Academic Identities in Higher Education

The Changing European Landscape

Linda Evans, Jon Nixon

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781350011038
• eBook ISBN: 9781472579515
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

Academic identity is continually being formed and reformed by the institutional, socio-cultural and political contexts within which academic practitioners operate. In Europe the impact of the 2008 economic crisis and its continuing aftermath accounts for many of these changes, but the diverse cultures and histories of different regions are also significant factors, influencing how institutions adapt and resist, and how identities are shaped. Academic Identities in Higher Education highlights the multiple influences acting upon academic practitioners and documents some of the ways in which they are positioning themselves in relation to these often competing pressures. At a time when higher education is undergoing huge structural and systemic change there is increasing uncertainty regarding the nature of academic identity. Traditional notions compete with new and emergent ones, which are still in the process of formation and articulation. Academic Identities in Higher Education explores this process of formation and articulation and addresses the question: what does it mean to be an academic in 21st century Europe?

Part One

Frameworks and Perspectives

1

The Academic Condition: Unstable Structures, Ambivalent Narratives, Dislocated Identities

Niilo Kauppi

Nobody does the job for which we were formed and that we love. We spend our time fighting to do the job for which we get paid.

French university teacher, EducPros Poll 2014, my translation¹

Why do we bother with academic identity? Why should we be interested in the question? Why should we ask academics anything about their academic identity? Students engaging in qualitative research and interviews are frequently advised not to take what people say about themselves at face value. People will always try to present themselves in the best possible light, forgetting nasty episodes and remembering the more positive ones. When pressed on nastier points they will hide and attempt to camouflage their real motives, even lie to themselves. So why bother with what academics say about their academic identity? The short answer is that although academic identities are generally of considerable interest to academics but hardly to anyone else, radical changes have been taking place in academia since at least the 1980s. Academic identities, conceptions of one’s worth and place in society, as well as one’s sense of responsibility have been dramatically transformed. For that reason, academic identity might be of interest even for some non-academics. They might find parallels in their own lives.

Were Immanuel Kant still with us he would not be surprised by these dramatic transformations. Since the 1980s the classical contradiction between freedom and authority, which he dissected in Der Streit der Fakultäten ([1798]1988), has entered a new stage. While academics continue being ‘business men or technicians of learning’ (14) subject to the whims of government (authority), the battleground has shifted with globalisation and neoliberal technologies of power. As a result the space where ‘reason is authorized to speak openly’ (17) has further shrunk and the value of independent thinking (freedom), so prized by Kant, has plummeted in the academic stock market. In this sense, placing ‘rationality’ as one of the main ingredients of the European model (Todorov, 2005) is dangerously misleading. It is rather the struggle between independent thinking and the attempts to govern it that defines European ‘rationality’ – its limits and possibilities.

Globalisation and neoliberalism have had a powerful impact on academic identities and the university as an institution. They have led to growing uncertainty and mistrust, to a concentration of power in the hands of university presidents, administrators in ministries and politicians, and to the accumulation of resources by a few institutions that are deemed excellent, widening the gap between first-class and second-class institutions and scholars. Neoliberal reforms subordinate science to political and bureaucratic interests. In this process, key concepts of academic activity are redefined. Because of a lack of understanding of scientific inquiry, these dominant interests require transforming quality, excellence, autonomy and freedom – banners that have united all academics for centuries – into governable objects, measurable or calculable numerical objectifications such as rankings and impact factors (Kauppi, 2013). It has meant removing from academics the right to define excellence. Paradoxically this mania for making science ‘understandable’ to ‘anyone’, of making science ‘useful’, has meant shattering the traditional scientific ethos.

Nothing seems to stop the triumph of neoliberalism in academe. But while the regime’s bureaucratic reform frenzy produces the academic identities it needs, countries, disciplines, departments and individual identifications vary in terms of the extent they appropriate or resist its well-known precepts (see Nixon’s introduction to this volume). Resistance to these forces of change is unevenly distributed. In Europe, where higher education is mostly publicly funded, more resistance can be observed from the humanities and the social sciences, from countries in whose self-image globalisation plays a modest role, from individuals operating uniquely in their national contexts, while less resistance will be found from those disciplines that are linked with economic development, business, or the international, from those countries that are dependent culturally and economically on globalisation processes, and from individuals who invest heavily in the international. The argument of this essay is that neoliberalism, through its bureaucratically led reform frenzy, produces not only identitarian uncertainty amid a politically more or less unorganised academe but also a scientifically legitimised ambivalent discourse that confuses more than clarifies the mission of the university and research.

