Graduate education and training in the neoliberal university
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2461
This essay explores the impacts of neoliberal policies on graduate education, focusing attention on issues of curriculum, decision-making, and the role of graduate students at the university.
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2239-625X
2461
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Meredith Welch-Devine
Anuac
Graduate education and training in the neoliberal university
Text.Serial.Journal
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Forum: Anthropologists in/of the Neoliberal Academy
2016-08-13
2016-08-06
2016-08-13
83-86
1
Meredith Welch-Devine
2016
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2461
83
University of Georgia, United States
2239-625X
1
en
86
Graduate education and training in the neoliberal university
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                                                       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)                                                     83




Graduate education and training in the neoliberal university
Meredith WELCH-DEVINE
University of Georgia


ABSTRACT: This essay explores the impacts of neoliberal policies on graduate education, focusing at-
tention on issues of curriculum, decision-making, and the role of graduate students at the university.



    Before beginning this essay, it is perhaps important to know who I am, or at least
what role I fulfill at the university. I work in the Graduate School as a faculty member
charged with enhancing our efforts at interdisciplinary and innovative education. In
many ways, I am a perfect example of what neoliberalism has wrought. I am a mid-
level administrator in a position that many might lump into the category of “admini-
strative bloat”. I spend much of my time assisting faculty as they write proposals for
new programs. This involves encouraging them to think about whom their new pro-
gram will attract, how their new graduates will serve the workforce of the state and the
nation, and what their economic impact will be. At the same time, I encourage them to
become entrepreneurial; new programs are all but obliged to apply for training grants,
to apply to foundations, or to otherwise secure the means to fund their graduate studen-
ts.
    I do not do those things because I think it will help these faculty better meet their
pedagogical goals, but rather because it will help them get their programs approved and
their graduate students fed. Demand, placement, and economic service to the state are
what drives program approval decisions, so much more so than ideals of advancing
science, lifting culture, pushing boundaries, and training insightful and critical thinkers;
and, state funds for higher education, particularly graduate education, are never suffi-
cient.
    At the same time, I also have elements in common with the academic precariat. I
am in a non-tenure-track faculty position, and my contract is reviewed and renewed on
a year-to-year basis. In addition to not feeling I have the security to openly critique
structures or policies I believe are problematic, the need to continually rejustify my exi-
stence forces me to carefully document the ways in which I contribute to the university,
particularly in how I help increase our offerings, our training grants, and the quantity
and quality of graduate students. This necessarily takes time and energy away from my
ability to serve those students and to think creatively about training programs that ad-
vance knowledge and create passionate and curious people.


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


    Much has been written on the impact on higher education of the policies and practi-
ces inspired by neoliberal ideologies and discourses. And much is quite damning (see
for example, Giroux 2010). Cuts in state funding to public institutions, the extension of
economic rationalities to universities, and the redefinition of individuals from citizens
to economic actors has pushed universities to focus on revenue generation, economic
efficiency, branding, and extrinsic outcomes (Saunders 2010). These conditions in turn
have led to the undermining of tenure, the increased use of contingent faculty, and in-
creasingly hierarchical modes of university governance (Saunders 2010).
    What is missing from those accounts, though, is an on-the-ground view of their ef-
fects on faculty, students, and the institution. What I try to do here is to provide that
and to focus attention a bit more on those issues that are specific to, or at least particu-
larly relevant for, graduate education and training. This focus on graduate students is
necessary because they face a different set of conditions, opportunities, and constraints
than do undergraduates, and yet at many institutions, mine included, they lack visibili-
ty. This may manifest in subtle ways, such as graduate students being absent from the
University President’s annual letter bragging on the qualifications of new students, or
they may be more insidious, particularly when important decisions are made without
adequate representation from graduate student interests. Recent examples at my univer-
sity include the selection and initial configuration of student information and other IT
systems. When the needs of graduate students and their mentors are considered after
key decision points, the workarounds put in place to meet their needs can be quite
cumbersome. One might argue that the focus on undergraduates is natural, given that
the university is made up mostly of undergraduates, but when approximately 8,500 of
our 36,000 students are graduate and professional students, they are hardly insignifi-
cant. It seems more likely that they are often overlooked because roughly half of the
approximately 7,000 graduate students are on assistantship, being paid to attend the
university, rather than paying tuition. They are, therefore, not the same kind of consu-
mer as the undergraduate who will pour tens of thousands of dollars into the university.
Graduate students become the cogs in the machine, teaching courses and laboring in
labs, with their work conditioned primarily as service to undergraduates and to PIs ra-
ther than as opportunities and contexts for their own growth and development as scho-
lars.
    Economic rationalities also drive a focus on creating graduate programs that are
economically efficient, that generate revenue, and that provide for the needs of capital
in the state. We see this in progressive rewrites of the program proposal template (pro-
vided by the Board of Regents of the University System) to increasingly focus on job
prospects for graduates, revenue impacts to the university, and potential for economic
impacts in the state. Faculty are now in the business of writing business plans, estima-
ting market shares, and forecasting demand for their product every bit as much as they
are tasked with designing programs to train future scholars and citizens. At the same

