Introduction

Across the globe, neoliberal agendas continue to alter, inter alia, the structures, landscapes and practices within higher education institutions. Bob Jessop’s (2017) work on predatory capitalism, for instance, centres the tendency towards degree mills, profit-based journal publications (downloads, copyright licences and subscriptions), metrification of academic work and the commercialisation of ideas, as key manifestations or formations of this phenomenon. Yet the augmentation of private financiers or influencers in higher education, and the move towards academic capitalism (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997), also signal a form of self-corporatisation and cultural transformation that aligns knowledge production and workers with those of market rationality and systems. Barry Bozeman and Craig Boardman (2013) tell us therefore that while we are neither capitalism’s slaves nor teaching fugitives, the expanding nature of university–industry relations call into question not just the complexity of these relationships, but more so, the boundary spanning university initiatives that continue to alter the thinking and actions of academics within these sites of knowledge production.

Understanding the significance of this nexus between knowledge work, workers and institutions requires that we critically interrogate the structural aspects that underpin unfolding relations. This type of analysis renders important historical and contemporary notions of the academically constituted subjects and the key factors that influence their negotiation and/or resistance to these narratives. In this chapter, I argue therefore that within the context of higher education, these market-led agendas also influence reconstituted forms of structuralism, with direct implications for deepened forms/systems of coloniality and for transformative praxis. This element of structuralism presents an important way of assessing the intricacies of socio-economic and political contexts for the positionality, ambiguity and criticality of knowledge workers. Catherine Chaput (2010: 6) captures this well in the statement that ‘theorizing neoliberalism demands a structural reorganization in the way we think about political-economic and cultural practices within capitalism … and a new understanding of rhetoric as continuously moving through and connecting different instantiations within the complex structure’. What emerges in this context of academic capitalism is that of the structural realignment of lived realities and inter-subjective dispositions that are socially constituted and/or embodied through the everyday thinking and actions of academic/knowledge workers.

Introduction

‘Lack of time’ is perhaps one of the most persistent expressions of anxiety in academic work today (Crang, 2007; Gill, 2014; Vostal, 2016). It is an affective illustration of a dog chasing its tail; no matter how hard we push, we rarely ‘get things done’ (Allen, 2001; see also Gill, 2010; Gregg, 2016, 2018). The relentless pondering over whether we did enough is, on the one hand, brought about and catalysed by the precarious employment settings and fierce competition within contemporary academia (Gill, 2014, 2017; Brunila and Hannukainen, 2017; Allmer, 2018; Brunila and Valero, 2018). On the other hand, the unsettled self-talk is a part of a vicious circle that gives rise to self-reinforcing experiences of insufficiency (Gill, 2010; Mannevuo and Valovirta, 2019; see also Chapter 8, this book). This affective composition is clearly structural, that is to say, somehow beyond personal, but it is still experienced individually, as if it were in researchers’ own hands to rationalise their working patterns so as to cope with impending rhythmic dissonances.

Individualised attempts to optimise work processes, to straighten out confused rhythms and to compensate for the chronic lack of time by working more ‘efficiently’ go hand in hand with the general evolution of academia into a huge measuring machine (Burrows, 2012; Murphy, 2015). With quantified academia, I refer to the meticulous efforts of standardising and measuring the inputs and outputs of scholarly activities as well as organising academic work with the guidance of these measurements (Crang, 2007; De Angelis and Harvie, 2009). As sociologist Roger Burrows (2012) describes, this trend of ‘metricisation’ is expressed in the roles that ‘numbers … are playing in our contemporary constitution as “academics” ’ (2012: 356; original emphasis).

In this chapter, I examine the affective dynamics of quantified academia through a particular subset of scholarly work: academic reading. Throughout history, reading has kept its place at the unquestionable core of academic proficiency and professional identity, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Reading is a curious case in point, as it seems to challenge the general trajectory towards the ‘quantification of everything’ (Dyson, 2013).

Appendix: EPKP projects

Cemeteries across England are full of people who have died of cancer, but what goes unrecognised are the many graves of those who never had the chance to find a cure for cancer. I can say this with confidence because my generation experienced both the denial of aspirations and capability to make a difference, but also benefitted from the common school that enabled investment in all children as worthy of an education. And yet I am now witnessing the intensification of segregation in education services, knowing that if I were of school age I would not have the opportunities that the abolition of the 11+ and the creation of comprehensive education provided. Having failed the 11+, and so officially categorised as incapable of benefitting from an academic education, I have just retired as a professor where my world was and remains within academia. This is why when I visit my parent’s grave, I look at the names on the other gravestones and realise that there are those who have not been fortunate to live at the time that I have, and there are those who would recognise how the stereotyping of bodies that disadvantaged them remains integral to unfolding education policy. There is an irony in these observations that goes beyond the matter of those who did not get the opportunities that I have had. Segregated services based on eugenics not only impacts negatively on those who are rendered inferior and unworthy of an education, but also on those who seemingly gain from being identified as having superior bodies. Cemeteries across England are full of people who may not have died of cancer if only they had allowed other people’s children to have the same educational opportunities as their own.

This book is the third instalment in a trilogy of critical education policy books where I have pioneered political and sociological thinking for the field (Gunter 2012, 2018). In 2012 I used Bourdieu’s thinking tools to generate understandings and explanations of how and why leaders, leading and leadership came to dominate UK government policy for reforms to educational services; and in 2018 I used Arendtian scholarship to investigate the meaning and practices of the politics of education policy in the dismantling of public education services.

Introduction

The 2020–2021 COVID-19 lockdowns in England have revealed much about the disparities in wealth and the impact of poverty on children’s learning: ‘a mother wakes at dawn to copy out worksheets for her children onto pieces of paper. Secondary school pupils attempt to write essays on their mobile phones, while younger children queue to wait their turn on the one computer in the house’ (Wakefield 2021: NP).

