Carole Leathwood

Graduates' employment and the discourse of employability: a critical analysis

In a context of considerable changes in the labour market and higher education sector in the UK, a discourse of employability has become increasingly dominant. Universities are urged to ensure that they produce ‘employable’ graduates, and graduates themselves are exhorted to continually develop their personal skills, qualities and experiences in order to compete in the graduate labour market. Drawing on a study of ‘non‐traditional’ graduates from a post‐1992 inner‐city university in England, this paper offers a critical appraisal of the discourse of employability. In contrast to assumptions of a level playing field in which graduates’ skills and personal qualities are the key to their success in the labour market, social class, gender, ethnicity, age, disability and university attended all impact on the opportunities available. It is argued that the discourse of employability, with its emphasis on individual responsibility and neglect of social inequalities, has potentially damaging consequences for these graduates.

Balancing paid work and studies: working (‐class) students in higher education

Engagement in paid work during term‐time amongst undergraduates in England has increased in recent years, reflecting changes in both higher education funding and labour market policy. This article draws on research with students in a post‐1992 university to explore undergraduate students’ accounts of combining work and study during term‐time and the various strategies they employ in their attempts to balance the two. Many of the students in this study may be described as ‘non traditional’ entrants, and attention is paid to the ways in which students’ accounts reflect issues of social class. It is argued that the transfer of responsibility for funding university study from the state to the individual student and their families, and the lack of attention paid to the demands of term‐time work in higher education and institutional policy, risks reinforcing and exacerbating inequalities.

Gender/ed discourses and emotional sub-texts: Theorising emotion in UK higher education

This article engages with contemporary debates about the absence/presence of emotion in higher education. UK higher education has traditionally been constructed as an emotion-free zone, reflecting the dominance of Cartesian dualism with its rational/emotional, mind/body, male/female split. This construction has been challenged in recent years by the incursion of ‘new students’ into the academy, requirements to offer enhanced student support, and new neo-liberal employability/personal skills agendas. At the same time, theories on the significance of the emotions in education are gaining prominence, e.g. in relation to debates about ‘emotional intelligence’. This renewed emphasis on emotion, however, has also been constructed as a dangerous and regressive example of the growing ‘therapy culture’ in universities. Drawing on the rich tradition of sociological and psycho-social work on the affective, our concern is to further the theorisation of the place of emotion in higher education.

Assessment policy and practice in higher education: purpose, standards and equity

This paper places a discussion of assessment in higher education (HE) in the UK within the wider policy context. It argues for a critical sociological analysis to consider some of the issues, themes and debates in relation to assessment in HE at this time. Recent trends in assessment policy and practice are discussed, alongside a consideration of the purposes of assessment. It examines the moral panic around standards, especially in the context of widening participation, and moves on to discuss concerns of equity in relation to assessment. Issues of identity and power relations are central to these debates, and the paper concludes with a plea for social justice, rather than selectivity and inequality, to be prioritized.This paper places a discussion of assessment in higher education (HE) in the UK within the wider policy context. It argues for a critical sociological analysis to consider some of the issues, themes and debates in relation to assessment in HE at this time. Recent trends in assessment policy and practice are discussed, alongside a consideration of the purposes of assessment. It examines the moral panic around standards, especially in the context of widening participation, and moves on to discuss concerns of equity in relation to assessment. Issues of identity and power relations are central to these debates, and the paper concludes with a plea for social justice, rather than selectivity and inequality, to be prioritized.

Research policy and academic performativity: compliance, contestation and complicity

Research, a major purpose of higher education, has become increasingly important in a context of global economic competitiveness. In this paper, we draw on data from email interviews with academics in Britain to explore responses to current research policy trends. Although the majority of academics expressed opposition to current policy developments, most were nevertheless complying with research imperatives. Informed by a Foucauldian conceptualisation of audit, feminist research on gendered performativity, and sociological and psycho-social theoretical resources on the affective, we discuss compliance, contestation and complicity in relation both to the data and to our own location as academics in this field.

