This article was downloaded by: [Clemson University]On: 19 May 2015, At: 18:42Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Click for updates

Studies in Higher EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cshe20

Exploring faculty experiences in astriving university through the lens ofacademic capitalismLeslie D. Gonzalesa, E. Martineza & C. Ordua

a Leadership, Counseling, Human & Organizational Development,E.T. Moore School of Education, Clemson University, Clemson, USPublished online: 20 May 2013.

To cite this article: Leslie D. Gonzales, E. Martinez & C. Ordu (2014) Exploring faculty experiencesin a striving university through the lens of academic capitalism, Studies in Higher Education, 39:7,1097-1115, DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2013.777401

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.777401

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &

Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

Exploring faculty experiences in a striving university through thelens of academic capitalism

Leslie D. Gonzales*, E. Martinez and C. Ordu

Leadership, Counseling, Human & Organizational Development, E.T. Moore School ofEducation, Clemson University, Clemson, US

In this paper, we draw from academic capitalism to explore the work lives andexperiences of faculty who work in a striving university. Our analysis suggeststhat faculty members feel pressures induced by academic capitalism, including alack of space, no time and the sense of constant surveillance. Our work adds tothe theoretical as well as empirical discussions concerning striving, academiccapitalism and the impacts of both on the academic profession.

Keywords: faculty members; neoliberalism; academic work and identity;organisational behaviour; rankings

Introduction

Many scholars have documented the significant challenges that the academic professionhas confronted over the last several decades (Altbach 1980; Bansel and Davies 2005;Bansel et al. 2008; Bowen and Schuster 1986; Davies and Peterson 2005; Musselin2007; Tuchman 2009). One of the central themes in this literature is how the profession,and higher education, more generally, has moved towards values and behaviors charac-teristic of the free market (Kirp 2003). For instance, in 1918, Veblen lamented howbusinesses were shaping the curriculum in higher education in undesirable ways(towards vocational education, for example). In 1984, Silva and Slaughter detailedthe connections between Western capitalism, the academic professions, and the pro-duction of knowledge. Later, in 1997, Slaughter and Leslie highlighted new relation-ships between colleges/universities, states, and private businesses. In what would bethe first rendition of ‘academic capitalism’ theory, Slaughter and Leslie (1997) drewheavily from economic perspectives, particularly resource dependency theory. In thisrendition of academic capitalism, universities were depicted mostly as victims forcedto react to a neoliberal political economy/policy environment. The authors pointed toneoliberalism as a distinct mode of international politics and economics that inspiredsignificant ideological shifts about the ways that public goods, such as higher edu-cation, might be understood. Simply put, the authors argued that neoliberalism posi-tioned higher education as a market good.

In a later iteration of the theory, Slaughter and Rhoades (2000, 2004) blended theirpolitical economy perspective with powerful sociological insights and argued that col-leges and universities were engaging in market-like behaviors at unprecedented levels

© 2013 Society for Research into Higher Education

*Corresponding author. Email: leslieg@clemson.edu

Studies in Higher Education, 2014Vol. 39, No. 7, 1097–1115, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.777401

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

and from an offensive rather than defensive position. Slaughter and Rhoades showedhow university leaders were arranging new partnerships between research units andindustry. Such partnerships included the development of intellectual property officesto create contracts that privileged business interests and corporate profits above thepublic good.

The impact of academic capitalism theory has been extensive. In most scholarship,the theory is mobilized to show how the structures of the higher education field, themarket, and the state are converging in radical new ways. It has also been quitehelpful in exploring the changing conditions of today’s academic profession (seeCampbell and Slaughter 1999; Shrecker 2010; Slaughter, Archerd, and Campbell2004; Walker 2009).

In this paper, we employ academic capitalism to explore faculty work experiencesin a ‘striving’ (O’Meara 2007) university. Striving is a concept meant to describe ‘pres-tige-seeking’ universities (O’Meara 2007, 123). Most treatments of striving link thetrend to cultural resource theories (e.g. new institutionalism) (Gonzales 2012; Margin-son 2010; Morphew and Baker 2004; Rusch and Wilbur 2007; Morphew 2009), whichmeans that scholars might inadvertently ignore the political-economic and fiscalimpetus that underlies striving. However, in this paper, we show how the political,economic and ideological influences of neoliberalism converge on the faculty experi-ence inside a striving university.

