I firmly believe that universities and academics have the potential to do good; to contribute to a more just, sustainable and peaceful future for our world by advancing public knowledge and understanding. Universities should cultivate the ability in our students to think creatively and critically for themselves. As an academic, I have seen it as my job to realise that potential, and for almost thirty years have devoted body and soul to that job. But now I’ve just about had it: I’m exhausted and heartbroken.
I’m a social scientist and senior academic at the Australian National University (ANU). This is my story. It is an admission of failure. Over the course of my career, Australian universities have become a central cog in the machinery of evil that is neoliberalism. I have been a victim of that evil, but also a particularly privileged beneficiary and, for all my good intentions, a collaborator. I have been a good little worker for capitalism. I haven’t fought fiercely or effectively enough against the barrage of bullshit – of exploitation, inequality, destruction and injustice; of abusive power, corruption, egotism, greed, and sheer, breathtaking incompetence and stupidity – that threatens us all.
I got my first full-time lecturing job at X University shortly after John Dawkins’ ‘reforms’ to the higher education sector were introduced at the end of the 1980s. I was young, green and penniless, the ideal, dog’s-body junior scholar. I worked my butt off.
At first, X University was an intellectually exciting place to be. But, as a small university it was hit particularly hard by government funding cuts and by neoliberalist managerialism, whose beginnings were first signalled when, shortly after I began my job, they changed the name of the ‘Personnel Department’ to ‘Human Resources’. We also had a particularly corrupt, megalomaniac and incompetent Vice Chancellor, and, in my area, an equally appalling Dean. Fine examples of how scum rises to the top.
Under their reign, we were introduced to a model of ‘development,’ most, or all, elements of which have since been experienced by universities across Australia. It goes something like this: first, suck as much administrative and other support away from academics as you can, centralise administration and increase the number of senior managers. Second, pay the Vice Chancellor and senior managers big bucks, suppress academic salaries and step up exploitation of short-term, casual academic labour. Third, audit and quantify every measure of academic worth you can think of. Turn every single scholar into their own worst bean-counting nightmare, and make sure they never feel like they’re doing enough. Fourth, boost areas, like business studies, where there’s ‘market demand,’ but starve the humanities and social sciences of funds and don’t allow the cross-subsidisation of courses or academic units in those areas.
For my area, that fourth aspect of the model resulted in a dreadful downward spiral: small numbers of students meant a small funding base and a lack of money to retain academic staff, let alone hire anyone new. Declining staff numbers meant we could run fewer courses, which in turn meant we lost funding. To compensate, the remaining staff were forced into even heavier workloads and a complicated, finely graded work point system was introduced. This increased the pressure on everyone. It brought enmity and conflict down lower and lower, so that by the time I left X University, we weren’t all blaming the system or the university or the Vice Chancellor or even the Dean: individuals were fighting individuals over who was entitled to more points, and tearing each other apart.
In the second half of the 1990s, I became a mother and shortly afterwards, a single mother. Meanwhile, I was the head of a small and declining programme under serious threat of closure. Or so I thought. But even after one colleague left, another’s contract was not renewed, and I went part-time – just in order to cope with a screaming baby and an impossible paid job – we weren’t closed down. I only then realised what the plan was: they were going to keep a single part-time continuing academic (me) running an entire four-year degree programme, with support coming only from underpaid, casual teaching assistants.
I took six months’ stress leave, went back to work and applied for six month’s Outside Studies Leave, so that I could do some fieldwork for a new research project. My application was denied. Having failed to renew the contract of my only other (non-casual) colleague, they told me I couldn’t take leave because I was required for teaching. I appealed repeatedly and lost. Finally, I managed to escape X University and took up a job at ANU.
My experience at X University was a good education in how rapidly and thoroughly you can destroy an institution, as well as individual lives. One thing I learnt was that evil doesn’t work alone: it needs collaborators. Equally, to combat evil, you can’t fight alone: you have to have a community and that community has to stick together and fight.
But over the several years I’ve been at ANU, I think I forgot those lessons. Or maybe I never really learned them sufficiently, or didn’t know how to actually put them into practice. Or found it all too difficult and demoralising. Or was too self-centred and complacent. Or too tired. Or all of the above.
In the early 2000s, there was quite a lot of complaining among my ANU colleagues. I thought to myself, you guys have no idea how privileged you are. I was in heaven: I had a research-only position and I was surrounded by some of the best scholars in the world. I was so proud to be at the ANU. But I also was disturbed at how undemocratic it was (and still is) and at how few of my colleagues seemed to care or want to engage in any kind of effort to change things. Why did so few people speak up at meetings, or even turn up to them, for that matter? I’m more sympathetic now. I too have given up going to most of the larger meetings, above the departmental level: they’re just too much of a risk to one’s mental health.
Toward the end of the 2000s and in the 2010s, the situation in the social sciences and humanities at ANU seriously deteriorated. Research-only positions became a thing of the past. Several areas were ‘restructured,’ causing lasting damage. The School of Music was ‘reviewed’ and gutted. Then, the ‘review’ of the School of Culture, History and Languages (CHL) began.
