Universities in ‘the condition of publicity’: how LSE engages with the wider world

This article analyses how one institution, the London School of Economics under Anthony Giddens’s directorship, sought to occupy the ‘condition of publicity’ that is increasingly a prerequisite for university success in ‘knowledge‐society’ contexts. In particular, we illustrate how the LSE has sought to develop a brand and practice that is policy‐relevant, close to society, media‐savvy and think‐tank‐like, whilst at the same time remaining impeccably academic. Whilst one goal of the paper is the relatively modest one of giving local texture to some of the general tendencies identified in wider debates about ‘academic capitalism’, ‘the postmodern university’, and the like, we also develop some initial considerations that are intended as a contribution to the assessment of those theoretical themes.     

How first-year students perceive and experience assessment of academic literacies

Abstract

First-year university students’ underdeveloped academic literacies can lead to dissatisfaction and poor performance. University teachers find it difficult to take action without an understanding of students’ perceptions and needs. This study investigates first-year Chinese students’ perceptions and experiences related to assessment of academic literacies in an English-as-a-foreign-language university context. The datasets include student focus groups at two different time points over their first university year, self-reflective essays written by students at the end of the year, and audio records of nine units of teaching in three teachers’ classes. Findings highlight that fostering students’ academic literacies incorporates both linguistic development and epistemological adaptation. Students held mixed feelings towards alternative assessment other than examinations. Their personal learning goals of using English in everyday scenarios dampened their commitment to teachers’ goals of developing learners’ academic literacies. Findings suggest assessment can be an effective ‘card’ played by teachers to nurture students’ appreciation of new learning goals, communicate areas for improvement in learning strategies, and demonstrate their visible progress.     

Identities of research-active academics in new universities: towards a complete academic profession cross-cutting different worlds of practice

This study explores how academics who expanded their teaching-only positions to include research view their (re)constructed academic identity. Participants worked in a higher professional education institution of applied research and teaching, comparable with so-called new universities. The aim is to increase our understanding of variations in academic identity and to be better able to support academics’ ‘role making’ within and across different worlds of practice. Data from semi-structured interviews with 18 academics at a Dutch new university were analysed using a grounded theory approach. This revealed six well-rounded academic identities reflecting participants’ personal scholarly objectives: the ‘continuous learner’, ‘disciplinary expert’, ‘skilled researcher’, ‘evidence-based teacher’, ‘guardian of the research work process’ and ‘liaison officer’. The researcher role served to promote the overall development of participants’ identities. The ‘disciplinary expert’ matured through participation in the academic world and research activities. Participants discovered what ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ a researcher in the new university might entail, and contributed to the professions’ knowledge base. Participants learned to apply various research-based teaching approaches. As brokers, they linked research projects to practices in meaningful ways. The six identities embodied an emergent power in creating and preserving a complete academic profession. Participants’ accounts showed tensions inherent in an extended role portfolio and constraints in ‘role making’ given inconsistencies between the university’s espoused research mission and the one in use. These imply challenges for university managers in aligning policies and practices, and scaffolding academics’ attempts to integrate their academic roles in different worlds of practice.     

Does Higher Education Need a Hippocratic Oath?

Taking as a starting point Eric Ashby's proposal that academic staff should swear to inculcate ‘the discipline of constructive dissent’, this paper explores the question of whether or not contemporary society's ethical expectations of higher education should be codified. Three types of relationship between the university and its communities are explored: ‘first order’, arising from the university just being there; ‘second order’, being largely structured by contracts; and ‘third’ order, between the institution and its members. This leads to discussion of partnerships, stakeholding, of governance, of the public interest and of academic citizenship. Ashby's approach to academic values is then contrasted with that of the Institute of Business Ethics and the Council for Industry and Higher Education, as well as Macfarlane's concept of academic virtues. The author concludes with a proposed set of ‘10 commandments’ for members of universities and colleges.     

The deviant university student: historical discourses about student failure and ‘wastage’ in the antipodes

The emergence of academic development in Anglophone higher education was linked to post Second World War massification and concerns about student failure. These concerns were driven by increasing statistical investigations into student attrition and degree times to completion, particularly in Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand. There was a dominant discourse about student ‘wastage’ (the deviant student). However, if we fast-forward to the late 2000s, we can see that these discourses have been replaced by discourses about university responsibility and teaching quality. Drawing on Foucauldian discourse analysis, this paper aims to trace the historical roots of contemporary teaching and learning dilemmas and to show how the responsibility for student failure was gradually shifted from perceptions of deviant students to perceptions of teacher ‘deviance’, which academic development units were designed to ameliorate.     

