1. Gender, Neoliberalism and Research in the Global Knowledge Economy
CENTRE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND EQUITY RESEARCH
Gender, Neoliberalism and Research in the Global Knowledge Economy
Professor Louise Morley

2. Graduate School Managers: Captured Minds?
CENTRE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND EQUITY RESEARCH
Graduate School Managers: Captured Minds?
Paul Roberts (EdD Candidate)

3. The Doctorate in the Neo-Liberal University
CENTRE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND EQUITY RESEARCH
The Doctorate in the Neo-Liberal University
All conduct is economic conduct; all spheres of existence are framed and measured by economic terms and metrics, even when those spheres are not directly monetized (p.10). (Brown, 2015)

4. Impact of neoliberalism on Higher Education (Morley, 2017)
From
Scholarship
Intellectual
Knowledge Creation
Policy Analysis
Criticality/ Citizenship To
Entrepreneurship
Income-generation
Knowledge Mobilisation
Policy Compliance
Employability

5. Impact of neoliberalism on Higher Education (Morley, 2017)
My research is focused on the senior administrators appointed to support these new entities.
What are the competing discourses Graduate School Managers experience?
How are the macro-level policy changes to the UK doctorate experienced at the micro level by individual Graduate School Managers?
How are they navigating their professional identity?
What have been the losses and gains for Graduate School Managers?
What do Graduate School Managers believe needs to be done differently?

6. How?
A small-scale qualitative research study - eight individual semi-structured interviews (45 minutes to 1hr 20) conducted over the last six months of 2016.
Insider Research (Drake, 2010)
Problematics of interviews
Personal relations, expectations and ‘performativity’
Motivation for Research, Reflexivity
Assumptions and ideas about what they expect to find on the basis of professional experience and my theoretical stance
Things happen in people’s heads during interview
‘You’re looking worried, Paul’
Implicated Research
The crucial characteristic of the model is competition rather than free exchange (Gane 2012). People on professional doctorates often work in ‘intensely political climates’ (Drake and Heath 2008, 140)
Each interview, whilst having the same key questions, also provided space for respondents to voice their experiences and interpretations of the contemporary UK Doctorate.
“the inquirer and the subject of the inquiry are interlocked in such a way that the findings of an investigation are the literal creation of the inquiry process” (Koch, 1999:26).
The problematics of interviewing as follows: (1) personal relations and expectations position everyone
in the interview; Often things you don’t fully pick up at the time, but on reflection after the interview and in relation to the transcript – jump out (Maggie McClure, 2013, the wonder of data) Interview A – ‘Is it okay?’; ‘I’m not sure I’ve given you what you wanted there?’; ‘Is that the kind of thing you wanted?’, ‘Is that the kind of thing you’re after?’, ‘is that what you’re after?’, ‘I’m not sure I’ve answered that right?’, ‘That’s not very clear, is it?’
Illusio = investing in the game involves performativities (Colley, 2015)
(2) the motivation for the research affects what the researcher learns;
(3) the same material generates accounts that emphasize different things;
Implicated Research - Foucault’s (2008:16) analysis of neoliberalism contends that it is distinguished by ‘a state under the supervision of the market rather than a market supervised by the state’ to the extent that a market economy functions as the ‘principle, form and model’ (p.17) of the state. The crucial characteristic of the model is competition rather than free exchange (Gane 2012).

7. Initial Points of Interest: Identity
Accidental ‘career’ – ‘nobody when they’re five says, I want to be a research administrator’; ‘I don’t know where I’m going with my career’; ‘a non-career’
Secret garden of graduate school administration – “freedom and flexibility to be trusted to do what I think is right for this university’; ‘jobs like the one I have are very, very rare…it sits…across so many different areas’
‘All-round’ academics are fast disappearing to be replaced by para-academics in what has been described as a ‘silent revolution’ (Finkelstein and Schuster, 2001)
Third Space environments between academic and professional spheres of activity (Whitchurch 2008);
Deem – Manager Academics ‘asserting their right to manage over both academics and other staff’, new managerialism

8. Initial Points of Interest: Identity
A shared identity - The relationship between the Graduate School Manager and the Academic Director of the Graduate School framed as critical.
Some evidence of Deem’s (2005) ‘manager academics’ asserting their right to manage over both academics and other staff.
“The graduate school should actually work with strategy, rather than just doing whatever a maverick Director wants to do.”
‘You know this kind of older generation are irreplaceable and then suddenly they’re going…they have the old values which is not all about money’
Deem – Manager Academics ‘asserting their right to manage over both academics and other staff’, new managerialism

9. Initial Points of Interest: Power
Evidence of the neo-liberal agent
The neoliberal project calls for the individual to see the various parts of their life (health, education, employment) as investments in themselves for which they are entirely responsible and, through their investment, will make them better market competitors (Bowser 2015)
“Hot topics? Well funding, because funding is always hot..”
“I wanted to get to that particular grade before hitting 30.”
“I think we take what the QAA tells us we have got to do, we try and make it more palatable…’
“….make sure their experience is more or less the same…”
Evidence of neo-liberal academy
“More active time to actually look for policy changes and look at them”; ‘its become more system based’
Role being played, key part of the audit society, but in ‘making palatable’ they become policy actors in their own right.
‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980) exhibiting a complex coagulation of complicity and resistance

10. Initial Points of Interest: Representation
Level of conformity on ‘hot topics’ and reliance on sector bodies (e.g. UKCGE, Academic Registrar’s Council) to identify them
Issues: Finances (Value reinforced via Doctoral Training Partnership funding regime); BREXIT; Competition for PhD numbers
Governmentality - regulate ourselves
Doctoral researchers often framed as ‘problematic’ but the greater challenge was with Faculty. Deficit language:
‘supervisors not being aware of what to do’; ‘I’m a supervisor, I don’t have to do any training’, ‘prima donnas’
Role being played, key part of the audit society, but in ‘making palatable’ they become policy actors in their own right.
‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980) exhibiting a complex coagulation of complicity and resistance

11. Questions?