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The university as a bounded institution
Thriving or (just) surviving?
Is academia in the twenty-first century thriving? Or is it just, and only just, surviving? On the one hand, academia appears to have thrived in recent years and decades, which have witnessed the proliferation of new specialisms and disciplines and the expansion of universitiesâ scale and scope. A seemingly ever-increasing range and quantity of people and organisations are coming to be associated with the university, whether as students, staff, sponsors, partners or other forms of stakeholders, as governments and societies place great faith in the capacity of academic knowledge to help solve many of its economic, technological, environmental, societal, health and security issues. The notions of academic work and academic identity have themselves expanded to accommodate these developments, with âentrepreneurialâ, âengagedâ, âconnectedâ and âimpactfulâ emerging as new academic modalities.
Yet many believe that academia, far from thriving, is barely surviving. A closer intertwinement with governments and industries is perceived by some not as a display of authentic, autonomous agency, but as symptomatic of a narrow-minded, short-termist and business-like approach to academic work and management which is at odds with traditional academic values. Academic freedom and autonomy, arguably academiaâs most deeply entrenched values (Russell, 1993), are seen to be challenged on multiple fronts. Support for research increasingly means following the agendas of external actors and interests (particularly those of industry and governments), rather than agendas geared towards scholarship, disciplinarity or theoretical advancement. It also increasingly means accepting judgement according to externally derived criteria, such as ârelevanceâ and âimpactâ, which do not necessarily align with other values and criteria, such as creativity, collegiality and rigorous scholarship. And while the thriving of universities has led to new, expansive academic identities, the just surviving of universities has had an opposite effect. The business-minded and short-term model is perceived to have challenged and undermined traditional values associated with academic identity by leading to an increasing number of academics employed on fixed-term and/or teaching-only contracts, restricting their capacity to exercise autonomy and engage in free and open inquiry and scholarship.
The paradox of the twenty-first-century university, then, is that to thrive it must cross boundaries and be engaged in an increasingly complex, multidimensional and knowledge intensive society (Brennan, Papatsiba, Sousa, & Hoffman, 2016); but that to survive means simultaneously reinforcing the integrity of its own boundaries and âboundednessâ so as not to undermine its distinctive institutional identity and thereby deprive society of its distinctive value and contributions. Amidst these âcompeting logicsâ (Shields & Watermeyer, 2020, p. 13), a key challenge for the university and its stakeholders is to consider what conceptual tools and principles can be used to ensure an appropriate balance between these opposing pressures; in other words, how to secure the universityâs future as an institution which neither overly strengthens nor overly weakens its boundaries. In this book, I put forward what I call the âboundary lensâ as just such a conceptual tool. I briefly introduce the âboundary lensâ later in this chapter and elaborate on it in Chapter 2. First, I want to add some further context to this âparadox of the universityâ with an overview of key developments facing academia in recent decades, including a brief âpolicy historyâ of how these developments have played out in one national context, that of the United Kingdom.
Context: boundary pressures, the âthird missionâ and the âimpact agendaâ
From at least the early 1980s, academic research and related activities, as well as the governance of academic institutions more generally, have become matters of heightened significance for governments and societies across the globe (Deem, Hillyard, & Reed, 2007; Martin, 2011). This was a time when the importance of academic knowledge for economic competitiveness was starting to become apparent to governments and industries across Europe and America (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, 1982; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1995; Martin, 2011; Smith, Ward, & House, 2011), prompting the notion of a âthird missionâ for universities (de Jong, Barker, Cox, Sveinsdottir, & Van den Besselaar, 2013; Kitagawa & Lightowler, 2013; Perkmann et al., 2013). In addition to their research and teaching missions, universities were considered to also have a third mission to contribute to the improvement of society more directly through reorientations of their research and teaching and also by using academic knowledge and expertise to engage directly in civil society or the market.
The 1980s also witnessed the emergence of New Public Management that has since characterised institutional governance across many sectors and nations, with a focus on value for money, measured performance and accountability (Clark, 1998, 2004; Deem, 2004; Lambert, 2003; Shattock, 2017; Watermeyer & Olssen, 2016). Under these conditions, academic managers are incentivised and empowered to exert influence on their institutions, whilst autonomy for individual academics âis ⌠secured through compliance with the ⌠expectations of their institutions and fundersâ (Shields & Watermeyer, 2020, p. 12), leading to claims of âdwindling agency, authority and legitimacyâ (Watermeyer, 2019, p. 9). Managerial steering is often geared less towards the creation of conditions for academics to enact traditional values of free and critical inquiry and more towards maximising âproductivityâ (Rhoades, 2001, p. 619), narrowly defined in terms of revenue or other indicators measured by national and international assessments and league tables (Deem et al., 2007; Hazelkorn, 2007, 2008; Marginson & van der Wende, 2007).
It is within the international context of the emergence of New Public Management and the notion of a third mission for universities that the UK government introduced a national performance-related research funding system, in which assessments of universitiesâ research âqualityâ would significantly determine academic research grant allocations. The first such national assessment was conducted in 1986 and they have since been conducted every three to seven years (with the periods between assessments generally increasing over time). In the 1980s and 1990s, these national assessments of universitiesâ research were focused quite generically on the quality rather than the impact of research, while scrutiny of the economic impact of research was targeted at research councils rather than universities themselves (Kearnes & Wienroth, 2011; Watermeyer, 2016; see also policy documents, Department for Business Innovation & Skills, 2010; Office of Science and Technology, 1993; Research Councils UK, 2007; Warry, 2006). However, by 2006 the government felt that more direct reforms were needed to reorient academics towards more socially and economically useful research, leading, in 2008, to âimpactâ being confirmed as a new element of future research assessments (Department for Education & Skills, 2006; HEFCE, 2009; Smith et al., 2011). The first assessment to include âimpactâ was the 2014 run, which had been rebranded as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and since that time the political emphasis on impact has continued to grow (Wilsdon, 2017), reflected in the decision to increase the weighting of impact from 20% to 25% for the next REF (originally scheduled for 2021 but currently delayed due to the 2019 coronavirus pandemic).
