ERIC Number: EJ1101817
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Jun
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0026-4695
EISSN: N/A
"Excellence" and Exclusion: The Individual Costs of Institutional Competitiveness
Watermeyer, Richard; Olssen, Mark
Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, v54 n2 p201-218 Jun 2016
A performance-based funding system like the United Kingdom's "Research Excellence Framework" (REF) symbolizes the re-rationalization of higher education according to neoliberal ideology and New Public Management technologies. The REF is also significant for disclosing the kinds of behaviour that characterize universities' response to government demands for research auditability. In this paper, we consider the casualties of what Henry Giroux (2014) calls "neoliberalism's war on higher education" or more precisely the deleterious consequences of non-participation in the REF. We also discuss the ways with which higher education's competition fetish, embodied within the REF, affects the instrumentalization of academic research and the diminution of academic freedom, autonomy and criticality.
Descriptors: Neoliberalism, Funding Formulas, Higher Education, Institutional Characteristics, Competition, Educational Research, Research Problems, Academic Freedom, Institutional Autonomy, Audits (Verification), Accountability, Governance, Excellence in Education, Grade Point Average, Weighted Scores, Institutional Evaluation, Educational Researchers, Productivity, Educational Quality, Educational Practices, Quality Assurance, Eligibility, Academic Rank (Professional), Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A