Arresting Decline in Shared Governance: Towards a Flexible Model for Academic Participation

This paper considers tensions between ‘corporate’ models of governance focused on the governing body and more traditional, ‘consensual’ academic approaches. It argues that despite these tensions, a decline in the role of the academic community in matters of institutional governance (‘shared governance’) is neither desirable nor inevitable, and that successful academic participation is possible through a combination of the corporate and consensual modes. Tracing a decline in academic participation from its height in the 1970s, the paper evaluates the problematic nature of more recent corporate approaches to university governance and the work of Dearlove (1997), (2002) and Deem is used to reflect on ‘tensions between the logic of managerial control and the conventions of professional autonomy’ ( Deem, 1998 , p. 52). The paper ends by offering a broad and flexible model for successful shared governance, drawing on the role of academic departments and Clark’s strengthened steering core (1998).     

A study of the difficulties of care and support in new university teachers’ work

This paper discusses some findings from a small‐scale qualitative study involving ‘new’ teachers in a medium sized, regional English university. Using Grounded Theory methods to inform and guide the research, the study explores participants’ views on working as both teachers and researchers whilst also managing considerable amounts of ‘caring work’ with a diverse body of students who often need academic and pastoral support in excess of that assumed within the university academic timetables or support networks. The voices of these teachers suggest that care is an overlooked aspect of university teachers’ work, yet it plays an important part in maintaining their and their students’ sense of scholarly endeavour. Further, our findings suggest that within the university at large there is a ‘discourse of difference’ in the way that many academics conceptualize and represent the student body and students’ needs to be supported. This discourse impacts on the development of new teachers’ identities and aspirations. Some implications of these findings for implementing strategies for supporting teachers to develop both academic and pastoral roles within universities are discussed.     

A Survey of the Influencing Factors for International Academic Mobility of Chinese University Students

This research aims to understand the factors influencing international academic mobility within the Chinese higher education context. The inventory of University Students’ Perceptions of Influencing Factors for International Academic Mobility was developed and tested to enquire about Chinese university students’ perceptions of factors influencing their decisions on international academic mobility. The findings reveal that ‘mobility cost’, ‘quality of host institutions’, ‘future career prospects’, ‘financial aid and employment rate and income in host country’ play leading roles in international academic mobility. Important differences were identified in ‘gender’, ‘major‐ and family‐education background’. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to predict the interest in mobility from the external factors. The results indicated that ‘future career prospects’, ‘quality of host institutions’, ‘mobility cost’ and ‘climate environment in host country’ emerged as significant favourable pull factors for Chinese university students' interest in mobility. ‘Geographical distance’ emerged as a significant unfavourable pull factor. ‘Impact from parents’ and ‘language and intercultural training of home institutions’ emerged as favourable push factors. ‘Economic situation of home country’ emerged as an unfavorable push factor.     

The Effects of Passage of Time on Alumni Recall of ‘Student Experience’

‘Student experience’ has become a popular term with higher education managers but is theoretically under‐developed. This paper conceptualises student experience as a construction from memory and advances previous discussion within the higher education sector by distinguishing between recalled academic and social experience. The results of a predominantly quantitative survey of 883 alumni indicated that recalled academic experience had greater effect on subsequent loyalty attitudes and behaviours than recalled social experience. Cluster analyses indicated that alumni having strong ties with their university were more likely over time to identify with the recalled academic experience of their university, while those with weak ties were more likely to identify with recalled social experiences. Implications for development of alumni associations are made based on targeting groups with different levels of ties with the university.     

Students’ writing ‘in transition’ from A-levels to university: how assessment drives students’ understandings,practices and discourses

The lament that ‘students can’t write’ remains loud and defiant, even after years of research pointing to the myriad factors that make students’ writing challenging, particularly when they move into university. This paper reports on a longitudinal, ethnographic study which explored students’ writing ‘in transition’, from A-levels to university in the UK, through the critical lens offered by the academic literacies conceptual framing. This paper offers critical analysis of the ways that students, teachers and institutions position writing at A-level and university, exploring the assumptions and beliefs that underpin their understandings and practices using Ivani?’s framework of discourses of writing. The analysis proposes that the centrality of assessment in the treatment of language at both levels creates an ‘assessment discourse of writing’, which originates in school, and becomes a defining and restrictive frame for students’ writing as they move into higher education. The analysis further suggests that assessment is the principal cause for the students’ challenges with adapting to the writing requirements of university. Moreover, assessment is used as a metalanguage for discussing writing at A-levels, and can become an unhelpful ‘anchor of continuance’ for students as they move into university.     