The CHL review set a record for malignant stupidity. Sacking some of the world’s top scholars for no apparent reason was just one part of it. Dragging out the whole business over more than two years, in a process devoid of transparency or accountability, but loaded with threat, was another. That led to many of the best people fleeing well before the sackings (and taking up senior positions at other universities), and serious demoralisation and illness among those who remained. The review decimated areas of research in which CHL scholars were world-leaders.
The CHL review did not affect me directly, but it did hit several close colleagues. I didn’t do enough to stand up for and support those colleagues, though I did join others in writing letters to the Vice Chancellor. I think I was just getting too overwhelmed by my ever-increasing workload and associated stress and by a sense of despair about academia.
I just wanted to crawl into a hole. For so many years, I had worked 60 – 70 hour weeks at my paid job (on top of being a single mother); I had very few friends and zero social life; I’d forgotten what it meant to take a holiday and, although I was not struck by physical or mental illness as severely as some colleagues, my health was in very poor shape.
Much of my stress came from being in a low-level ‘leadership’ position – at the coalface, where you have no power, but a shitload of work, and you’re continually having to implement or go along with policies you abhor, and continually having to spend hours, weeks, months of your life trying to navigate a bureaucracy in which the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
I felt – and still feel – less and less happy about belonging to ANU, and more and more alienated from academia in general. I’m ashamed of the extortionate fees we charge students, especially international postgraduate students, and of our failure to address bullying and abuse of students and staff, and the exploitation of casual and junior scholars. I’m appalled at the corruption and lack of due process that characterises so much decision-making across the university and at some of the appointments and promotions that the university has made, of people who lack academic qualifications or competence. I’m dismayed at the ongoing, and in some cases worsening, gender imbalances across the university. I’m tired of the rhetoric of ‘diversity’ (as opposed to ‘justice’ or ‘equality’) and of being counselled about maintaining a ‘work-life balance’ at the same time that the screws are tightened harder and harder. I’m fed up with being asked, as a senior female academic, to give other women pep talks about how to be ‘resilient’ and teach them how to play the promotion game, so the university can get away with not seriously addressing systemic exploitation, discrimination and inequality.
But what really gets me is how far we are moving from anything resembling a first-class institution of higher education. We’re urged to put on short professional ‘training’ courses. We’re told to devote hours and hours of our time to learn how to develop online courses, Mickey Mouse stuff with a bit of everything thrown in, lots of pictures and very short talks. We’re urged to cut down on the reading requirements. Draw the students in with pap; don’t engage their intelligence or push them to actually think and don’t fail them when they produce rubbish.
For years, we’ve suffered under the ‘publish or perish’ imperative, but now, the publication of peer-reviewed scholarly papers counts for nothing because apparently, they don’t have ‘impact.’ So, instead of publishing scholarship, we must turn ourselves into policy advisers for business and government, and second-rate journalists, churning out soundbites, glossy brochures and blogs. Never mind if you’re not interested in advising government or business and they’re not interested in you: just change the direction of your research. Don’t worry if you weren’t trained as a journalist: you can do a two-hour workshop. Don’t be phased if you’re asked to speak to a topic on which you have no research expertise: all you have to do is put on a smart suit and spout clichés, perpetuate stereotypes and misleading simplifications. Who cares?
We must, in short, do anything and everything other than be real scholars, doing the best we can to make genuine contributions to public understanding and critical thinking. Anything to keep the money coming in, so we can employ more managers, build gorgeous buildings, bail out ‘research’ centres that squander millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, while producing next-to-no real scholarship.
It’s like we’ve all gone down the rabbit hole. I see that damn cat-grin wherever I turn.
In the last year or so, things have become more and more surreal. Departmental meetings have taken on a hysterical edge. I think our brains can’t process the truly awful stuff, so we get stuck on the little things; the ones we can turn into a joke. There’s the joke, for example, about how, after spending millions of dollars on first demolishing and then rebuilding the whole student union court area in the centre of the university, the first thing they do is open up the swanky restaurants that students can’t afford. Well into first semester, the barriers which block direct access from that great, grand University Avenue to the Chifley library have not been removed. This is supposed to be the nation’s leading research-led institution for higher education and learning.
How are we to fight back or even stand up straight in the face of such a barrage of bullshit?
Academics in Australia have failed. I have failed. I know about neoliberalism and how it works. I know you have to organise to fight it. But I don’t. I don’t know how to and I don’t have time. I’ve been a union member my whole career, but only occasionally been to any meetings or joined campaigns. I haven’t fought hard enough for what I believe in and care about. I haven’t stuck by my colleagues sufficiently. I’ve too often just kept my head down and stayed safe. I haven’t even fought against my own exploitation. I’m too well trained. I try too hard to be liked. I don’t cope well with conflict. I feel bad if I don’t work non-stop. I feel guilty for not working hard enough, for being so privileged. I get worn out and I lose hope.
Failure is the mother of success, or so they say. So, tell me: What should I do now?
What should we do?