In terms of national higher education systems, France has been presented (and has presented itself) as a cultural exception to the triumph of neoliberalism. But has it really succeeded in shielding itself from the onslaught of neoliberalism? As it is often at the margins of social phenomena that the conditions enabling its existence are visible, analysis of the French case can be particularly instructive (see Evans and Cosnefroy, 2013, for a perceptive presentation of the French system of higher education). It shows what form resistance can take.

Tensions in French academe

A prestigious national tradition of cultural ‘exportation’ has legitimised resistance to ‘Anglo-Saxon dominance’, including the hegemony of English, and the transformations under way. Indeed neoliberalism cannot be disassociated from broader historical ‘culture wars’ between France and the United Kingdom/United States. There has been for some time a clear sentiment that France as a cultural power is in decline, despite the fact that some elements of French culture, luxury products such as perfumes, its cuisine and wines, are important export items especially in East Asia. Therefore, and in contrast to attitudes in many other European countries, reforms of academe are in general not viewed in a positive light as they are seen as being imposed from the outside and being part of American cultural hegemony.

But even in France opposition to the neoliberal academic regime has been selectively reactive more than proactive. With the appropriate reservations on the reliability of the tools used to measure quality and excellence, a majority of politicians and university administrators have embraced the precepts of global visibility and competition. This has led to the adoption of grade degrees (the canonical LMD License (or Bachelor), Master, Doctorate) and the fusion of institutions of higher education to cut costs and to improve positions in global rankings (Assemblée nationale, 2013; Hansens, 2011; Kauppi, 2013). University personnel and the public have been more divided (Nourry, 2014). Lower level administrators have been going along with this movement, while teachers and researchers (a distinction that has to be made in France where teaching and research institutions are separated into universities/grandes écoles and research institutions such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientific (CNRS), the French publicly funded National Scientific Research Council) as well as public opinion have been very critical of the reforms. This has led to the usual politics of petitions, strikes and protests.

As for the official motives for the reform, the internationalisation of higher education and the global competition between countries and higher education institutions top the list. These motives are very clear in the new French law for higher education and research (Assemblée nationale, 2013: 5): ‘Our higher education and research system is too complex and difficult to read . . . Our system has become illegible not only for national stakeholders and users, but also for their counterparts in Europe and the world. Simplicity is a necessity expected by everyone, which will greatly contribute to our national and international attractiveness’ (my translation).

The four goals of this new law, which for the first time in French history unites all the laws dealing with higher education and research, are the following: (1) democratise higher education, improve student success, increase the percentage of university diplomees to 50 per cent of the age group; (2) provide more visibility to French research in the face of big economic and social challenges, in harmony with the EU program Horizon 2020; (3) reinforce cooperation between the various actors involved in higher education and research and reduce institutional complexity, unite collegiality in the university and excellence for all; and (4) amplify the presence of French research in European programs and the international influence of French universities, schools and laboratories, encourage the mobility of students, teachers, administrative and technical personnel, and increase the attractiveness of our sites.

The goals also include becoming part of the EU’s ‘U-Multirank’ system.² This should enable France to ‘get rid of our dependency on international classification systems that are not adapted to the culture and academic history of research in Europe’ (Assemblée nationale, 2013: 16), a goal that unites protagonists and opponents of the law worried about loss of French national prestige. The overall aim is to correct the modest success of France in rankings such as the Shanghai ranking and more broadly to ‘clearly replace our country into a European and international process’ (Assemblée nationale, 2013: 16).

Despite the explicitly stated political will to simplify the organisation of French higher education, the new French law of reform, known as the ‘Fioraso law’ following the minister in charge of education, Geneviéve Fioraso, has led to a great deal of confusion and has exacerbated tensions (Nourry, 2014). In a few days a protest on the web gathered more than 11,000 signatures. Academics are asked to compete internationally but at the same time their budgets are being cut. Given the official espousal of neoliberal policy for higher education and research, the horizon of possibilities for proactive alternatives is quite limited as attempts in formulating alternative developments that would not be a return to the ‘good old days’ have failed to materialise. Neoliberal precepts have hijacked the future: at the moment there simply are no credible, coherently formulated political alternatives. As in most European countries, the sense of disempowerment among French academics has been aggravated by the homogeneity of the academic scene: once the only financer, the state, cuts its budget there are no alternatives but to protest against these measures. But, while for academics in some other European countries such as the United Kingdom resorting to financial support from businesses or even privatising higher education as in Poland are viable options, for French academics this would be unimaginable. Higher education is seen as a public service provided by the Republican state, not as an economic service. (See Romuald Normand’s contribution to this volume – Chapter 9.)

Notwithstanding the gloomy situation within the academy, a 2014 French moral barometer in higher education and research found that for a large majority of its 2,000 respondents academic work was still a source of satisfaction (EducPros Poll, 2014). This result is quite similar to that obtained by the UK Times Higher Education Best University Workplace Survey 2014, which inspired the French survey: 81 per cent of British respondents expressed satisfaction, as 82 per cent of the French respondents did. Pride in working in their establishment was somewhat stronger in France (three-quarters positive responses) than in Britain (two-thirds positive responses).

