Michelle Webber’s research while affiliated with Brock University and other places

Much literature focusing on the academy is concerned with the spread of neo-liberalism into the university sector. We argue that universities in Canada are operating in an era of “accountability governance,” with ideologies, discourses, and practices centred on quality, accountability, and efficiency. We explore the interplay between accountability governance as a regime of power and the work of faculty associations, especially as they strive to preserve faculty members’ professional autonomy and control over their academic work. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with executive members of several Ontario university faculty associations, we explore themes of neo-liberalization and corporatization of the university, shrinking faculty budgets, program reviews, and strategic mandates. While opportunities for action and resistance for faculty unions arise, particularly at the level of senate, more militancy and radicalism are not favoured by many members, as political action is often seen as “unprofessional.”

Much literature focusing on the academy is concerned with the spread of neo-liberalism into the university sector. We argue that universities in Canada are operating in an era of “accountability governance,” with ideologies, discourses, and practices centred on quality, accountability, and efficiency. We explore the interplay between accountability governance as a regime of power and the work of faculty associations, especially as they strive to preserve faculty members’ professional autonomy and control over their academic work. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with executive members of several Ontario university faculty associations, we explore themes of neo-liberalization and corporatization of the university, shrinking faculty budgets, program reviews, and strategic mandates. While opportunities for action and resistance for faculty unions arise, particularly at the level of senate, more militancy and radicalism are not favoured by many members, as political action is often seen as “unprofessional.”

While Canada lacks explicit central directives towards research productivity, academics experience frequent and intense reviews of their research, teaching and service through mechanisms such as elaborate tenure and promotion procedures and annual performance reviews. Given that newer academics are sometimes thought to be especially susceptible to contemporary performativity pressures, this article considers seven early career academics (ECAs), interviewed as part of a larger qualitative study, and the nuances of their reactions to evaluative processes, especially the tenure review. On the whole, the ECAs create and deploy strategies to ensure that they meet ever-rising standards, because they love their work and believe they are ‘lucky’ to be on track to secure a permanent position. They hope for more freedom in ‘life after tenure’. However, all have trenchant criticisms of the corporatized university and the ways in which evaluation proceeds.

Acker and Webber present results of their qualitative interviews with 47 early-career academics in five social science fields in Ontario, Canada. Using a theoretical framework drawn from Michel Foucault and scholarship on gender and organizations, they show how regulatory mechanisms such as the tenure review operate through surveillance, discipline and self-discipline. In the process of conforming to real or imagined standards, junior academics narrow their research, over-emphasize performativity and experience high anxiety. Gender, race and class contribute to differentiated experiences. The tenure review is a high-stakes ?examination? that determines whether or not an academic gains a permanent position. While the tenure review process is not new, its intensity and impact on subjectivity have increased in line with the audit cultures spreading globally through academe.

This article presents the findings of a survey of unionized professors and professional librarians at a public university in Southern Ontario to examine their views on the prospect and desirability of “right-to-work” legislation and “paycheck protection” laws. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to assess the level of opposition to such legislative initiatives among unionized faculty, and, second, to determine the extent to which the passage of such laws would undermine the dues base of the faculty union. Based on the findings of a mixed methods survey, we found that a strong majority of the university professors and professional librarians surveyed were opposed to “right-to-work” and “paycheck protection” laws and that their passage would not deter them from paying dues or authorizing expenditures for political action.

Over the past 40 or so years, women’s share of faculty positions in Canada and elsewhere has increased considerably, if not yet reaching parity. Yet working in the gendered university remains problematic. This article uses data from a qualitative research project in which 38 junior academics were interviewed about their responses to being on the tenure-track and being reviewed for tenure. Participants also talked about work–family issues and how they distributed their efforts among research, teaching, and service responsibilities. Both women and men made career decisions based on family needs, and two women and four men had taken parental leaves. While there were signs of changing norms around family matters, women were still overloaded with service roles at work. The article looks at the results in light of the contradictory nature of social change and gender roles within university work.

For the past few years, we have been conducting a project exploring the relationship between what we call accountability governance in higher education, specifically in the Canadian province of Ontario, and the (re)formation of academic subjectivities. Our starting point was the burgeoning critical literature about the corporatization of universities and its many consequences, including increased surveillance of workers and emphasis on accountability and performativity.

This study examines the views of full-time unionized university faculty at four primarily undergraduate universities in Ontario, Canada, on a broad range of issues related to postsecondary education, faculty associations, and the labor movement. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to better understand the views of unionized professors regarding the role and effectiveness of their faculty unions and of labor unions more generally, and second to explore what impact such views might have on shaping the strategic orientation and political priorities of faculty associations in a context of unprecedented austerity measures and neoliberal restructuring in Ontario's postsecondary education sector. Based on the findings of a mixed-methods survey, we found that university professors were relatively satisfied union members with a healthy degree of union—as opposed to class—consciousness, but had little appetite for engaging in political activities beyond the narrow scope of postsecondary education. This finding, we argue, reinforces the false division between the “economic” and the “political” in the realm of labor strategy, thus potentially undermining the capacity of unionized faculty associations to effectively resist neoliberal restructuring both on campus and in society more broadly.

Academic Working Lives: Experience, Practice and Change examines the ways in which lecturers and their roles have developed in the modern academic workplace. The book offers insights into changing occupational roles, institutions and the adaptations around flexible and mobile working in everyday professional life. The editors have drawn together an impressive range of research perspectives and themed topics that cover the key aspects of academic professional identity and relationships, as well as reflecting experiences of learning and development at work in today's academy. The contributors explore lecturers' everyday working experiences in the light of the impact of policy changes, and the modes of academic leadership and management in contemporary higher education. Contributions reflect situations and contexts from across the UK and internationally, in taking account of the changing workforce, evolving pedagogies and new technologies in the working lives of today's educational professionals.