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Humboldt meets market forces - A narrative approach to academic work
Oili-Helena Ylijoki
Department of Sociology and Social Psychology
33014 University of Tampere
Finland
Tel: +358 3 2157630
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Paper presented at the Higher Education Close Up Conference 2, Lancaster University, 16-18 July 2001
Abstract
During recent years universities have undergone many profound changes with regard to both funding patterns and management styles. The nature of these changes is well captured by the newly coined terms characterising the present-day academia, such as ”the entrepreneurial university”, ”academic capitalism” and ”the postmodern university”. In this paper I will explore what impact the turn to market forces has on the internal functioning of academia, particularly on the nature of academic work. The empirical basis of my paper is composed of focused interviews with 23 senior academics in three university settings in Finland. Drawing upon a narrative approach, I will distinguish four cultural core narratives that describe academic work in conflicting ways: Humboldtian, ivory tower, marketing and misery narratives. The four narratives are ideal types that unite and give meaning to separate elements in the interviews, thus reconstructing order of the told. The paper argues that the external pressures to engage in academic capitalism and market-orientation have no mechanical effects on academic work, as academics interpret and respond to the new demands on the basis of the culturally shared and sustained basic assumptions, values, norms and moral commitments. At the present the traditional academic and the market-oriented ideals and practices, which frequently contradict each other, live side by side, for which reason one of the greatest challenges in academic work is to try to find a balance between them.
Introduction
In recent years universities have undergone many profound changes with regard to both funding patterns and management styles. The nature of these changes is well captured by the newly introduced terms characterizing the present-day academia, such as ”the entrepreneurial university” (Clark 1998; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000), ”academic capitalism”(Slaughter and Leslie 1997), “the new mode of knowledge production” (Gibbons et al. 1994) and ”the postmodern university”(Smith and Webster 1997). All these terms point to the growth of market-orientation, competition and managerial practices within academia.
However, such a turn to market forces has been examined mainly from the macro-level perspective, which leaves largely open the question of how academics in distinct local settings interpret and respond to the changes and increasing external pressures.
Therefore it is crucial to ask what impact the recent changes have on the internal life of the higher education institutions and, especially, on the nature of academic work. Are the academics of today “state-subsidized entrepreneurs” (Slaughter and Leslie 1997), has academia been transformed into a “McUniversity” accompanied with a radical change in “the way that most academics think about themselves and their role” (Parker and Jary 1995, p.329), is it the case that universities “have been absorbed into, been taken over by, market relations” (Scott 1997, p.14)? Or should we take a more moderate position and speak for a diversity of responses, including even counter-trends to the seemingly inevitable growth of market logic and managerial colonisation in universities (e.g. Barry et al. 2001; Clark 1998; Prichard and Willmott 1997; Subotszky 1999; Trowler 1998)?
In this paper I will explore the current nature of academic work in greater detail by examining how academics themselves account of their work and the changes which have taken place in it. In particular, the emphasis is on the research aspect of academic work. I will focus on the variety of the accounts and trace the different kinds of views as to what academic work is all about and what its basic rationale and core commitments are.
As my analytical framework I will use a narrative approach. According to this, narratives constitute a fundamental form of human understanding through which individuals make sense of themselves and of their lives (e.g. Bruner 1986; Gergen 1994; MacIntyre 1987; Polkinghorne 1988; Sarbin 1986; Taylor 1992). Narratives make individual events and phenomena comprehensible by providing a meaningful whole, a plot, to which they contribute. Thus narratives impart meaning to experiences, thereby also providing moral grounds on the basis of which individuals are able to orient themselves in their lives.
This view holds good with regard to organizations, too. Organizations, such as universities, have their own core narratives which maintain and transmit collectively shared ways to make sense of the purpose, values and practices of the organization. In fact, there may be several, even conflicting, narratives prevailing simultaneously in the same organization. The cultural narratives provide members with resources to grasp the duties, expectations and basic assumptions of the organization and to construct their identities within it. In times of rapid organizational change narratives acquire an especially prominent role while they help members to understand both the continuity and the change in organizational life. It is through culturally available narratives that individual members explain the changes and emerging new demands, orient towards the past and anticipate the future.
