Re-empowering academics in a corporate culture: an exploration of workload and performativity in a university

Neo-liberal reforms in higher education have resulted in corporate managerial practices in universities and a drive for efficiency and productivity in teaching and research. As a result, there has been an intensification of academic work, increased stress for academics and an emphasis on accountability and performativity in universities. The paper proposes that while managerialism in modern universities is now the norm, corporate approaches have disempowered academics in their institutions and reduced productivity because they ignore the nature of academic work. Using Foucault’s conception of power relations in institutions, policies that directly affect academic work such as workload allocation and performance management are identified as key ways in which power is exercised in universities. The paper reports on a case study in one university which explored the relationship between the academic workload allocation and performance management policies and concludes that a more balanced power relationship is needed in which academics can have more influence over these key processes which control their work so they preserve the self-managed aspects of academic work and the intrinsic motivations driving their careers.     

Professional loyalties of university academics: Four ideal types

University academics display a high degree of internal differentiation in terms of their professional interests, diverse roles and divided loyalties. Perceptions from academics at the University of Melbourne regarding these elements are used in this paper to construct a typology which distinguishes four different groups according to their levels of research and institutional commitment. Such typologies serve to highlight not only the essential nature of universities but also the importance of the research culture. Implications of emphasising research are seen to have possible detrimental effects on the functioning of a university and these are addressed.     

Redefinition of the relationships between academics and their university

This paper primarily deals with the relationships between academics and their university in European countries. The aim of this paper is therefore not to produce new results but provide a synthesis of the main trends that can be identified from the literature and then suggest what can be borrowed from sociological theories to highlight the on-going evolutions. The first section of the paper reviews the main results to be drawn from previous research on this issue and focuses on the management of academic careers and the management of academic activities at the university level. The second section suggests alternative interpretative frameworks to be borrowed from sociological theory in order to complete the already existing research and develop new perspectives to explain and interpret these changes in the relationships between academics and their institutions. Four perspectives are successively explored particularly useful here: a sociology of work; a labor market perspective; an analysis in terms of careers and trajectories and finally considerations about the traditional tension between organizations and professions.     

创新高校思想政治工作的思考

从新世纪开始,我国将进入全面建设小康社会,加快推进社会主义现代化建设的新的发展阶段。新世纪、新形势、新任务对高校思想政治工作提出了新的、更高的要求,高校思想政治工作要想得到真正的改进和加强,必须在继承和发扬优良传统的基础上,在观念、内容、方法、手段、机制等方面求是创新,在为时代发展服务中确立自身的地位,在改进和创新中推动高校思想政治工作的发展。     

Surviving the performance management of academic work: evidence from young Chinese academics

ABSTRACT

Despite predominant macro-level changes of performance management at Chinese universities, little attention has been paid to how the disciplinary technologies have been interpreted and enacted at the level of individual academics. Using qualitative data with 26 participants at a Chinese research university, this study provides evidence of collective compliance with the performative imperatives. The study indicates that tacit compliance has been reinforced through the coercive powers of reward, punishment, and bureaucratization and consolidated through the normative influences of the Chinese Confucian culture and subjectification via creating new notions of ‘academic success’. Moreover, the process of perverse learning, during which opportunistic behaviors are taken to ‘play the game’, has contributed to the emergence of performance paradox. In addition, the findings do not indicate any vocal resistance in public but conscientious efforts have been taken in private by some of the participants to navigating through the performance paradox in order to alleviate the dysfunctional consequences caused by the perverse learning.     

论如何做好高校办公室工作

本文就如何做好高校办公室工作进行了论述,并提出工作人员应具备的五种意识和五种能力,以及办公室应建立健全的六种制度.     

高校教师教学工作量标准比较研究

确定高校教师的教学工作量基本标准,是高等教育管理规范化的要求,也是高校人事分配制度改革深化过程中必须解决的问题,因为它直接涉及高校人力资源的投入数量,与人力资源的效益密切相联.对美国、印度、德国的教师教学工作量基本标准的确定依据、确定结果进行了初步比较分析研究,并在此基础上对我国高校教师教学工作量标准提出建议.     

