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European governance and doctoral education: (con) figuring the neo-liberal worker

Corina Balaban and António M. Magalhães

Porto summer school29 June – 3 July 2015

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Outline

- Introduction- EU coordination, national and institutional

contexts: doctoral education - the creation of the neo-liberal worker (the

new figures of the PhD student that are emerging in the EU policy discourse)

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EU coordination, national and institutional contexts - Doctoral education

• Doctoral education: bringing together the discourse of the Europe of knowledge, the development of the EHEA and the ERA (Berlin 2003).

• OMC as a EU governance instrument (extended to higher education).

• The Bologna process and the EC ‘galloping’ competencies :“The question was no longer if national policies should be coordinated but how they could be. The efforts were bundled into one package and being referred to as ‘OMC’” (Gornitzka, 2007).

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• The new social contract (Olsen, 2009) - relationships between higher education, economy and society

- higher education purposes- funding and governance systems

• The EC prescribed detailed measures for the university sector (EC, 2005):

- performance-linked pay for academic staff- tax incentives for university-industry cooperation - output-related funding for HEIs

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The “areas of possible reform” (EC, 2007)• Curricular reform• Governance reform• Funding reform

The pace and nature governance reforms across countries and their links with the implementation of the Bologna process are diverse

HOWEVER the grammar of the discourses through which the reforms are legitimated show a considerable degree of convergence

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• Based on seminal oppositions, providing the building blocks for a comprehensive political approach encompassing discourses and practices.

- governing versus governance- bureaucracy versus management - elite university versus mass tertiary education - institutions versus organisations- self-government versus state control- administrative managerial power versus academic

bureau- professional power

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– The appropriation of Bologna the LS - the EHEA

– Conflating EHEA and ERA (agenda for research grounded on an EU established policy area driven by the competiveness of European R&D).

– The focus on internationalisation of competition for academic staff and mobility between academia and industry reflects on Phd graduates training.

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• EC call upon Bologna signatories to adjust the legislative framework doctoral studies in order that the recognition of doctoral degrees are more closely linked with careers in R&D, and that joint doctorates can be implemented more easily and obstacles to recognition removed.

• Collaborative partnerships university-industry, private-public funded research organisations as a “critical imperative” (CEC, 2003: 10).

The “concept of academic freedom which researchers are keen to preserve” is signalled as one of the reasons why “in many fields applied research projects are still granted a lower status, and academics involved in industry are not seen as serious candidates for academic promotion” (CEC, 2003).

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• EUA Doctoral programmes : “a crucial source of a new generation of researchers and to serve as the main bridge between the European Higher Education and Research Areas” (2005: 7).

• Eurydice report: “at Doctoral level, many developments are at

an early stage, and dominant national patterns are difficult to discern and compare” (Eurydice, 2009: 17).

• EC research policies and the Bologna process had impacts on the development of the third cycle by inducing clear adaptive changes (e.g. Portugal) in its structure by accelerating the reform processes (e.g. France, Germany)

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• The ‘third cycle’ does not reflect the convergence brought about by the Bologna process to the two-cycles:

“the organisation of doctoral programmes displays a large diversity not only across different countries in Europe, but also across universities within the same country and across faculties within the same university” (EUA, 2005: 12).

- diverse legal frameworks and regulations- The extent of universities’ autonomy- responsibility of PhD studies left to faculties or departments.

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• Doctoral studies went high in the EC higher education agenda, but do not have the same degree of priority across countries

– The UK doctoral reforms were enacted not in the framework of Europeanisation process,

– The Netherlands and Norway widely used the Bologna momentum to move to the European concern with doctoral education/training

– At different paces and intensity Germany, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland are enacting policies aiming at transforming doctoral education in line with EC injunctions.

• The reorganisation of doctoral education/training in structured programmes is emerging as a commonality against the traditional doctoral studies.

• Academic cultures and institutional ethos are making difficult to attain the degree of transparency and comparability aimed at.