‘On the outside I’m smiling but inside I’m crying’: communication successes and challenges for undergraduate academic writing

Abstract

Student difficulties with the transition to writing in higher education are well documented whether from a ‘study skills’, an ‘academic socialisation’ or an ‘academic literacies’ perspective. In order to more closely examine the challenges faced by students from widening participation backgrounds and diverse routes into undergraduate study, this project focuses on first-year undergraduate experiences of developing academic literacies on an Education Studies programme at one university in England. It highlights the impact of different support and guidance within and beyond their degree programme where attempts to embed academic literacy development are part of subject modules. The paper reports the findings generated using a mixed methods interpretive approach. Questionnaires were collected at the beginning (n = 48) and end of the students’ first year (n = 44), and interviews and visual data collection methods (n =19) were used at the mid-point of the academic year. Key findings highlight students’ expectations of achievement on entry to university and the influence of the emotional journey of students as they begin to make progress as academic writers. Identifying, selecting and applying academic reading were an enduring concern whilst some students struggled with the digital literacy implicit in undergraduate work. Importantly, some strategies developed to support student transition to academic writing in higher education may have unintended consequences as they progress through the first year.     

The role of HE in professional development: some reflections on a foundation degree for teaching assistants

Rapid change in higher education (HE) has lead to a reappraisal and debate about the role and ‘mission’ of the university and the university teacher. In the diversification of the HE sector, it is possible to see a shift away from the ‘advancement of knowledge’ as the primary purpose of the HE sector as a whole. This article focuses on a particular dimension of this change referred to as the ‘vocationalisation’ of HE and evident in the growing role of work-based learning (WBL) in the academy. In particular, foundation degrees provide a context for examining the role of WBL and the university in professional development. Analysis of interviews with 19 students on, or progressing from a foundation degree for teaching assistants reveals how they construct their learning and the relationship between work-based and academic learning. The author concludes that notions of ‘equivalence’ between work-based and academic learning are flawed and fail to recognise HE's distinctive contribution to professional learning, and argues for recognition of the distinctive contributions that both WBL and ‘academic’ learning make to professional development.     

Accountability,transparency, redundancy: Academic identities in an era of ‘excellence’

Higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK and elsewhere are having a hard time, pushed into the marketplace with the turn to ‘academic capitalism’ and now suffering the effects of the economic downturn. Increasingly, the discourse of ‘excellence’ is being invoked as HEIs are held to account and public funding for research is predicated on the basis of ‘impact’. What effect is this having on the long‐established ideals appealed to in the idea of a university (if such an idea can be said to exist)? This paper adopts an autoethnographic approach in order to examine the ways in which dominant discourses are operationalised in the university through everyday communications and how, in turn, this impacts on the development of academic identities. The aim of this paper then is to examine the often uncomfortable point of insertion between the personal and the institutional in and through which subjectivities and identities are constituted as a means to understand the state we're in.     

The work of academic development – occupational identity,standards of practice,and the virtues of association

Abstract

The paper addresses the questions of identity, ethics and organization for academic developers ('AD’ is used as an umbrella for academic staff development plus a number of other academic‐related professional university roles). It inquires into the degree of role differentiation between this occupational cluster and others that resemble it, outside as well as inside the universities. It argues, following Clark and Boyer, that ‘AD’ is both a scholarly and an academic pursuit, and adds that it is characterized uniquely by its focus on change and development, and that the nature of its ‘discipline’ is somewhat problematic. The paper examines the occupational freedoms of AD people and their special knowledge‐base, and argues for a ‘temptations‐based’ rather than a ‘virtues‐based’ approach to creating an ethical schema. It concludes with observations about how to achieve a firm professional identity for AD and recommends new organizational machinery to both politicize and defend the distinctive AD role in academia.     

Influence of improved teaching practices on student satisfaction ratings for two undergraduate units at an Australian university

To track the quality of instruction delivered at the University of Western Australia, the university surveys all units using its Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback (SURF) metrics, and faculties use these metrics to benchmark student satisfaction. Consequently, teaching staff are actively encouraged to adopt teaching practices that will increase the average levels of these metrics. Using a ‘before-after’ approach, we compared these metrics before and after the implementation of improved teaching practices that addressed specific weaknesses identified through student responses for two undergraduate units. Despite the implementation of improved teaching practices, SURF scores did not increase significantly for the two units assessed, due possibly to the components of the academic programme covered by the SURF questions, the field-based nature of the units, and the difficulty in measuring an increase in the SURF scores of units which already score highly. This poor sensitivity of the SURF metrics to the implementation of improved teaching practices could have implications for their use for performance assessment by the university.     

