Dark Clouds on the Horizon: Neoliberalism in Higher Education

Part One: A Poem—Soaked to the Skin

Part Two: Dark Clouds on the Horizon

Yesterday and the days before had been cloudy, foggy with doubt and unanswered questions. Perhaps they might find some way to re-count or discredit my work? Perhaps I have not performed well enough? (Zabrodska, Linnell, Laws, & Davies, 2011). I know that committees not only scrutinize our publications but also inspect the reputation of the publishers of our books and of particular journals, the length of articles, whether performance works were selected into a festival or self-produced, whether book chapters appear in books edited by close colleagues, and the international accessibility of our publications. Research indicators like the Performance-Based Research Funding (aka PBRF) have become so very important, not just as “disciplinary mechanisms (although they are certainly that), but are increasingly the site around which workplace politics are being played out” (Larner & Le Heron, 2005, p. 854). Sitting in the first round of these committees recently, I discovered just how normalized it has become, to compare academics against each other (Larner & Le Heron, 2005; Whelan, 2015). The PBRF system measures outputs and collates lists that can be compared. But it does not provide “a rich, well rounded, complex portrait of a research life” that offers meaning and honors the complexity of our knowledges and sophistication of our representations (Roberts, 2013, p. 35). However, the work of committees is more “efficient” when lists rather than complex portraits can be compared.

Today, as morning meetings dragged to inevitable and inconclusive ends, my niggling doubts began to intensify. Walking across campus at the mercy of the accumulating rain clouds, I ponder the time I had invested, even before the introduction of PBRF, in arguing for dance research to be counted. I had made the case to distinguish, for example, between performances of existing works and the choreography/composition of new works, the latter evidencing embodied scholarship as well as skillful artistry. I had been strategic in my publishing and diligent in compiling evidence. All this, while redundancies in the arts and in education continued (Giroux, 2010; Roberts, 2013).

To stay in the academic world, there seemed no escape from performativity and I have been dutifully “compliant and appropriately responsive” (Curtis, 2016; Lawn & Prentice, 2015; Levin & Aliyeva, 2015; Roberts, 2013; Whelan, 2015, p. 12). It seems that

research becomes not an integral part of one’s being as an academic—the manifestation of a desire to know—but a matter of survival. This can prompt a certain creativity but it can also lead to conformity . . . In constantly producing for others, we simultaneously reconstitute ourselves. (Roberts, 2013, p. 40)

And finally, now I know the outcome. Small points of lightness spread under my skin, a private celebration that I am just itching to share with my family. That afternoon, the Dean sends a congratulatory email to the Faculty to share the news. A close colleague and I savor a cup of tea on a rare break in our staffroom, quietly sharing the warmth of success. Returning my teacup to the kitchen, I am almost knocked down by another academic I barely know. As I politely step aside he says, “I hear you got promoted. I guess they are giving them out now.” Later, I force myself “to think of encounters such as this as discursively shaping realities, not something to be taken personally” (Brunila, 2015, p.390).

Part Three: Some One Told Me

Sliding into the swirling comments, somehow my subconscious offers me the words from a 1970s song by John Fogerty: “Some one told me long ago, there’s a calm before the storm.” ² I am grasping at the meaning while I wait. Biting my tongue and observing the tightening mouths, averted eyes, shifting in seats, pessimistic tones, and frustrated sighs, I hold the space for my colleagues to express their opinions. But across the table, I almost see the skin of some of my colleagues crawling. “How are we supposed to do research in this world of ‘publish or perish’ with this constantly increasing pressure of teaching and administrivia?” (Roberts, 2013, p. 34). “How much time must be dedicated to entering data?” (Harland, Tidswell, Everett, Hale, & Pickering, 2010). “Can’t the data auto-populate from other university databases?” “Will the data be kept confidential?” “If teaching workload is quantified, shouldn’t there be a more comprehensive system that also considers all administrative and service roles too?” “Will this data be combined with our research output data?” “Will this affect our promotion applications?”

Taking a deep breath, I interject into the torrent of questions that“I am well aware of the skepticism and resistance many of you feel towards the use of this Workload Manager program. But I have been instructed to use it. I can tell you that I will make every effort to reflect as accurately and as meaningfully the workload associated with your teaching. I have a draft of next years’ teaching allocations already and am now planning to meet with you individually when there is a particular need and to help address the numbers of papers for which there are no longer teaching staff. I intend to avoid asking you to take on more teaching if your workload is already optimal or if the paper might be canceled anyway. The way I have been instructed to gauge how close your workload is to optimal is through using Workload Manager and we are entering student numbers and teaching hours now . . .”

I almost cannot believe these words just made it out of my mouth. Swallowing hard, I knew I had to say this, my doubts shoved down my throat for now. I had checked my position description again before our staff meeting. It stated that satisfactory performance will be demonstrated when acting at the direction of the Dean. But here I am, choking in my own performance (Brunila, 2015; Whelan, 2015).“It’s a much more sophisticated tool” [the Dean had explained to me] “allowing us to calculate not only the equivalent fulltime students [also known as ETFs] and the funding this brings against each staff member’s teaching but also the hours involved in teaching. It provides useful detail to consider and should inform your decisions as Acting Head of School about teaching allocations next year.”

