The neo-liberal university 

Many of us are critical of the increasingly neo-liberal university sector. We are frustrated by the various ways in which our academic performance is now quantified, including REF, teaching evaluations, NSS, citation indexes, quantity of funding achieved. We recognize that this quantification and categorization of our work is flawed, asocial and fails to capture what is valuable about our academic activity: that knowledge and education are values in their own right and are essential in a critical and democratic public sphere. We frequently highlight this in casual conversation, in academic publications, in collective campaigns (e.g. Campaign for the Public University) or within our union.

A critique from the failing

All too often, however, when we individually achieve success (have a project funded, are invited to give a plenary, are evaluated at 5/5 for our teaching) we accept the proposition that this is a justified reward for our individual performance. Consequently, it is only when we ‘fail’ (when our teaching scores are only ‘average’, are ranked lower than expected in REF, fail to win funding, have articles rejected, or simply do not submit these) that we explain our performance on the basis of structural and social conditions (institutional support or lack thereof, subject-specific complexities, our family, health, gender, or etc.) or highlight the lack of validity of those measures used to evaluate us. As such these explanations appear as illegitimate post-hoc ‘excuses’ for under-performance. Moreover individual and even collective criticism is left to those with the least institutional power. But the measurement of excellence is a collective problem.

Performance Management

The context in which this is occurring is that universities are increasingly employing systems of Performance Management, a set of management techniques based on the assumption that there is a normal distribution of ‘talent’ and that only a few will excel. ‘Objective’ targets and measureable outcomes, like those described above, are used to appraise, or provide the criteria for disciplining, under-performing academics. Fear is used to motivate. And, while any single target may seem ‘reasonable’, most of us will fairly regularly fall short of meeting every target every year. This makes us universally vulnerable. Performance Management undermines our ability to do academic work and puts us into competition with one-another (since only those achieving at ‘above average’ will prosper). Performance Management provides a disincentive for experimentation in teaching, rewards research specialization and the individual and institutional accumulation and reproduction of ‘expertise’, means that those working in unpopular or difficult-to-fund fields are marginalized, and that time spent on activities, including research-led-activism or policy-related work, that are not ‘core’ will make us vulnerable within our institutions. Perhaps ironically, it is increasingly only those academics who ‘succeed’ within the managerial regime who retain the freedom to engage in political and campaigning activities.

In this context it is essential that criticism – and acknowledgement of the flawed and divisive nature of these assessments of success and failure – comes not only from those of us who are frustrated and having problems but also, most critically, from those of us achieving success within the current system.

The Academic Pledge is a way for each of us, as individual academics, to commit to acting in our professional lives in a way that is consistent with such a critical approach.