In the narrative construction of life collective and personal elements are thus interwoven. This interplay can be clarified by Harré’s (1983) notion of psychological space. Relying on this conception (cf. Murray 1989), it can be argued that individuals not only appropriate the collectively maintained core narratives of their culture, but due to their unique life-histories and points of view, they also transform them into their personal narratives. Furthermore, by making personal narratives public, individuals bring their idiosyncratic transformations back to the collective sphere to be evaluated by the community. If the outcome is positive, some narrative transformations can be conventionalised and incorporated into a cultural stock of collective narratives, thus enriching the overall cultural resources of the community. In this way personal narratives are both derivations from and impetus for the cultural narratives prevailing in a given culture.
From such a perspective the key issue with regard to academic work is what kinds of cultural core narratives exist in present-day academia: What are perceived as the main characteristics of academic work, how are the changes in higher education incorporated into the narratives and what kinds of positions as the protagonists of the narratives do academics hold? And if there are several core narratives, what are the relationships between the different ways of conceiving the nature of academic work?
Method
The empirical basis of my paper comprises focused interviews with academics in three academic settings in Finland: the Department of History, the Laboratories of Surface Science and Semiconductor Technology (called the SemiLab) and the Work Research Centre. In order to trace the internal diversity in academic work, the settings were selected on the criteria that they differ from each other both with regard to the cognitive nature of knowledge and their organizational form (e.g. Becher 1989). The Department of History represents a typical university basic unit which is involved in both teaching and research and which is funded mainly from budget funding and research grants. As to the cognitive dimension, it can be classified as a soft and pure field. The SemiLab focuses principally on externally funded research, stemming from both private and public sources. It has also established two spin-off companies. With regard to the nature of knowledge, the SemiLab represents a hard and applied field. Finally, the Work Research Centre is a separate, social scientific research unit which is funded almost completely by external public agencies. The nature of knowledge can be characterised as soft and applied.
The total number of interviews is 23. The interviews lasted about two hours, during which time a wide range of themes related to academic work, especially research work, were discussed. Most of the interviewees were senior researchers with several years or decades of work experience in universities. In terms of gender, all the interviewees at the SemiLab were male, whereas at the other two units the number of male and female interviewees was fairly equal. This corresponds to the actual situation at the units.
On the basis of the interview material I discern cultural core narratives on academic work. The aim of the analysis is to “reconstruct order of the told” (Mishler 1995, p. 95), that is to trace the basic narrative structures according to which the interviewees describe their work and experiences as academics. In accordance with the idea of “narrative analysis” (Polkinghorne 1995), I am not examining narratives but rather constructing them. In other words, my data does not consist of narratives which should be categorised. Instead, my data is composed of academics’ wide-ranging accounts without any specific structure in them. Therefore it is my task through careful reading of the data to identify the basic plot structures in these accounts. It is also noteworthy that the analysis does not capture the idiosyncrasy of experiences of particular academics but its aim is rather to reveal the common, culturally shared modes of making sense of academic work in the interview material.
As a result of the analysis, four cultural core narratives on academic work are constructed: Humboldtian, ivory tower, marketing and misery narratives. The narratives differ on two dimensions: the tone and the logic. The tone of the narratives is either positive or negative, and their logic is based on either academic autonomy or market forces. In the following I will present the characteristics of each of the four stories in turn, using numerous quotations from the interviews.
Four narratives of academic work
The Humboldtian narrative
The Humboldtian narrative is a composite of a positive tone and the notion of academic autonomy. According to this narrative, in spite of the changing external conditions, academic work continues to draw upon the traditional academic values and modes of behaviour. The starting point in work is academic freedom, which allows academics to decide themselves about the content and the nature of their work without being subjected to external direction of any sort. One work researcher, for instance, makes the point by stressing that ”It really is, I mean I really have an absolutely free scope, no restrictions in this phase. (…) Really I myself can decide what I’m doing.”
Based on academic freedom, the Humboldtian narrative emphasises the importance of self-expression and creativity. Academic work is said to be ”based on your own interests so that you are able to gratify your own interests in it”, thereby being ”something very much of my own, very personal”. Likewise, work is regarded as “an adventure”, an exciting journey to unknown terrain involving risks as well as opportunities to find something new and intellectually challenging. In this respect one historian compares it to artistic work: ”It is creative work, I could as well be a writer or a painter. It is a creative process, that is what fascinates me. It really is an intellectual challenge at its best. Of course that is what fascinates me.”
This kind of fascination is related mainly to research work: “For me doing research is something of my own in my work.” This does not mean, however, that teaching is avoided, but instead, the integration of research and teaching is seen as an ideal situation, as in the following quote from one historian: ”I long for a period or a phase when I could focus solely on research work. But this does not mean that I would like to be totally separated from teaching, that I experience it unpleasant. The integration of teaching and research is a good thing, because in teaching you learn yourself, get diverse impetus and stuff for research work. If for years I did only research without teaching, I would feel that something important was missing from it.” It is noteworthy that administrative duties are never mentioned in this context, thus illustrating that they do not belong to the core of academic work.
