Abstract
The perceptible rise of an audit culture has had marked effects in higher education, including in Australia. Since their introduction in the early 1990s, academic audits have grown in size and sophistication, consuming ever more time, energy, and financial resources. While supported by both governments and institutional leaders, this study reveals that the effects have significantly distorted the academic mission. Drawing on a systematic analysis of academic outputs in two fields (Education, and Anthropology) for the years 1993, 2003, and 2013, as well as individual interviews, the analysis underlines the fracturing of the profession, including gender dimensions, and a trend toward publication in highly ranked international journals. For an English-language system that is increasingly integrated into the Asia-Pacific, with a diverse academic staff, the effects are complex, and not entirely uniform. But overall, the effects have been to devalue collegiality, in the interests of reshaping academics into self-monitoring subjects.
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Notes
- 1.
In recognition of the need for a more global perspective, and response to an increasing trend for US students to spend time studying abroad, US News began publishing its Best Global Universities ranking in 2014.
- 2.
Interestingly, the League of European Research Universities (LERU), representing 21 research-intensive institutions across Europe, including a handful of leading UK HEIs, withdrew its support for the project in January 2013 (amid criticisms that they had most to lose from the new ranking exercise).
- 3.
The UK version came with its own Inspectorate, to verify performance data submitted by HEIs. Later, panels of senior academics from each discipline were anointed as ‘Reviewers’.
- 4.
This compares, for example, with the other Asian giant, India, which despite having around 125 million speakers of English (the major scientific language), had only the Indian Institute of Science listed among the world’s top 500 institutions.
- 5.
Despite investing Rm 590 million in the scheme, the Malaysian government was careful not to specify which ranking scheme. UM is currently ranked below 300, with USM ranked below 400, on the ARWU’s leading 500 Index.
- 6.
At one national university, for example, publication of an article in SSCI journals is rewarded with 10,000 Taiwan dollars, compared with 6000 for a TSCI article. Much the same differentials apply at numerous universities in mainland China, although less likely at top-tier HEIs, where increasingly such performance is required, at least for younger staff.
- 7.
Research quality; Research volume and activity; Research application; Research recognition.
- 8.
Earlier versions of ERA that had initially listed journals as A+, A, B and C were highly contested, revised and re-contested, and ultimately abandoned (Australian 2011).
- 9.
Such age differences are by no means unique to the Australian profession. Ishikawa’s research (personal correspondence, and in this Special Issue) shows that while younger (and more vulnerable) Japanese scholars are aware of and affected by journals rankings, and are more likely to respond to the pressure to publish in English, older professors remain largely unaffected. Similarly, older professors in China are in practice largely exempted from the demanding expectations of research performance, notably to publish regularly in highly ranked international journals, in English, that burden their younger colleagues.
- 10.
The fact that these consortia of research intensive HEIs recently banded together is yet another sign of the importance of rankings, internationally (LERU 2013).
- 11.
The OECD study of publications Measuring Innovation (2010), for example, showed Australia as among the most internationally collaborative of all 34 member systems.
- 12.
Disciplinary differences are substantial here. While academic publications in the natural sciences, medicine and applied sciences strongly favour articles, it remains the case that production in the social sciences and humanities is commonly in the form of books and book chapters.
- 13.
The department of Social Work joined the Faculty of Education in 2003, forming the current Faculty of Education and Social Work. Only academics within the Education discipline were included in the analysis, and staff count, throughout.
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Welch, A. (2021). Audit Culture and Academic Production: Re-Shaping Australian Social Science Research Output (1993–2013). In: Welch, A., Li, J. (eds) Measuring Up in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7921-9_13
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