Of course I understand the Dean’s point about needing for tools for decision making. But I am struggling to see how these measurements can represent the art of teaching in the radically different settings in which my colleagues and I teach. More importantly, how do I now foster equity, promote critical pedagogy, and encourage genuine collegiality, while introducing Workload Manager that will compartmentalize and repackage our teaching into unrecognizable data? (Larner & Le Heron, 2005). Have I become the instrument of my own demise, cajoling my colleagues into and martyring myself by accepting more workload? (Zabrodska et al., 2011). I do understand that workload models

are not simply calculations to measure who is doing what, they also send strong messages about the “right” amount of time to spend on a task. Similarly, performance appraisals are both a key means of ensuring accountability and a signal about appropriate behaviours. In this regard, these techniques have become powerful mechanisms of self-regulating performativity. (Larner & Le Heron, 2005, p. 845)

Of course, most of my colleagues want none of this new system. When Workload Manager is painstakingly populated with required data, I report to my colleagues that I will hand-deliver personalized, confidential printouts of their teaching workload calculations for them to check. When one colleague remarks simply, “Oh I don’t even need to see it Karen,” I barely manage to close my office door before a kind hysterical flood bursts through my skin and threatens to wash me completely away.

Part Four: The Calm Before the Storm

Apparently, we in the South Pacific have been fully engaged in this unnamed project of neoliberalism over the last 30 years (Davies & Bansel, 2007; Harland et al., 2010; Lawn & Prentice, 2015; Ng, 2015). According to Lorenz (2012), “the societal relevance of the universities demanded by critical students [of the 60s and 70s] was turned on its head [in the 80s] to become economic relevance to business and industry in the knowledge society” (pp. 599-600). As our moral responsibilities have been eroded by these insistent winds from the West, we too have become increasingly “constructed within a market-driven rationality that abstracts economics and markets from ethical considerations” (Giroux, 2010, p. 185). Exactly what “neoliberalism” refers to has been a matter for much debate (Whelan, 2015), and I certainly do not understand it all. Unwittingly however, I have been seduced, imagining that the pursuit of academic individualism was some kind of freedom. Even as fragments of neoliberal agendas began to cohere into repeating patterns, I did not recognize how much this increasing measurement, competition, risk, and rationalization (Davies & Bansel, 2007; Lawn & Prentice, 2015; Smith, 2013; Zabrodska et al., 2011) would affect the climate around me and my own well-being. Thinking of myself as performing as a good academic, I have simply become part of the process of implementing difficult changes (Whelan, 2015).

In the Dean’s address to Faculty staff late last year, he painstakingly laid out the layers of change we currently faced, relating to dropping student enrollments, curriculum enhancement and new degree architecture, implementing the re-structure of our Faculty, new systems for managing staff workloads, ongoing review of our initial teacher education programs, new expectations for PBRF evidence portfolios, greater requirements for external funding, reduction in overseas conference leave funding, new systems for online readings and course information for students, and even more (Lawn & Prentice, 2015; Whelan, 2015).

At the end of this long list, my own tears threatened to spill as I watched the Dean struggle to get the words out, and we hear that there will be redundancies. Concluding his address, the Dean describes the situation as “the perfect storm.”

Part Five: A Feeling in My Bones

Searching for shelter, even with a “weather eye” on those dark clouds, I keep affirming my commitment to accessible arts education as a “fundamental and sustainable component of a high quality” education, and from which we do apply learning “to contribute to resolving the social and cultural challenges” facing our world (UNESCO, 2010). The New Zealand government, as a UNESCO member state, signed up to these commitments too, as stated in the Seoul Agenda. I have made my purpose as an educator to empower our students to become conscious, engaged, and response-able members of our families and communities, capable of contributing to a more just world (Barbour, 2011; Olsen, 2002; Shapiro, 1999, 2008).

It happens that critical feminist pedagogy in the dance studio (Barbour, 2011; Burnidge, 2012; Shapiro, 1988, 1999, 2008; Stinson, 2016) is the means through which I nurture our students, encouraging them to accept the role of critic and conscience of society. In teaching dance, I understand critical feminist pedagogy as analyzing how power is enacted in social-cultural contexts, beginning with the dance studio. We dancers discuss issues of social justice, power, and oppression broadly, and particularly in terms of access, participation and voice in dance, for women as well as for indigenous peoples and minority groups. We work together to identify hidden curriculums in dance education, including learning forms of gendered behavior, socialization, acculturalization, docility, or agency through different dance practices (Shapiro, 1988; Stinson, 2016). Framed within my critical feminist pedagogy, my intention is that discussions in the dance studio support students to develop a critical awareness so that they may offer conscious contributions to their communities to activate for positive social change (Olsen, 2002; Stinson, 2016). Thus, my critical feminist pedagogy is embodied in the dance studio; aligns with UNESCO commitments to, and agendas for, arts education; and is one interpretation of the role of arts educators as critic and conscience of society.

Beyond my own pedagogical commitments, it is clearly stated in the New Zealand Education Amendment Act 1989 (162) that we academics are expected to act as “critic and conscience of society” (Harland et al., 2010, p. 86). This expectation is also written into our academic employment contracts. While it may feel uncomfortable, or risky, “to critique one’s own institution, it is crucial to do so to work against neoliberal, discourses that privilege competition . . . othering, and profit over critical analysis” (Taber, 2014, p. 15; Zabrodska et al., 2011). Thus, I offer this critical commentary on the impact of neoliberal practices in higher education from my position as an academic and arts educator, and toward hope.

Finally, I note that the irony of this endeavor is not lost on me: I attended the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry to present this academic work, performing dutifully, and through this article, I am (hopefully) demonstrating my scholarly capital and accumulating further research outputs, while “writing the critique of neoliberalism as a solidarising social practice” (Whelan, 2015, p. 13). I am so thoroughly soaked to the skin.