Transformación del Paquete Entities

In his first interview, Andy had talked about a collaborative commercial project that he had been involved in. He had attended international conferences, co-authored a book and was working on developing resources with commercial potential. He was the only interviewee who talked about this more commercial element of knowledge exchange and his involvement in it:

I am making links with another European university, doing a conference there about supporting children with English as an additional language. I have also been trying to develop something with computing, designing Apps…

Andy self-authored as someone who not only tried to accommodate the new values, he was also proactive in developing projects and strategies. In his first interview, he talked about his plans for participating in building up Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activity: ‘I like the CPD work and I would like to see that grow and become more popular, so I would like to develop that. I think that there is scope to do that and I would like to be involved in a few more projects along the way.’ However, the CPD courses did not recruit

116 sufficient numbers to run. Andy’s later narrative began to focus on the impact of market forces and the values they brought: ‘My RKE next year is going to be cut to the minimum … I did a lot of stuff for my area of expertise, planned lots of CPD courses, but they did not recruit, so that’s not going to run next year.’ He reflected on how managerialism and the need to make a profit for the institution had also had an impact on other things that he had done: ‘I did the book, but then I was told [by management] that it was not part of the hours, it did not count as “scholarly hours”…it’s not making money for the institution.’

He had been unaware of this financial imperative until work on the book had been completed. He expressed his frustration: ‘I didn’t realise that it wasn’t part of RKE until my PDR [Professional Development Review] when my manager said it wasn’t. So I got a bit annoyed about all that.’ Others had also misunderstood the directives around KTP activities. ‘It was like my colleagues who took on school governor roles [as their contribution to Knowledge Exchange]. Then they were told that that didn’t count, either, like the book. So, we were told all this and that these things wouldn’t count.’ He went on ‘I am really annoyed about the RKE stuff and I think that everyone has been let down by that.’

This frustration and disappointment in his institution had made him reluctant to contribute more: ‘If it hadn’t been for that, I would have done lots of other things, but, to be honest, I don’t feel like doing them now.’He rejected the neoliberal underpinning of why these things “didn’t count”:

… well, it’s not making money, is it, for this institution? It’s sad really, the whole thing is changing, into a business model and it’s slightly worrying really. I think that’s why a lot of the management are leaving, so it’s like a transition.

Both Michael and Andy recognised the impact of the neo-liberal discourses of marketisation. Unlike Michael, though, Andy resisted the idea of engaging in any further academic study, citing busyness alongside a desire to do things properly if he was going to do them. He was not as such opposed to further study, but he wanted to do it well, and would only do it if it were demanded of him:

I’m so busy that I wouldn’t have time to do the Ed Doc properly. So, unless it becomes a necessity, I don’t want to do it at the moment…When I want to do

117 something, I want to do it properly, to get my teeth into it, to really enjoy it. I would not want to do it just for the sake of doing it, not something to be ticked off on a management list.

Andy also resisted the impact of neoliberalism on changing values in the context of teaching and the student experience. He commented frequently on how positively he viewed the teaching element of his role: ‘I love the teaching… I want to be with the students, teaching, because that’s what I get a buzz out of…’ He saw his work with students as being fundamentally about human relationships ‘… look at those fourth year students [attending for a celebration of course completion on the day of my interview with him] …we know all those students and the richness of those relationships that have evolved with them…’. However, he feared that the culture of staff-student relationships was changing in a quality assurance system which ultimately rendered both staff and students more passive:

We are getting more and more like a secondary school where we are drip feeding the students and I worry that it is going more and more that way … we did not used to do this and they used to manage fine … I worry about the university’s obsession with this kind of [student evaluation] feedback … We’ve not got a voice.

None of the things that he valued in terms of relationships with the students were: ‘…picked up by hard data.’ He saw this as representative of the way that things were becoming: ‘…it’s the way of the world, I guess.’