The similarity breaks down however when it comes to salary. If 61 per cent of British academics feel that their employer offers a decent wage, the reverse is true in France, where only 25 per cent of respondents share this view. Similarly, while 63 per cent of the THE respondents are enthusiastic about the future of their establishment, only 37 per cent of the French share this feeling. The negative impact of work on health is more strongly felt in France than in Britain (51% of respondents, against 32%), while concern for the well-being at work seems neglected in the eyes of the French (only 33% believe that their institution is interested in their well-being), which is less so in Britain (46%). Finally, visions of the future differ widely from one country to another. If 63 per cent of the British are enthusiastic about the future of their establishment, only 37 per cent of the French share that feeling.

Overall, academics on both side of the Channel still seem to be satisfied with their work. Divergences concerning the future and the institution might be attributed to a general collective psychological makeup, the French being considered more pessimistic and sceptical than the British. In terms of the broader transformations of academic life divergences could have to do with a general siege mentality in France, a nearly-alone-against-the-world situation, combined with a sense that things are only getting worse, partly because of what is happening outside of France.

France has not escaped a more general depreciation of the value of academic work, and more specifically teaching. As a French university teacher expressed it, there is ‘(a) lot of stress, little time to devote to research, many administrative tasks . . . The teacher-researcher job is conducive to fragmentation. With two pitfalls: wanting visibility at all costs and chasing the best indicators . . . There is a growing dichotomy between teachers and researchers who are genuinely researchers, and others who run the Faculty and departments or invest in property, such as serving on the boards . . .’ (French university teacher, EducPros Poll, 2014, my translation). As in other European countries bureaucratically led reforms are one of the main reasons that academics have come to feel like strangers in their own house: ‘The institutional instability of the past 10 years has led to instability in my daily tasks, in the content of these assignments and in the forms they take. Hardly have I identified an assignment than a given task disappears or radically changes. This instability is the source of a generalized stress that can only lead to disengagement. This stress is not related to the actors but, from my point of view, is structural’ (French university teacher, EducPros Poll, 2014, my translation). According to some the result has been an explosion of burnouts (Nourry, 2014). The low morale is especially clear in the humanities and the social sciences. In the same poll, academics in the arts, letters, languages and social sciences were on average less satisfied with their condition compared to academics in law, economy and management – 39 per cent compared to 61 per cent.

But compared to academics in many other European countries French university teachers and researchers have it well. At least some jobs are still tenured, although the overall tendency is to limit the number of permanent positions and increase the number of temporary positions. I am no doubt privileged, a state-employed and tenured research director at CNRS, working on my own research projects, teaching at the Master’s level in three different European countries, and involved in administrative work at the department level in Strasbourg and in scientific management as vice-chair of a European professional organisation, European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). This insider/outsider position gives me an interesting perspective on academe that highlights the often contradictory multiplicity of selves.

In France I am part of a shrinking group of people who are favoured by the educational system, those holding permanent positions but outside the university. Indeed the European academic scene is all but homogeneous. In several countries publicly funded research institutions, such as the CNRS in France, the Academy of Finland, the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the academies of science in some Eastern European countries, play a key role not just in research but also in higher education as most researchers are affiliated with universities and teach in them. However, their career development and salaries are dependent on these nationally funded research organisations. This has been one of the problems with the Shanghai ranking, which does not fully take into account research done outside universities, and explains the reactions of some politicians in Germany and France.

The main difference with my previous job as research fellow in another, more neoliberal European national research organisation, the Academy of Finland, was that in Finland I had to reapply for my position every three or five years, with no guarantee whatsoever that the position would be renewed. Worrying about what would happen after the term is over was the first thing on my mind during those 13 years of service. I have to say that this transformation from successive fixed-term positions to a permanent one has had a tremendous effect on not just my professional life but also my family life. Having a permanent job in these neoliberal times is possible only in a country where neoliberalism is not considered as the greatest thing since sliced bread. But even in France, the pressures to use one’s time doing administrative work as head of department or equivalent and fulfilling one’s teaching responsibilities, instead on doing research, are very strong.

One of the stains on the otherwise rather rosy picture of academic work in France is that there is, as elsewhere in Europe, a growing population of temporary, precariously positioned teachers a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Introduction: Identities in Transition – Perspectives, Re-formations and Trajectories  Jon Nixon
• Part 1  Frameworks and Perspectives
• Part 2  Academic Trajectories
• Part 3  Formations and Re-Formations
• Reflections: Academic Identity and the Changing European Landscape  Linda Evans
• Index
• Copyright