Page 13 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

Contemporary Western higher education institutions (HEIs) are situated in a context of neoliberalisation, where academic work is increasingly market-driven and focused on performance, excellence, competition, project-based working, entrepreneurialism and cost-reductions (Bozzon, Murgia, & Poggio, 2018; Clarke & Knights, 2015; Hearn, 2017; Prichard, 2012). Since mid-1980, Western governments became more hesitant to spend public money on public services (Deem, 2001), which has led, amongst others, to decreasing investments in higher education. These on-going austerity measures caused structural changes in the academic system (Hakala, 2009; Hearn, 2017). In 1995, an article addressed the concept of the McUniversity, emphasizing the move to mass higher education, greater managerial power and increased monitoring and regulation of the labour of academics1 (Parker & Jary, 1995).
Another crucial consequence of neoliberalisation is the rise of precarious employment in HEIs (Morgan & Wood, 2017) also referred to as the casualization of academic labour (Parker & Jary, 1995). HEIs increasingly rely on part-timers, hourly paid positions, and fixed-term contracts (Ackers & Oliver, 2007), who provide HEIs with greater staff flexibility. As a result of these developments, secure employment in academia is becoming increasingly rare, particularly for academics at the beginning2 of their career (Fumasoli, Goastellec, & Kehm, 2015; Krilić, Petrović, Hočevar, & Istenič, 2016; Wöhrer, 2014). Figures show a disproportionate growth of early-career temporary positions compared to more stable positions (EU, 2012, 2016). In 2010, in 23 countries in Europe, the number of academics working in (temporary) post-PhD positions was 156.595 (EU, 2012) compared to 191.238 in 2013 (EU, 2016). This is a 22 per cent increase over three years. The overall numbers of academic staff did only increase with nine per cent from 918.875 in 2010 to 997.109 in 2013 (EU, 2012; 2016). This has led to many early-career researchers pursuing “precarious, geographically mobile careers as ‘reserve armies’ of doctoral and postdoctoral academic labour for teaching, research, and knowledge production, often across dispersed transnational networks” (Hearn, 2017, p. 33).
An increase of competitive temporary funding from national and international research councils and the private sector has accelerated the growth of fixed-term contracts even more (Ackers & Oliver, 2007; Hakala, 2009; Van Arensbergen, Van der Weijden, & Van den Besselaar, 2014b). The aim of such research funding is to “use
1 I use the terms ‘academics’ and ‘researchers’ interchangeably. When I use these terms in this study, I refer to people working in universities on research only positions or positions that combine research and teaching.
2 The beginning of the career is referring to the phase between completing a PhD and obtaining a stable position in academia (Bozzon et al., 2018). This phase increasingly prolongs into more mid- career stages.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 11
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