Category Education

notes on academic overwork

This post was written whilst listening to Sharon van Etten’s Glastonbury set from 2015. One: Preamble This is a post about the proletarianisation of the university. This is a post about the exploitation of our labour-time. This is a post…

notes in support of Rhodes Must Fall

I My two most recent articles have referenced Rhodes Must Fall. The first, “Re-engineering higher education: the subsumption of academic labour and the exploitation of anxiety” (with Kate Bowles), argues that narratives of solidarity, in particular from marginalised voices, might…

against the HE Green Paper

Turn the light out say goodnight, no thinking for a little while Let’s not try to figure out everything at once It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky We’re half awake in a fake empire The…

notes on metricide

I read these pieces as I listened to The Smiths, Strangeways Here We Come. it seems that the panopticon is about to be extended across the whole academic hierarchy with the introduction of ‘faculty dashboards’. These are tools which allow…

HE Green Paper and related stuff

This is a collection of stuff related to the Green paper, grouped into: Political economics; Sector responses; HE marketisation; Teaching excellence; Learning gain; HE governance; Quality Assurance/regulation; and Research. It is not exhaustive and I probably won’t add to it. NOTE:…

against teaching intensity

My reading of the Higher Education Green paper sits alongside that of the Universities and Colleges Union, with its highlighting of the critical absence of staff inside education policy. My reading emerges against the UK Treasury’s Productivity Plan, Fixing the…