While the UK government and charity have provided assistance through the distribution of hardware into homes, it has not eradicated structured resource deprivation:

Even in an affluent country it remains the case that gaps in educational achievement are still related to significant disparities in parental income and involvement: ‘children do better if their parents have higher incomes and more education themselves, and they do better if they come from homes where they have a place to study, where there are reference books and newspapers, and where education is valued’ (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009: 105). While much is claimed about social mobility, it remains the case that the ERC is based on eugenicist populism that constructs and legitimises poverty through superior–inferior calculations about the natural educability of children (as either aspirational winners or unambitious losers). Research shows this to be historically embedded (Chitty 2007), and the COVID-19 lockdowns have intensively exposed the visceral inequity of being a child and growing up in England (Longfield 2020).

This chapter examines evidence from the EPKP projects regarding how public education services have been modernised through and for the education reform claimocracy as a ‘new and improved brand’, but where the endurance of the ‘unmodern’ remains crucial to the purposes of education.

Introduction

In August 2020 the examination results for 16- and 18-year-olds in England were released. The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown meant that assessment was undertaken by teachers who provided an estimated grade for each student and a comparative ranking to allow for standardisation. An algorithm was used to adjust the grades based on the school’s performance in each subject over the previous 3 years. When the A-level results were published, ‘36% of entries had a lower grade than teachers recommended and 3% were down two grades’ (BBC 2020a: NP). It became clear that students who attended fee-paying schools had their estimated grades protected through a combination of selective entry into school, smaller classes, and better funding, because ‘an algorithm based on past performance will put students from these schools at an advantage compared with their state-educated equivalents’ (BBC 2020a: NP). Smaller classes in private schools meant that the standardisation process could not operate and so teacher estimates were used, but a student in a larger class in a school or FE college would have their grade adjusted according to past performance. The design and deployment of a ‘neutral’ algorithm enables the segregated education system to be preserved through the supportive use of narratives that enable and sustain the wasting of talent: first, students in a state school cannot be awarded the highest grades and so the reality of ‘bright’ and ‘able’ students outside of the private sector is disavowed; and second, the exercise of professional judgement in a state school is distrusted because larger classes and limited resources incentivise grade manipulation by teachers. This example illustrates how the ERC requires authorisation through governing by knowledge production whereby what is known, how it is known, what is worth knowing, and who the knowers are is integral to how structures operate in regard to strategic and tactical public policy design and enactment. Policy is infused with eugenicist populism where the ERC is replete with justifications of exceptionality:

Introduction

Peacehaven Heights and Telscombe Cliffs Primary Schools were in the news in spring 2021 because parents and staff are campaigning to stop the schools being academised and run by a MAT. The parents want the LA to keep running the schools but the LA want to hand over the schools to a MAT. The first take-over attempt by a MAT was in 2019, and following the rejection of academisation by the schools, both school governing bodies were removed and replaced by Interim Executive Boards (with no parent or community membership), and this was approved by the Regional Schools Commissioner (DfE 2020). In response to the second attempt to hand the schools over to a MAT, a parent stated: ‘East Sussex County Council have sacked our governors, they have shut our swimming pool, they have stood in the way of consistent leadership at the schools and put the interests of academy chains above those of our children’ (Stringer 2021: NP). At the same time as this campaign was underway, Gavin Williamson, the UK Secretary of State for Education in England, gave a speech where he demanded that more schools should become academies: ‘I want to see us break away from our current “pick and mix” structure of a school system and move towards a single model, one that is built on a foundation of strong multi-academy trusts, and I’m actively looking at how we can make that happen’ (Adams 2021: NP).

Oligarchic occupation of the state determines the reality of what parental consumer choice actually means – parents may not want academisation and may distrust the consultation process as rigged, but depoliticised club alliances between oligarchic sovereignty in government with private oligarchies enable national policy to both marginalise local democracy and to outflank demands for citizen forms of participation. The irony in Williamson’s speech is that the ‘single model’ of the LA system from the 1970s was attacked by the ERC, where the argument was made for the diversity of school place provision as being integral to the choice process and experience.

Introduction

On 21 June 2021, the UK Department for Education that governs education in England published a tweet in which they pronounced 25 June as ‘One Britain One Nation Day’, ‘when children can learn about our shared values of tolerance, kindness, pride and respect’, with the support of the then Secretary of State, Gavin Williamson (Harding 2021: NP). The celebration included an ‘anthem’ for all children in school to sing on the appointed day, with the repeated chorus line: ‘We are Britain and we have one dream, To Unite all people in one great team’. Verse two sings out: ‘A nation survived through many storms and many wars, We’ve opened our doors, and widened our island’s shores, We celebrate our differences with love in our hearts, United forever, never apart’ (OBON 2022: NP). This proposed ‘national event’ raises questions about how and why the core vantage point of the Department for Education is inter-related with privileged vantage points such the former police inspector Kash Singh who is promoting the anthem in his capacity as the Chief executive and Founder of the campaign group ‘One Britain One Nation’ (OBON). The anthem shows how the core vantage point uses normative functionalism to fabricate conformity and approved-of identity through how histories and current experiences of living in the UK are included/excluded in the curriculum. Ironically the lyrics encourage disunity because Britain is not the UK, and so Northern Ireland is excluded, and it was reported that most schools in Scotland would be closed for the summer vacation on the day of celebration (Harding 2021). Geography and the UK constitution put to one side, the words and event conflate (and confuse) nationalism with patriotism, and as such the narrative description and critical viewpoints and standpoints of those who are marginalised and othered on the basis of eugenicist populism and nationalism are unrecognised.