kids Be Kids nevertheless argued – with the support of considerable
anecdotal evidence – that children found SATs increasingly stressful, and that they
were stifling creativity in the classroom, as teachers increasingly “teach to test”. More
significantly, though, Let Our Kids Be Kids points towards a more general problem, of
a primary education system in the grips of a stifling audit regime that threatens to gen-
erate a particular type of perverse subjectivity, at the cost of a more healthy one – of
“being Kids”.
    A similar audit regime prevails in the UK’s universities, where the requirements of
accountability and “quality assurance” generate an equally unhealthy subjectivity
among academics. The technologies of audit generate technologies of management and
self-management that refashion subjectivities in alignment with the values of individu-
alism, entrepreneurialism and market competition. Such is the nature of neoliberalism
(Ganti 2014: 94). Many of us recognise in this neither the people we wanted or expec-
ted to become when we started our academic career, nor ourselves, in our activities.
The challenge of the neoliberal university is that of “being a Prof”.
    Since the 1980s, successive UK governments have pushed for increased accountabil-
ity and marketization in higher education. Under the banner of “quality assurance”, a
series of frameworks or “exercises” have been established to audit both teaching and
research.
    In research, this began in 1986 with the “research selectivity exercise”, which be-
came the “research assessment exercise” (RAE) and latterly the “research excellence
framework” (REF). They were initially designed to guide the allocation of general re-

                                                 2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 1, GIUGNO 2016: 41-90
88                                              ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN/OF THE NEOLIBERAL ACADEMY


search funding – the so-called QR or “quality related” funding that is not linked to par-
ticular projects. However, as QR funding decreases in real terms (Ruckenstein, Smith
and Owen 2016), they are increasingly significant only to establish league tables of de-
partments and universities, or as what some people refer to as a “beauty contest”. Re-
search quality is measured in terms of three factors: the quality of publications, as
judged by peers – but increasingly through citation and impact indices; the research en-
vironment, in which the main factor is research income from non-QR sources (founda-
tions, research councils etc.); societal impact – this is the measurable effect that a piece
of research has had upon wider society or culture.
   In each case, what started out as a retrospective “stock-taking” of achievement and
quality is now a driver of entrepreneurial research activity. Publications, or “outputs”,
are targeted towards higher status, higher profile journals; the acquisition of research
funding has become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end of generating re-
search; and the pursuit of societal impact has become a central driver of research
design, as grant applicants are now required to “plan for impact”. Not only have these
drivers become commonplace, their hegemonic purchase has made them “common
sense”, in Gramsci’s terms. They are seen as unquestionable: who could possibly argue
against wanting to publish your work in the “best” journals, wanting to get more re-
search funding, or wanting to maximise the societal impact of your research?
   Yet we know from Kuhn (1962) that science tends to be highly normative. The
highest profile is not necessarily the most innovative, with genuinely new ideas more
likely to appear on the fringes. We also know that the best ideas are not necessarily
those that are likely to attract funding – again because they go against norms of accep-
ted practice or established paradigms. As Ozga (1988) has argued, entrepreneurialism
in research grant acquisition has driven scholars away from «Purposeful, but wide-ran-
ging intellectual enquiry» (147), and towards management – of research funds, of
funding applications, and of donor expectations. Moreover, as I have argued (Mitchell
2014), the impact agenda favours impacts of a particular type, driving us towards re-
search that bolsters established policy – or worse, serves as propaganda for policy
(Marginson 1993). The consequence is a standardisation and homogenisation of re-
search on the one hand, and on the other, an increasingly frantic and anxious entrepren-
eurialism, as scholars compete over limited resources.
   In teaching, audit began in the early 1990s with “teaching quality assessment”
(TQA) and “subject review”, managed by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). These
were initially institution-level, and subsequently subject-level reviews, involving self-
evaluation, review of student evaluation, observation of teaching, and scrutiny of audit
process. They were replaced in 2001 by a “lighter touch” Institutional Audit process in
which universities manage their own teaching quality assurance, but have periodic visits
from the QAA to audit their procedures. There are plans to replace this in 2017 with a
“teaching excellence framework” (TEF).