More specifically, following the work of Walker (2009), we have refinedacademic capitalism for micro-level analysis by including temporal and spatial con-siderations. Incorporating these dimensions is a strategy to consider more specifi-cally how academic capitalism, and its underpinning framework, neoliberalism,shapes faculty work life on a daily basis inside a striving university. In sum,our work seeks to bring together two lines of research: the well-established litera-ture on academic capitalism’s effect on the academic profession and the emergingline of research that considers how striving university contexts shape faculty worklife (Gardner 2010, 2013; Gonzales 2012, 2013; O’Meara and Bloomgarden 2011;Rusch and Wilbur 2007). To set up this paper, we review literature on the aca-demic profession. Then we show how striving universities impact faculty worklives.

Literature review

As noted above, the scholarship on faculty careers is filled with assertions that facultywork conditions have dramatically slumped since the late 1970s (Altbach 1980; Banseland Davies 2005; Bansel et al. 2008; Bowen and Schuster 1986; Davies and Peterson2005; Musselin 2007; Tuchman 2009). Bowen and Schuster’s (1986) multi-method,multi-site investigation was among the first to offer extant empirical evidence forthis claim. Bowen and Schuster (1986) developed four major themes to describethe condition of the profession based on their work. These four themes were: 1) thefaculty dispirited; 2) the faculty fragmented; 3) the faculty devalued; and 4) thefaculty dedicated. The grim essence of these four themes was drawn from commentssuch as the following:

Somehow the sheer joy of being a scholar has been eroded, and it’s not just because of themoney. They have taken the fun out of teaching. You feel so pressured; it’s hard to findtime to sit and think. We have gotten into this publish-or-perish type syndrome where

1098 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

we publish trivia and we’re not reflecting on what we’re doing… (Bowen and Schuster1986, 143)

One of the central concerns outlined by Bowen and Schuster’s (1986) work was theincreasing tendency for universities and colleges to press scholarly production as themost valuable part of faculty work. This concern has been reiterated consistently forthe last three decades or so (Boyer 1991; Fairweather 1996, 2005; Wright 2005).Although faculty members seem to be rewarded only for scholarly production, manyscholars point out that expectations for the academic profession consist of more dimen-sions than ever before (see Musselin 2007). For instance, Musselin (2007) pointed outthat faculty have heavier administrative loads; that grant hunting and writing are nownormal expectations of the career; and that professors must keep up with technologicalinnovations for teaching and learning. Based on this brief review of literature, it is clearthat academic careers are increasingly complex while reward systems seem to be quitenarrow. In the next section, we describe the main features of striving and highlight theimpact of striving on faculty careers.

Striving universities and faculty work

As noted earlier, ‘striving’ is a theoretical construct sketched out by O’Meara (2007).O’Meara (2007) employed the concept to describe how universities are always attempt-ing to enhance their prestige. She argued that in their pursuits of prestige, universitiespay incredibly close attention to the indicators used by ranking bodies such as U.S.News and World Report. The trend is probably most notable among US universities,but Pusser and Marginson (2012) smartly noted that in a global era, striving isquickly becoming an international phenomenon.

In her synthesis, O’Meara argued that striving universities tend to make changes tofive operational areas, which align with key measures that ranking bodies use. Thesefive operational changes include: 1) revising admissions processes to be more select;2) recruiting and rewarding research oriented faculty; 3) making curricular and pro-gramming changes, such as removing less prestigious forms of education from a uni-versity’s charge (vocational or technical programming; see Longanecker 2008); 4)reallocating resources to favor and facilitate research activities or to build attractiveamenities; and 5) developing a public relations or branding campaign.

Of these five changes, the shift in faculty rewards and recruitment has the mostobvious and direct impact for faculty work life. However, the elimination of programsor the reallocation of resources for purposes outside teaching and learning or studentsupport services can also impact faculty work experiences. For example, Gardner(2010) showed how departmental cultures shifted, and consequently, reshaped thefaculty and student experience at one striving university. In another study, Gardner(2013) argued that striving contexts present heightened productivity expectationswithout adequate support or infrastructure, which resulted in a higher intent-to-leaveamong women faculty. Gardner suggested that although the changes being made at astriving university were attempts to enhance prestige, they led to some negative experi-ences for faculty.