The âimpact agendaâ therefore refers to a set of policies and an accompanying discourse which encourage and incentivise academic institutions and researchers to shift focus towards more societally and economically ârelevantâ problems (Chubb, Watermeyer, & Wakeling, 2017; Martin, 2011; Smith et al., 2011). The impact agenda is arguably more explicit in the United Kingdom than elsewhere, but similar developments are playing out globally. These conditions operate âselectivelyâ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 55; Leydesdorff, 2010, p. 370; Robertson, 2010, p. 193) on academic actors, making it possible for academics to achieve distinction (Watermeyer & Chubb, 2019) according to new kinds of criteria and values which derive from or take place amongst âexternal publicsâ (Putnam, 2009, p. 23), thereby challenging academia as a âboundedâ field in which the primary aim of academics is to achieve distinction and prestige amongst themselves (Bourdieu, 1975; Cooper, 2009; Smith et al., 2011; Turnbull & Antalffy, 2009). The result of academicsâ âcreative engagement with [these] shifting structural conditionsâ (Cooper, 2009, p. 629) has been that participation in boundary-crossing activities has become not only normalised, but a marker and predictor of academic success (Perkmann et al., 2013; Terama, Smallman, Lock, Johnson, & Austwick, 2016). The systematic study of how academic boundaries are being (re)construed and (re)shaped through interactions across them is therefore significant and timely.
Introducing the âboundary lensâ
Many higher education theorists have adopted the âboundaryâ metaphor to make sense of contemporary issues and debates related to the role, organisation, activities and relation of universities. For example, universitiesâ efforts to maintain institutional autonomy and distinctiveness while also attempting to increase their social reach and relevance has been conceptualised in terms of managing and (re)negotiating âboundariesâ (Bacevic, 2019; Hatakenaka, 2004; Henkel, 2007; Kogan, 2005; Nickolai, Hoffman, & Trautner, 2012; Wright, 2016). The metaphor has also been applied to specific developments, for example to the expansion of new kinds of âboundary-crossingâ activities (e.g., outreach and commercialisation), âboundary structuresâ (e.g., technology transfer offices and transdisciplinary research centres) and âboundary-spanningâ professional identities (e.g., academic entrepreneurs or âknowledge brokersâ) (Cervantes, 2017; Chau, Gilman, & Serbanica, 2017; Koryakina, Sarrico, & Teixeira, 2015; Lam, 2010; Primeri & Reale, 2015).
Theorists have thus been drawn to the boundary metaphor to study both âprocess and outcomeâ (Vakkuri, 2004, p. 17), that is, both how academic change takes place and what academia is becoming. In this book, I bring these uses of the boundary metaphor into a âboundary lensâ, a conceptual tool for analysing these processes and outcomes. To do so, I join other authors (Beck & Young, 2005; Muller & Young, 2019; Nickolai et al., 2012; Sataøen, 2018) in drawing from the theoretical legacy of Basil Bernstein (2000), who grounds the application of the boundary metaphor within his sociological conceptualisations of âpowerâ and âcontrolâ over boundary processes and outcomes.
Briefly, following Bernstein (2000), I understand a social boundary as a socially constructed device for regulating a relationship between two or more categories, such as categories of actor or group, or categories of activity or domains of knowledge. For example, the discipline of physics is relatively bounded from that of chemistry or history, and we call those who hold authority over these knowledge domains physicists, chemists and historians. At a higher order, academic knowledge in general is relatively âboundedâ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 99; Henkel, 2004, p. 168; Lam, 2010, p. 333) from non-academic knowledge.
All social boundaries, including academic boundaries, can be understood as a reflection of, and an attempt to preserve, the âpowerâ held by a given group over some social asset or position, where âpowerâ is understood as a groupâs capacity to self-define a domain of authority for itself (Bernstein, 2000) â say authority over knowledge claims related to the physical world or to historical facts and interpretations. They are an âattempt to regulate those who have accessâ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 30). In this way, academic boundaries âare conceptual and normative, as well as organizational. They serve to reinforce identification by highlighting differences from other groupsâ (Henkel, 2004, p. 168).
Although the power to self-define a domain of authority may, as will be discussed later, sometimes give the appearance of âinsulationâ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 6) from the complexities, politics and problems of wider society, in reality this is only a partial insulation. As noted in an insightful OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI, 1982) report, âeven the phenomenon of the âivory towerâ must be understood in terms of interaction, not as a symbol of an illusory independenceâ (p. 17). This is because no boundary, no matter how powerful and durable, is completely self-sustaining; they always require broader societal legitimacy. Therefore, all bounded groups and categories are under some pressure to show their value to wider society, or at least to some sections of it. Therefore, precisely because academia is interested in maintaining its relatively bounded and powerful position in society, it must actively enter into some form of relationship with society, in particular an âexchange relationshipâ (Kogan, 2000, p. 215).
In this book, I conceptualise any instance of a group or institution showing its value to wider society as a form of exchange which I call a âboundary transactionâ. They can take many forms. For example, an academic paper or report could constitute a form of boundary transaction if it comes to be taken up in...
