Managerialism and its effects on academics’ writing

Presented by Sharon McCulloch

Academics’ writing

practices

National policies

Institutional policies

Departmental culture

Academics’ writing

practices

National policies

Institutional policies

Departmental culture

Disciplinary cultures

Academics’ writing

practicesNational policies

Institutional policies

Departmental culture

Disciplinary cultures

Individual career

objectives

Personal histories

Academics’ writing

practicesNational policies

Institutional policies

Departmental culture

Disciplinary cultures

Individual career

objectives

Personal histories

Metrics

Digital pressures

Academics’ writing

practicesNational policies

Institutional policies

Departmental culture

Disciplinary cultures

Individual career

objectives Personal histories

Metrics

Digital pressures

Students’ expectations

I'm on probation at the moment, a four year probationary period. During that time I have to publish two papers at three star.

Emma: Lecturer in Marketing

…the minimum that would be required is one good publication a year […] if somebody had one good publication a year, they would be okay for the REF […] They would probably be okay for promotion and everything else.

Stephanie: Head of Department

Now back when I started it was “Just get a couple of twos, maybe a couple of threes, if you get included in the REF that’s brilliant.” Now you need, as a junior member of staff or any member of staff in this department, you need to be able to get a four star journal.

Charles: Senior lecturer in Marketing

There are a range of metrics that are being used, often arbitrary figures are then come up with, it’s not quite clear. They’re round numbers, so that’s why these are then the targets that have to be hit. So it’s 90% for the National Student Survey. It’s £100,000 for your grant application in the cycle. It’s not clear to me that, you know, why not £89,000?

Alex: Senior lecturer in History

What sorts of writing do you expect academic staff to be doing?

What sorts of writing do you expect academic staff to be doing?

Well the writing I guess that we are encouraged to value the most is their research writing but we also ask them to write a phenomenal amount of other stuff.

Clara: Head of Department

God. You have to repeat everything endlessly, so with the programme I had to write pages and pages of stuff to justify what the aims of the course were, of this new master’s programme, and then you have to justify it and then you have to justify that there’s a market there and demonstrate evidence for the market.

Diane: Professor in Marketing

Image courtesy of Claudia Mahler: https://eigenblogger.com

Increasingly, because we’re encouraged to think about impact, we’re being stretched away from the monograph.

Rebecca: Lecturer in History

It's not exactly something that you would encourage a starting lecturer to do because there are just too many things and you've got to establish yourself in various ways.

Robert: Professor in Mathematics

They [tweets] are useful to form a brand awareness ... As in the brand of my department, and my brand. And when the day dawns that I have anything published, it will be all over Twitter.

Emma: Lecturer in Marketing

A lot of the work is grey literature where people have written blog pieces. I think that's opened my eyes to what's possible in that area but yes, if there's time – I think it's always a question of time. Again, that work is not valued by the university as far as I can see.

David: Professor in Mathematics

How does managerialism affect academics’ writing practices?

• Pressures around no. and type of research publications

• Proliferation of ‘accountability’ writing • Distrust of targets and the cult of performance• Unclear relationship between what is valued

and what is seen to be valued• Internalisation of managerial rhetoric