Gonzales (2012) also adopted a cultural resource perspective in her study of facultyagency inside a striving university. Gonzales revealed that faculty privileged research,grant writing, and graduate education as they sought to position themselves as ‘legiti-mate.’ Gonzales (2012) critically asserted that faculty who did not prioritize these

Studies in Higher Education 1099

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

activities might face difficulties in the tenure and promotion system. Rusch and Wilbur(2007) also noted that expectations for publishing, grant writing/winning, and partici-pation in (inter)national associations/academies rose in one striving college because ofthe kinds of cultural resources that these activities yield for universities. Of the increas-ing homogeneity of academic missions and faculty roles in the higher education field,Morphew (2009, 262) wrote:

… this movement toward less institutional diversity over time is the result of normativeforces resulting from professionalization and specialization or the need to obtain the pre-cious resource of legitimacy via the adoption of standard structures or policies.

Morphew’s comments summarize the theories that underpin the scholarship onstriving (Gardner 2010, 2013; Gonzales 2012; O’Meara and Bloomgarden 2011;Rusch and Wilbur 2007; Tuchman 2009) where the behavior is explained as a resultof higher education’s normative orientation, meaning that cultural resources areassumed to be of the utmost import – even above fiscal resources (e.g. earning ahigher ranking, asking faculty to produce more research). Below, though, we lay outthe theory of academic capitalism (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004; Walker 2009) to con-sider how it might be relevant to studies of striving.

Theoretical framework

As noted earlier, Slaughter and Leslie (1997) unveiled their theory of academic capital-ism to discuss universities’ increasing propensity to operate like market entities. First,the authors situated universities in a complex web of relationships that included govern-mental actors (the state) as well as market actors across both national and internationalcontexts. While markets have always had an inter-country dimension (Allan 2010;Rhoads and Torres 2006), international economic policies and agreements, such asthe epic North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, became the lynchpinfor a global, more liberal form of capitalism (neoliberalism). These policies and agree-ments came into play at the urging of business owners who were often tied into largerinternational entities such asWorldBank, InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF, hereafter),and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) around the1970s (Harvey 2007). These business moguls used their connections to lobby for pol-icies that would enable and/or improve business transactions across national boundariesand sought to integrate higher education into such transactions. Slaughter and Leslie(1997, 7) described how these policies played out in the higher education field:

As the economy globalized, the business sector in industrialized countries pushed the stateto devote more resources to the enhancement and management of innovation so that cor-porations and the nations in which they were headquartered could compete more success-fully in world markets … business leaders wanted government to sponsor commercialresearch and development in research universities and in government laboratories …faculty and research universities were willing to consider partnerships with businessand government based on commercial innovation because government spending onhigher education was slowing down.

Not only did the government ask universities to work more closely with industry tostimulate growth via research, technological innovation and other collaborative endea-vors, government also simultaneously slashed funding for higher education. It is

1100 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

notable that a decrease in public funding for universities has been documented acrossthe globe (Altbach 2001).

As these conditions worsened over the period of four decades, Slaughter andRhoades (2004) suggested that it eventually became more common and less controver-sial for academics to twist their research agendas or questions to fit with sponsoredresearch demands (Slaughter, Archerd, and Campbell 2004; Mendoza 2007). Corporateinspired research began to be normalized. Administrators continuously worked todevelop industry-friendly practices, policies, and infrastructure (Campbell and Slaugh-ter 1999) in order to enable exchanges between faculty researchers and industry repre-sentatives. That university constituents, particularly administrators, began to take on amore entrepreneurial stance on such matters meant that they were no longer on thedefense and reacting to a harsh policy and funding environment. Instead, Slaughterand Rhoades (2004) pointed out that university actors were participating more willinglyand thus contributing to academic capitalist regimes. This offensive shift among univer-sity actors might be attributed to a deep ideological ‘neoliberal turn’ (Harvey 2007)where individuals assume a sort of market-like position, fending for themselves,where ‘individual success or failure are interpreted in terms of entrepreneurial virtuesor personal failings rather than attributed to systemic property’ (Harvey 2007, 66–67).