Furthermore, according to this narrative, academic work involves profound dedication and passion. It is characterised, for example, as a ”sort of burning need for me”, ”a madness”, ”a way of life” and ”a calling”. It follows that academic work forms ”the main content of my life” so that ”research and life almost can be equated”, as one work researcher describes her experiences. Her colleague makes a similar point: ”The profession of a researcher has become such a part of my way of life and personality that I could not describe myself as anything other. I never came to think about that. Sometimes you may be very tired and irritated and curse how sick the university business is, but still not thinking for a second that you really would like to go away.”
This means that academic work is not ordinary work but requires a special personality - you have to be ”a researcher by nature”, as one researcher in the SemiLab states. Another physicist asserts in a similar fashion his long-lasting devotion to his discipline: ”In a way research work has attracted me ever since I was a little boy. My big idols were some astronomers such as Kopernicus and Galileo and Kepler whose biographies I devoured. Finding something new and exploring unknown somehow fascinated me.” In an extreme version of the Humboldtian narrative, academic work is even said to demand absolute dedication requiring almost inhuman powers: ”If you are not willing to sacrifice your whole energy and life, and besides if you need much sleep, there is no point in bothering.” In this respect the Humboldtian narrative represents academics as great heroes.
It is obvious that according to the Humboldtian narrative, the reference group in academic work is the scientific community. The motive of work is said to spring from ”a need to participate in the worldwide scientific community”, as one work researcher puts it. In a similar tone a physicist relates that his ultimate aim is to achieve ”such results of which I could be proud” so that he could ”feel that our work has something to offer to other research teams in the world”. Contributing to the advancement of knowledge in one’s field is thus regarded as the basic motive to pursue in the university career. Correspondingly, the most valuable reward from work is the recognition of the scientific community and gaining prestige within it. This is indicated by one work researcher in the following way: ”What is meaningful and rewarding for me personally is that you are aware that in some issues you really are an expert, that there are some issues that interest me and after several years of work it becomes clear that I am good at it. And colleagues whom I respect, value that and listen and are interested in what I am saying and writing.” Thus it is the scientific community who is seen to have the right to evaluate academic work and set the standards of quality for it.
The ivory tower narrative
The ivory tower narrative is a negative version of the Humboldtian narrative. It, too, relies on the notion of academic autonomy but the tone of the narrative is negative. According to this, academic work is something that academics do in their own rooms without any links to the outside world. Therefore it is alienated from reality and has no meaning or relevance to anybody but the academics themselves. It is crucial to note that nobody interviewed sees herself/himself as a protagonist of this narrative. In other words, the ivory tower image is never used to refer to one’s own work, but rather, it represents a historic relic and a cultural stereotype from which academics want to distance themselves.
It can be claimed that the use of the ivory tower narrative represents a sort of shadowboxing through which academics justify themselves against potential accusations. One historian, for instance, presents the following statement ”I think there are also those moving in these corridors, living caricatures. (…) They are capable of being interested forever in some detail in the 18th century history in which I can find no relevance. But they have built in their heads some kind of motivation but I cannot figure out what it is.” Instead of this kind of working pattern he demands societal relevance and claims that historical research ”should have something to do with the present-day modes of thinking”.
Likewise, another historian highlights that although he works alone ”it really is healthy to step out sometimes to meet people, I mean I’m no hermit by nature.” Yet another historian makes a similar kind of point by saying, ”It is not merely that I do research so that some other historians will eagerly read it in their chambers, but I try to consider what kind of wider view to societal discussion it can open.” In both quotations the threat of ivory tower image is first constructed and then denied, at least in the case of the speakers themselves.
According to this narrative, two things in particular prevent academic work from being caught in the ivory tower. First, through teaching students academics have to face reality, as is pointed out by one historian: ”Students have such an impact that we have to rethink things over and over again, so that we are not able to carry on for ever in our own castles in the air or in our sandboxes.” The commitment to social responsibility and public good makes also academics open up towards civil society: ”I think historical studies still have also a national function. It is linked to the fact that it is important to disseminate the results of historical studies to a wider audience and to make them popular so that other people than the researchers of the field also understand them and gain knowledge. Finland’s history and also history more generally, they are an important part in the forming of Finnish identity.”