2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 1, GIUGNO 2016: 41-90
TRACEY HEATHERINGTON, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)                                           85


time, the University has been charged with eliminating programs that are “low produ-
cing” and that are feared to use too many resources in the production of each unit. This
includes eliminating the terminal master’s degrees that in many fields have provided an
honorable and useful escape hatch for those who learn that doctoral education is not a
good fit. These are programs that cost very little, that we prefer not be high producing,
that serve students well, and that were targeted for termination nonetheless. Luckily,
the Board of Regents did accept the University’s argument that these programs should
remain. Other programs will not be so lucky. As has been pointed out by others (e.g.
Slaughter 1993), humanities programs have long been under fire because they do not
generate revenue in the same way that genetics programs do, but now they are also un-
der attack for being smaller programs, even when that is what might make both pro-
grammatic and financial sense.
    Even such mundane building blocks of graduate education as courses are under
pressure from the budget models born of neoliberalism. At my institution, budgets are
loosely based on credit hours, and credit hours follow the instructor of the course, flo-
wing to the unit that pays the instructor. This actively works against the development of
interdisciplinary programs, as some unit heads discourage students from taking courses
outside of their departments. This focus on credit hours also makes it difficult for facul-
ty members to co-teach courses. Even when they give full effort, they can only receive
a portion of the credit. Such a funding model encourages unnecessary duplication of
effort. Why would we develop a robust general training course that would serve multi-
ple programs when each program could offer a variant of it and capture the credit
hours produced by their students?
    For those who write using the term neoliberalism, the results attributed to it are al-
most always cast as universally bad. I would like to, gently, challenge that notion. Many
authors decry the “vocationalization” of training (e.g. Giroux 2010), and while I do be-
lieve that our graduate programs should focus more on creativity and inquiry, I also
think it is perfectly reasonable and responsible to train students with other skills as
well. Turning out graduates who can communicate and work in teams certainly serves
the interests of capital, but that does not mean it does not also serve the interests of the
students and society more broadly. As pertains to the research enterprise, perhaps the
constant push for more grant dollars has forced creativity leading to breakthroughs in
science. And perhaps the arranged marriage of arts and humanities programs with the
sciences will not simply produce bland humanities in the service of STEM but rather
confer benefits in expanding the horizons of both partners.
    I feel acutely the tension between my roles as handmaiden of neoliberalism and cri-
tical scholar committed to the democratization of knowledge production, management,
and transfer. I have not yet found a satisfactory way to resolve that tension and am not
entirely content with the “change from within” model. However, a glimmer of hope
came from a very unlikely place earlier this year, as International Monetary Fund

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


(IMF) researchers identified disturbing concerns with neoliberalism more generally
(Ostry, Loungani, Furceri 2016). If even the IMF can step away from neoliberal poli-
cies, perhaps our institutions of higher education can as well.

REFERENCES

Giroux, Henry, 2010, Bare pedagogy and the scourge of neoliberalism: Rethinking higher edu-
       cation as a democratic public sphere, The Educational Forum, 74, 3: 184-196.
Ostry, Jonathan, Prakash Loungani, Davide Furceri, 2016, Neoliberalism: Oversold?, Finance
       and Development, June 2016: 38-41.
Saunders, Daniel, 2010, Neoliberal ideology and public higher education in the United States,
       Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 8, 1: 41-77.
Slaughter, Sheila. 1993, Retrenchment in the 1980s: The politics of prestige and gender. The
       Journal of Higher Education, 64: 250-281.




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