According to Harvey (2007), neoliberal ideology has seeped into almost all facets ofsocial life to the point that free-market logics now reign over all areas of public interest.Harvey highlighted the purposeful dismantling of social welfare programs, such ashealth, education, transportation and so forth. Similarly, Slaughter and Rhoades(2004) argue that neoliberalism transformed students into consumers, universitiesinto willing service providers, and faculty members into participatory knowledge capi-talists (Kirp 2003; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004; Walker 2009). It is clear that academiccapitalism is anchored in a political-economy approach that privileges free-market prin-ciples. Below, we move from the structural level to consider how academic capitalismplays out at the micro level.

Academic capitalism at the micro-level

Judith Walker (2009) followed the ideological thread in academic capitalism/neoliber-alism and aimed to show how it has an extended reach into people’s daily lives.Drawing heavily from Marx and Weber, Walker (2009, 487) explained that in theindustrial era, people were organized by ‘clock time’. This is why Weber (1958)noted time as a precious commodity. While at work, hourly wages and piecemealpay incentivized workers to watch the clock and keep track of their production. Inshort, society was organized around workweeks and work hours. However, throughthe development of infrastructure and technology, Walker (2009) noted that workhas come to happen in new ways. For one, the structure of workweeks melted away.Additionally, the demarcation between home and work has disappeared. Suchchanged conditions, Walker noted, have led us to a new phase of capitalism describedas neoliberalism or post-Fordism.

These insights about the fluidity of time and space are Walker’s (2009) jumping-offpoints for updating Slaughter and Rhoades’s theory of academic capitalism and they areespecially helpful for studying the penetration of academic capitalism at a more microlevel. Walker argued that academic capitalism seeps into the very ways that universityactors live out the whole of their lives, especially academics (2009, 496–99). Writingabout the pressures of time delivered through academic capitalism, Walker described

Studies in Higher Education 1101

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

three common time pressures: no time; efficient use of time; and the moral imperativeuse of time. Walker wrote:

… whereas the modern capitalist sought to control time, under globalization the post-modern knowledge worker attempts to outsmart time … In universities, which houseand produce knowledge workers, work knows no time-bounds; it seeps into everynook and cranny of one’s life …. in an academically-capitalist regime, both clock-timeand global time engulf the individual faculty member… (Walker 2009, 497)

For faculty members, not only is time more fluid, the spaces in which academics areexpected to carry out their work have changed as well. Of this, Walker described howwork can (and often is expected to) be carried out while away from one’s official work-spaces. Walker points to smartphones that deliver email and virtual classrooms. Giventhe ever-expanding ways that academics can carry out their work, Walker (2009)suggested that Weber’s (1958) moral imperative to always be using one’s timewisely is particularly relevant for today’s academic:

… both academics and students internalize the value of being efficient and productive;time remains a moral issue. Time not spent on producing can be thought of as timetheft – procrastination, the deadliest of sins. As we guiltily indulge our time playingspider solitaire and surfing the internet, we are conscious that we will be seen aswasting time and not doing anything useful. (499)

Scholars who draw from similar schools of thought, but perhaps not academic capital-ism specifically, agree withWalker’s assessment (see Ball 2003; Bansel and Davies 2005;Bansel et al. 2008).These thinkers agreewith thenotion that timeand space have takenonamore fluid character and all agree that time pressure is one of the key ways that neoliber-alism manifests in the lives of academics. Most recently, Gornall and Salisbury (2012)explored the lives of 45 academics in theUKand described awork ethic that they describedas ‘hyperprofessionalism.’ The term ‘hyperprofessionalism’ was meant to:

capture the alignment between the professional, the always connected modality of a con-tinuous electronic environment and research on academics in their important but unseenwork… (Gornall and Salisbury 2012, 145)

However, Gornall and Salisbury (2012, 145) also noted that hyperprofessionalismwas not just ‘empty, repetitive behavior… but an attempt to capture elements of“giving more”, “going beyond and above”’.

We have illustrated several potential parallels between academic capitalism andstriving. In the discussion on striving, we showed that faculty members face increasedwork expectations, yet little increase in support and infrastructure (Gardner 2013). Wealso pointed to the work of Gonzales (2012) and Rusch and Wilbur (2007) who showedhow faculty members were highly aware that their work would be evaluated based onthe kind of prestige and legitimacy it attracted. In our review of academic capitalism, wehave shown how faculty are positioned as resource generators, and that their work livesare without boundaries.