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• European documents and national reports on the development of the Bologna process probably oversell the transformations occurred.

• Competition between European universities for ‘attractive’ positions in the rankings of excellence is enacting a hierarchical order within and among higher education systems and raising significant recognition issues.

• Recognition tend to be developed in “zones of mutual trust” where institutions cooperate preferably with others in the same ‘league’ (Khem, 2009).

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The Neoliberal worker

• How does this political grammar and its political enactment promote the emergence of new figures of the PhD student?

Figuration (a background) - what is it?

• as a useful theoretical lens to understand transformations in doctoral education

• Figuration work: a form of field work and mode of analysis which focuses on the generative production of diverse figures/ figurations in frictional events and an activity (or ‘work’) that people engage in, in their everyday lives (Gritt Nilesen)

How do we use figuration in the context of doctoral education?

• Large-scale processes of transformation in the EU policy on doctoral education are creating new conditions for PhD students’ subject formation

• Focus on how the student is given form and made to appear, or to figure, in certain ways in different policy documents and events

• Explore the emergence of various figures of the PhD student in EU policy texts as well as interviews with officials

What do we mean by figures of the PhD student?

• There are more figures of the PhD student that are emerging – not just one

• The figure is not the person, the person engages with the figure(s) in different contexts

• Different conceptualisations of the PhD student coming from different parties/ actors involved: steward of the discipline, early career researcher/ cadidate, knowledge/ neoliberal worker

• Conflicting figures of PhD student – how to reconcile them?

PhD student as part of the neoliberal imaginary

• PhD figures are co-produced alongside worlds in which they are envisioned to exist – universities, society, economy etc - given different characteristics to function in those worlds

• In a period of changes, the PhD student is made to figure as part of different and sometimes conflicting worlds

• There are more figures of the PhD student that are emerging – they can be located within different discourses: Humboltian, neoliberal, or at the intersection.

• In this presentation we focus on those figures that locate the PhD student in the neoliberal imaginary

• The PhD student can engage with these figures or not (but that is not the focus of this presentation)

Neoliberal figures of the PhD student: Key Questions

– What are the neoliberal figures?– Who are the actors?/ How do they negotiate the

boundaries of the figure? (The figure is negotiated and enacted across different institutional and political settings by different actors)

– What kind of world do they imagine?• Based on data from fieldwork conducted in

2014 – interviews with 6 key actors plus document analysis

What are the ‘neoliberal’ figures of the PhD student emerging in the EU policy discourse? • In this particular construction, the PhD student is located as

part of the economy and the ‘Europe of knowledge’ (EC, 1997)• ‘Because the ultimate goal is to prepare them for the

economy, and for their role in the economy’ (EC interview, 2014)

• ‘it is essential to ensure that enough researchers have the skills demanded by the knowledge-based economy’ (EC, 2011).

• ‘communication, teamwork, entrepreneurship, project management, ethics’ (EC, 2011).

• ‘autonomous intellectual risk takers’ (EC, 2011).

Who are the actors and how do they construct the figures?

• Decision-making - levels• Figure – boundaries – constructed, contested

and negotiated

• Stakeholders – who sets the trend?• EC – privileged position – soft governance – ‘You don’t get the grant if you don’t follow the

principles’ (former EC official, 2014)

What kind of world are they imagining?

• Neoliberal ‘knowledge economy’ imaginary• Constructing and defining problems • Sense of urgency – ‘competitiveness’

• re-skilling PhDs• agenda around economy, not education

• ‘knowledge economy;’ ‘industry;’ ‘training’ - contested

Conclusions

• New figures of the PhD student are emerging in the EU as part of a wider ‘knowledge economy’ imaginary, and one of these is the neoliberal worker.

• PhD students can choose to engage with it or not • There are key actors in Europe who are constantly

contesting and negotiating the boundaries of the doctorate and are engaged in a rather intricate policy-making process.

• Implications?