Doing Good and Feeling Bad: the work of women university teachers

Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 27 women academics in faculties of education in Canada, this article explores some of the consequences of the gendered division of labour in universities. Jean Baker Miller's phrase, ‘doing good and feeling bad’, characterised the women in the study. They reported working excessively hard, taking responsibility for supporting others, including colleagues and students, and being ‘good department citizens’. Yet they seemed disappointed by the results. Their ‘feeling bad’ is related to the reward system in academic life; a sense that there is an unequal division of labour, with women ‘working harder'; and an expectation that women will take greater responsibility for the nurturing and housekeeping side of academic life. The article explores ‘individual’ and ‘structural’ explanations for the findings and raises further questions about caring in university teaching, the situation of tokens and outsiders in university departments and the prospects for altering university priorities in these times of cutbacks and retrenchment.     

Tracking the nomadic life of the educational researcher: What future for feminist public intellectuals and the performative university?

Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the postmodern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory-practice divide merely collapsed in an era of ‘new knowledge work’, or has the university just become one aspect of market states and global capitalism? Knowledge-based economies locate universities as central to the commodification and management of knowledge, while at the same time the legitimacy of the university and the academic as knowledge producers is challenged by postmodernist, feminist, post-colonial and indigenous claims within a wider trend towards the ‘democratisation of knowledge’ and a new educational instrumentalism and opportunism. What becomes of the educational researcher, and indeed their professional organisations, in this changing socio-political and economic scenario? Is our role one of policy service, policy critique, technical expert or public intellectual? In particular what place is there for feminist public intellectuals in a so-called era of postfeminism and public-private convergence? The paper draws on feminist and critical perspectives to mount a case for the importance of the public intellectual in the performative postmodern university.     

The ivory tower revisited

The corollary of the concept of the ‘ivory tower’, as reflected in the writings of Plato and Newman amongst others, was, paradoxically, the vital importance of the university for wider society. Nevertheless from the mid-twentieth century, the esteem in which a ‘liberal’ university education was held was diminished by rising expectations that higher education institutions would actively contribute to addressing broader socio-economic challenges through ‘knowledge-transfer’, education for employment, and community service. However while this linear conception of universities' ‘third mission’ eroded their ‘ivory tower’ status, the death knell of the ‘ivory tower’ rings in contemporary literature on higher education, which articulates a dialectical view of its historical development in which the university and wider society are synthesised in the ‘engaged university’. With its focus on reciprocal ‘knowledge-exchange’, the co-creation of knowledge through teaching and learning, and civic engagement, the ‘engaged university’ embraces the ‘other’ as intrinsic to its identity. Yet arguably the increasing instrumentalism and democratisation of higher education are irrevocably eroding the academic freedom and institutional autonomy upon which universities' immeasurable contribution to society ultimately depends.     

‘Birth work’ accompaniment and PhD supervision: an alternative feminist pedagogy for the neoliberal university

In this paper, we discuss how ‘with-woman’ midwifery and doula care provide resources for rethinking the theory and practice of academic supervision from a feminist perspective. We identify how the tradition of accompaniment in both birth work and academia is under threat given the economic reforms facing public sector education and health care. Despite these pressures, we suggest that the practice of focusing on the pregnant woman as an ‘expert’ on her pregnancy rather than on the foetus or the delivery – that is, the ‘product’ of her pregnancy – would help transform how we theorise and practise academic supervision. The aim of the supervisory relation would mean supporting the student’s direct relation to the intellectual, embodied and emotional process of completing the PhD. Such an approach suggests ways in which the pedagogical practices of contemporary midwifery and doula care can inform academic supervision in the neoliberal university.     

The hollowed-out university? A critical analysis of changing institutional and academic norms in UK higher education

This article argues that UK universities are at risk from a process of ‘hollowing out’ – that is, of becoming institutions with no distinctive social role and no ethical raison d'etre – and that this is a process which undermines the possibilities for meaningful institutional and academic identities. It begins with a condensed, and necessarily partial, review of recent UK higher education policy trends to indicate the historical context and direction of change and to highlight the growing separation of management and academic agendas and the linked rise in gloss and spin compared to academic substance. In the remainder of this article we focus on the normative dimension of these changes and unpack their implications for the nature of the university and of academic work. In so doing, we illustrate the breadth and depth of the threat posed by ‘hollowed-out’ universities, indicate alternative, more positive currents and call for a ‘re-valuation’ of the UK university.