Thus, we take Slaughter and Rhoades’ (2004) academic capitalist theory and blendit with Walker’s (2009) consideration of time and space in order to explore faculty lifeinside a striving university. This means that we conceptualize striving not only or evenprimarily as a cultural trend, but as one foregrounded in neoliberalism. Next, the meth-odology and analysis are presented.

1102 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

Methodology

This paper is intended to explore the experience of facultymembers inside a striving univer-sity through the lens of academic capitalism. Anchored in a social constructionist perspec-tive, we approached the project with an appreciation for subjective experiences and forms ofknowledge that grow out of people’s social interactions as well as their intersection withstructure(s) and culture(s) that have real consequences for individuals (Archer 2003). Tothis point, the project was guided by a mixed-method research design (Creswell 2008)that allowed us to explore, broadly, the striving context itself, how faculty understoodand experienced striving. Below we detail each of the data sources we used for this paper.

Fieldwork

Fieldwork (Bogdan and Biklen 2007), broadly defined, includes observation of dailyhappenings as well as seminal events within a context. It also includes formal and infor-mal conversations with participants of the context and the collection and review oforganizational documents. The first author employed each of these strategies to estab-lish an ‘insider’s perspective’ (Deyhle, Hess, and LeCompte 1992) regarding theuniversity’s striving process. For example, through these efforts, it was discoveredthat advertisements for faculty and administrator positions specified that the successfulcandidate would be able to ‘move’ the respective unit to a tier-one level (field notes,2008, 2009). Also, it was learned that faculty evaluative practices were changing orwere in the process of being revised. In general, the revisions stressed research pro-ductivity. During fieldwork, current and previous administrators explained that a fewfaculty members had recently been denied tenure due to a lack of research productivityand/or resource generating efforts (field notes, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012). Additionally,the administration took greater steps in recognizing faculty who have secured grants byhosting grant recipient dinners (field notes, 2012). Such findings were accepted asfurther evidence that the University was, in fact, striving, and that further explorationinto the impact of striving on faculty lives was warranted. Thus, the study was extendedto include an electronic survey for faculty.

Electronic survey

The survey was electronically delivered to the University’s 440 tenured/tenure-trackfaculty members and was completed by 180 of the professors. Thirty-two percent or140 professors completed all of the open-ended comments. The survey was composedof open- and close-ended questions that gauged if, what kind, and to what extent facultymembers were making changes to their work in light of the university’s strivingmission. The open-ended survey questions are listed in Table 1 below.

Setting

This study took place at a US-based university that we refer to as Esperanza Univer-sity.1 Long recognized as a regional university with a limited research profile, in theearly 2000s, Esperanza publicly pronounced its desire to achieve greater nationalresearch reputation or ‘tier-one’2 research status. Around 2006, the idea of achievinga ‘national tier-one’ status were adopted as prominent University discourse. Leadersframed the goal as essential and beneficial to all constituents and worked to garner

Studies in Higher Education 1103

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

support and commitment from students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the community atlarge, by explaining how such status would motivate regional economies and generatenew workforce opportunities as well (field notes, 2010, 2011). To support the goal,Esperanza leaders invested resources for grant administration and research-relatedinfrastructure, and began to hire administrators with experience in striving contexts.

Analysis

As noted earlier, this paper is drawn from a research project constituted by multipledata sources. As is customary with large, especially qualitative, field-embeddedresearch projects, there were many angles and significant slices of data that yieldedrich insights. In this paper, we focus specifically on faculty work experiences.Given the profound effect that academic capitalism has on higher education and theacademic profession and our familiarity with the limited literature on faculty workexperiences inside striving universities, we chose to read our data through the lensof academic capitalism. Our approach, then, differs from the frequent use of culturalresource theories to study striving contexts (Gardner 2010, 2013; Gonzales, 2012;Morphew 2000, 2009; Rusch and Wilbur 2007). Following academic capitalism asupdated by Walker (2009), the analytical questions used for data coding and analysisare listed below:

. In faculty members’ description of their work, how did they describe the role oftime?

. In faculty members’ description of their work, how did they describe the role oftechnology?

. How did faculty describe the expectations of their work, especially related toresearch productivity and grant/resource generation?