A Critique of Institutional Inequalities in Higher Education (or an Alternative to Hypocrisy for Higher Educational Policy)

This article seeks to apply Adam Swift’s (2003) critique of private and selective schooling to higher education in the UK. The higher education sector in this country is highly differentiated, with high status, research-led elite institutions at the top of the university hierarchy, and newer universities, with far lower levels of funding and prestige, at the bottom. The extent of this differentiation is illustrated by an analysis of six universities at different ends of this spectrum. It also becomes apparent that the student profiles of these institutions are very different, with privately educated, white, middle class students particularly over-represented in the elite universities, and working-class, minority ethnic, and to some extent, women students concentrated in those institutions with far lower levels of funding and prestige. Considerable benefits accrue to those who have attended the elite institutions, and it is argued that the hierarchy of universities both reflects and perpetuates social inequalities, with the middle-classes retaining their privileges and the elite continuing to reproduce itself. The discourse of meritocracy that is used to justify this institutional differentiation is also discussed, and the paper concludes with a call for a more socially just and equitable future for the higher education sector.

‘Treat me as a human being—don’t look at me as a woman’: femininities and professional identities in further education

This article draws on case study research in two further education (FE) colleges to explore the ways in which women administrators, lecturers and managers negotiate and construct their (gendered, racialized and classed) identities in the workplace. The context is that of the restructuring of education, the ‘feminization’ of educational management, and debates about the de‐ or re‐professionalization of lecturers. The article illustrates how discourses of femininity are drawn upon in the construction of professional identities, and are used to both perform and resist new worker identities and gendered power relations. Despite optimistic discourses about a ‘female future’, the restructuring of further education does not, as yet, appear to have resulted in any notable challenge to the gendered, racialized and classed FE labour market.

Re/presenting intellectual subjectivity: gender and visual imagery in the field of higher education

Visual images of students and academics in the UK have traditionally featured men, reflecting the historical predominance of men in these positions. When women were represented, sexist imagery and traditional constructions of femininity were not uncommon. This article explores the ways in which students and academics are constructed in a selection of visual representations in two contemporary UK sources: in two videos aimed at potential students and in the Times Higher Education, a magazine for higher education professionals. Following a discussion of dominant constructions of intellectual subjectivity, I draw upon a feminist post-structuralist approach in the analysis of these visual images. Although women are now entering universities in greater numbers than ever before, I suggest that this visual iconography continues to inscribe culturally dominant constructions of femininity and masculinity, reaffirms a gender binary and reconstructs the serious intellectual subject as a masculine one.

Women Academic Researchers: Still Interlopers in the UK Academy?

This chapter explores the gendered effects and affects of contemporary trends in higher education research policy. These trends, including a renewed focus on excellence and the utility of research outcomes, are evident globally, with universities and nations competing to assert their ‘world-class’ status. Research has become an increasingly high stakes activity, critical to institutional positioning in national and international league tables and a key signifier of material and symbolic capitals for universities, departments and individual academics. Research is also a highly gendered arena, with (white) men in the UK continuing to hold the majority of senior posts and more likely to be judged research ‘excellent’ than their women peers.

Tomorrow’s a mystery: constructions of the future and ‘un/becoming’ amongst ‘early’ and ‘late’ career academics

Abstract Constructing a secure sense of a professional future has become increasingly difficult for early career researchers, whilst concerns about present and future job in/security have also been expressed in relation to already-established academics. In this paper, we draw on qualitative data from a U.K. study to explore everyday conceptualisations of the future for both ‘early career’ and ‘late career’ academics, in the context of increased fears and actualities of occupational precarity. We utilise theories of the social construction of time, as well as a conception of precarity and ‘precarization’ utilised by Butler (2009a, 2009b) and Lorey (2015), relating to ‘politically induced’ forms of insecurity that are a direct product of neoliberalism. The research reveals a variety of forms and levels of concern and anxiety by both groups for their own futures, and for the future of the academy as a whole.