2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 1, GIUGNO 2016: 41-90
TRACEY HEATHERINGTON, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)                                          89


    Over the period of university teaching audit, measures of student satisfaction with
teaching have become increasingly important, particularly so since the introduction of
student tuition fees in 1998. Initially set at a maximum of £1,000, this was raised to
£3,000 in 2004, and £9,000 in 2012, when central government removed its direct per
capita funding of student tuition. This created an open market in student recruitment.
To help prospective students make decisions about where to study, and to assure quality
the National Student Survey was introduced in 2005. This annual survey of all final
year students rates student “satisfaction” about their courses, on a range of issues in-
cluding learning resources, careers guidance, feedback on work, and the quality of
teaching. When the TEF is introduced, this will feed in to an overall ranking that will
enable the higher-ranked institutions to charge yet higher tuition fees. For the moment,
it is an important part of the published league tables that appear in the press and online,
which form an important part of student recruitment.
    With every undergraduate student now guaranteeing an income to the university of
£27,000 over 3 years, there is considerable financial pressure to compete for every po-
tential student both internally within universities and externally between them. With
league tables and student satisfaction a significant factor in student choice, and with
rising fees generating an increasingly consumer-like attitude among students who, now
paying, expect “good service” and “value for money”, there is increased pressure to
teach courses and modules that are not merely “interesting” or “important”, but “satis-
fying” and even “entertaining”. Again, the logic is in some ways unquestionable – why
wouldn’t we want to provide the best possible teaching, and why wouldn’t we ask the
students to make judgements about teaching quality? Yet as with research, the teaching
audit regime generates a series of perverse outcomes, or drivers. In this case potentially
“dumbing down” course content and presenting classes as “infotainment”. Not so much
“teaching to test” as teaching to student evaluation, in order to maximise league-table
scores and so better compete for students.
    Evidence is starting to emerge about the levels of stress and anxiety being generated
by this entrepreneurialisation of university life (Berg, Seeber 2016: 2ff). We might
identify three inter-related sources of stress. First, the need to perform, to maximize, to
generate outputs, income, impact and high levels of satisfaction. Second, the stress in-
herent in compromising principles that this generates. We are drawn towards tailoring
our research interests towards those of the funders or of policy; and tailoring our teach-
ing towards that which is satisfying. Maintaining principles in such a context can lead
to contradiction and compromise. Third, there is the stress inherent in competition. Al-
though academics have always competed – intellectually, and over jobs and resources –
it is its collegiality and sense of collective endeavour that has attracted and sustained
many careers – including my own – through difficult and stressful times. The neoliberal
regime of audit, accountability, entrepreneurialism and competition cuts across this
collegiality, producing an entrepreneurial subjectivity that is by definition competitive,
rather than collegial. As a result, the very thing that holds us together is eroded.


                                             2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 1, GIUGNO 2016: 41-90
                                                 2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 1, GIUGNO 2016: 41-90


   Let Our Kids Be Kids attracted widespread media attention, and support from di-
verse public commentators. As I write, the University and Colleges Union (UCU),
which represents academics and others in higher education, has its own campaign, in-
volving a series of one-day strikes and a “work to contract” designed to disrupt uni-
versity business. The primary grievances are an inadequate pay deal, the casualization
of university contracts, and the gender pay-gap. These are all important – indeed vital –
targets for action. Yet for many the focus on the specific fails to capture the more gen-
eralised grievance that not just our work and our conditions, but our very subjectivities,
have been transformed.
   I am not sure that a Let Our Profs Be Profs campaign would have any purchase in
the public imagination. Fighting against, or to preserve, something as apparently nebu-
lous as “subjectivity” is going to be a difficult task. Yet as anthropologists, we need to
find ways to communicate this most central of messages in the anthropology of neolib-
eralism – that the transformation of subjectivity is not a “soft” project, but the hard
edge of neoliberalism. We need to do this not just for our Kids, but also for our Profs.

REFERENCES

Berg, Maggie, Barbara Seeber, 2016, The Slow Professor: Challenging the culture of speed in
       the academy, Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
Ganti, Tejaswini, 2014, Neoliberalism, Annual Review of Anthropology, 43: 89-104.
Kuhn, Thomas, 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, Chicago University
       Press.
Marginson, Simon, 1993, Education Research and Education Policy, Review of Australian Re-
       search in Education, 2: 15-29.
Mitchell, Jon P., 2014, Anthropologists behaving badly? Impact and the politics of evaluation
       in an era of accountability, Etnográfica, 18, 2: 275-297.
Ozga, Jenny, 1988, The Entrepreneurial Researcher: Re-formations of identity in the research
       marketplace, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 8, 2: 143-153.
Ruckenstein, Andrei, Mark Smith and Nicola Owen, 2016, How can we make UK Higher Edu-
       cation Sustainable?, Times Higher Education, February 25 2016. www.timeshigheredu-
       cation.com/features/how-can-we-make-uk-higher-education-sustainable (accessed on 30
       June 2016).




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © TRACEY HEATHERINGTON, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)
Anthropologists in/of the Neoliberal Academy
2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 1, GIUGNO 2016: 41-90.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2437
