John Gray
Phone: 00 44 (0)20 7612 6531
Address: UCL Institute of Education
University College London
Dept. of Culture, Communication and Media,
20 Bedford Way,
London WC1H 0AL
Address: UCL Institute of Education
University College London
Dept. of Culture, Communication and Media,
20 Bedford Way,
London WC1H 0AL
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continuing until the present, universities in the UK have been subjected
to a series of neoliberal reforms which have had a deleterious effect on
academics’ working conditions and on the kind of research they are
required to produce. 1986 saw the introduction of regular sector wide
audits of research and scholarly activity designed to make academics
more ‘productive’ and the institutions in which they worked more
‘competitive’. This article takes as the object of its investigation the
Research Excellence Framework (REF), the most recent iteration of the
UK government sponsored assessment exercise. It adopts a
transdisciplinary approach which draws on political economy, social
theory and critical discourse analysis. The analysis exposes the ways in
which the Research Excellence Framework constructs an illusion of
intellectual excellence and innovation whose true purpose is the
neutralization of the university as a centre of independent knowledge
creation and learning, and hence as a potential locus of intellectual
opposition to the neoliberal hegemony. The article concludes by calling
on academics to refuse the narrow model of research valorized by the
REF and to reclaim the idea of the university as a public good.
continuing until the present, universities in the UK have been subjected
to a series of neoliberal reforms which have had a deleterious effect on
academics’ working conditions and on the kind of research they are
required to produce. 1986 saw the introduction of regular sector wide
audits of research and scholarly activity designed to make academics
more ‘productive’ and the institutions in which they worked more
‘competitive’. This article takes as the object of its investigation the
Research Excellence Framework (REF), the most recent iteration of the
UK government sponsored assessment exercise. It adopts a
transdisciplinary approach which draws on political economy, social
theory and critical discourse analysis. The analysis exposes the ways in
which the Research Excellence Framework constructs an illusion of
intellectual excellence and innovation whose true purpose is the
neutralization of the university as a centre of independent knowledge
creation and learning, and hence as a potential locus of intellectual
opposition to the neoliberal hegemony. The article concludes by calling
on academics to refuse the narrow model of research valorized by the
REF and to reclaim the idea of the university as a public good.