Analysis of policies for allocating university resources in heterogeneous social systems: a case study of university admissions in Sri Lanka

This paper focuses on the complex nature of designing andeffectively implementing policies, assuring fair access to universityeducational opportunities in heterogeneous societies. First, the universityadmission problem is modeled as a load balancing, scheduling and resourceallocation problem in a heterogeneous distributed system with policies toallocate student loads in university resources. Then the paper analyses thedifferent policies implemented in Sri Lanka for the last three decades todistribute the limited university level training resources in theengineering and medical faculties equally among the citizens.It is observed that in Sri Lanka, the schools in thirteen out of twentytwo districts did not produce a single engineering or medicine student until1974. Two districts enjoyed several times their fair share. Other districtshad less than their fair share in access to free higher education resources.It is also observed that no standardisation methods have been used in bothadding and comparing the marks received in multiple-language examinationsfor different subjects.The policy changes helped the talented low-income students who live indisadvantaged areas to set access, to begin, complete and get ahead on theirown. Furthermore, it generated a new wave of regional economic development.The same policies badly affected the happy few who enjoyed more than theirfair share of the university resources. Dube claimed the policy wasdiscriminatory and contributed to the on-going civil war (1995) .     

A different approach to university rankings

Educationalists are well able to find fault with rankings on numerous grounds and may reject them outright. However, given that they are here to stay, we could also try to improve them wherever possible. All currently published university rankings combine various measures to produce an overall score using an additive approach. The individual measures are first normalized to make the figures ‘comparable’ before they are combined. Various normalization procedures exist but, unfortunately, they lead to different results when applied to the same data: hence the compiler’s choice of normalization actually affects the order in which universities are ranked. Other difficulties associated with the additive approach include differing treatments of the student to staff ratio, and unexpected rank reversals associated with the removal or inclusion of institutions. We show that a multiplicative approach to aggregation overcomes all of these difficulties. It also provides a transparent interpretation for the weights. The proposed approach is very general and can be applied to many other types of ranking problem.     

班主任工作中的辩证方法

从事班主任工作,应处理好各种辩证关系;了解学生的性格时,要把握好变量与常量的关系;理解学生的行为时,要处理好偶然与必然的关系;评价学生的成绩时,要运用好定与肯定的表达;判断学生的能力时,要掌握好有限与无限的分寸。     

高校学生工作精细化管理的可行性研究

当前高校学生工作面临种种缺失,精细化管理作为一种企业理念和文化引入高校能够着力解决学生工作中精细与效率的矛盾,最终促进学生工作粗放模式向精细模式转变。本文通过界定相关概念,分析学生工作的缺失和引进精细化管理的可行性,从而阐述学生工作精细化管理的价值和意义。     

Images of a new sub-culture in the Australian university: Perceptions of non-nurse academics of the discipline of nursing

It is crucial to the development and credibility of the nursing profession that its knowledge base be recognised as legitimate scholarly endeavour by established members of academia. For that reason, this report concerns examination of the attitudes and values of a group of non-nurse academics employed in universities in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and the degree to which they view nursing as an epistemic entity. Perceptions are considered within the dual contexts of recent major changes in nursing education and in academia. Naturalistic Inquiry, informed by a hermeneutic attitude, is employed as a heuristic to examine the sub-culture of nursing within the broad culture of academia. Analysis of extensive interview data provided by the contemplation of study participants provides emergent themes. Several metaphors are chosen to explicate the findings that nursing is largely perceived to be nebulous, atheoretical, and subservient to the medical profession. Implications are discussed and recommendations are made with the view to encourage modernisation of the university through improving internal communication and challenging traditional models of operations within the tertiary sector.     

论加强高校档案管理工作研究

随着我国高校建设的迅猛发展,对高校档案管理工作的要求越来越高,本文在对我国高校当前档案管理工作现状及存在的问题进行分析并提出相应的对策建议,以期能对促进我国档案管理工作提供有益借鉴。     

浅谈高校学生管理工作点滴

本文论述了高校人性化教育管理,优良学风,入学教育及宿舍秩序,辅导员工作等都是学生管理工作的重点,因此从这四个方面加以改进,推行更加人性化的教育模式,贴近学生生活实际,才能更好的做好高校学生管理工作。     

Qualitative differences in approaches to teaching first year university science

Changing lecturers' teaching strategies to improve learning in higher education may mean first having to address the intentions associated with those strategies. The study reported in this paper used a phenomenographic approach to explore the intentions associated with the teaching strategies of first year physical science lecturers. Approaches found ranged from those involving information transmission to those where the intention was to develop learning through conceptual change, but in all approaches, logical relations were found between intention and strategy. The implications for attempts to improve teaching through developing strategies are discussed.     

略谈高校的档案管理工作

随着知识经济信息化发展,对高校的档案管理工作提出了新的要求。笔者想从档案学的理论,认真分析那些与时代发展不相适宜的工作理念和工作模式,希冀用新的思路,新的途径,新办法来解决,从而提出几点改革的措施来完善高校的档案管理工作。