We posed these questions to ourselves as we independently read each set of com-ments. After open coding as individuals (Hsuing 2010), we came together face to face,via phone, or online to examine one another’s coding. Through conversation, we dis-cussed what the coded comments shared in common. We began to bundle those thatcould be held together by commonalities and then named a theme for the bundleddata. Each of us maintained an audit trail to retain important nuances within themes(Creswell 2008). For points or comments where our coding differed, we talked

Table 1. Survey questions.

Have you changed your work time allocation? Briefly describe those changes.Have the expectations for your work changed due to Esperanza’s desire to be a tier-one

university? Please explain your answer below.Describe your role as a faculty member in light of Esperanza’s aspirations.Please discuss some of the reasons that you entered academia; did you have any overarching

goals or personal mission that you wanted to achieve as a faculty member?Does Esperanza’s decision to pursue a tier-one status impact your ability to realize these

overarching personal goals? Please explain below.Do you have any specific or general concerns related to the role that you are expected to play

during this transition? Please describe those concerns below.

1104 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

through what we saw, re-read across the data sources, and revisited the literature whennecessary.

This project’s trustworthiness and strength lies in its in-depth approach, multi-method design, and the fact that three researchers analyzed the data independently(Guion, Diehl, and McDonald 2011). Most importantly, participants from Esperanzareceived a synopsis and face-to-face presentation of the findings, and found the findingsto be relevant and accurate. Still, the findings are not intended for broad generalizabil-ity, but the rich contextual data paired with extant subjective data can help higher edu-cation researchers glean new insights from this particular case in ways that can informsimilar situations (Hsuing 2010; Maxwell 2012).

Findings

The goal of this work was to better understand how faculty members experienced worklife inside a striving university by analyzing data through the lens of academic capital-ism. As we read faculty members’ descriptions of their work context and work lives, wedeveloped one overarching theme: pressure. Pressure was constituted by three overlap-ping properties or sub-themes. Specifically, pressure was brought on by facultymembers’ sense 1) that their careers were without boundaries; 2) of the need to con-stantly manage or outsmart time; 3) of heightened surveillance.

Pressure

All of the questions in the survey asked faculty to consider their work in some way inrelation to the university’s aspirations. Naming the overarching theme ‘pressure’ madesense because faculty members described how their daily lives were filled with mul-tiple, often competing, new expectations, and with very little additional support.Additionally, faculty consistently used the word ‘pressure’ in their responses.

One professor noted ‘it just gets harder to handle the load’ and another said ‘work-loads are high for all.’ When asked to describe how the university’s new aspirationsimpacted work expectations, a professor noted:

We are being expected to be all things to everyone. We hear that we are supposed topublish more and that we need to have an international reputation to become a full pro-fessor. Yet, we are also told that the Provost doesn’t really care so much what we dofor and with our best and brightest students, [but that] we will be evaluated by whatwe do for the average students …

Other professors consistently noted that they felt as if they were not fully supportedwith the kinds of human resources and organizational infrastructure necessary toachieve the university’s desire for enhanced research productivity and status. Forinstance, one professor wrote:

I think that we are expected to do everything… if we become more research focused, wewill need to let something go. We just cannot be expected to do everything, i.e., teachforty graduate students in a class and do research.

The sense of pressure that faculty expressed was summarized by a faculty memberwho described concerns about the university’s aspirations as follows: ‘the goal to bring

Studies in Higher Education 1105

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

in more money, to become a better researcher, while still having a heavy course loadseems unrealistic and inhumane.’

All of the comments suggest that Esperanza’s striving mission led to an increasingworkload for faculty. Just as Harvey (2007) suggested in his description of neoliberal-ism’s impact on individuals, these professors were expected to carry more, to domore with less, to be more creative without supports. This led to a great sense of pressurefor professors, which we argue, was constituted by the sub-themes described below.

No boundaries, no space

When faculty were asked to describe the expectations of their work or when they wereasked to describe any concern (specific or general) that they had about the university’snew aspirations, they described hurried work lives and a lack of space to think throughtheir work. This became particularly evident when faculty described the struggles tobalance between professional and personal (e.g. family, relational or household)responsibilities. For example, the following professor wrote: ‘I am working veryhard to meet my personal and professional obligations, but this is incredibly taxingon my family life.’ Another wrote: ‘I spend a lot more time trying to get things doneat home.’ Another professor offered comments that clearly suggested that the linesbetween work life and other parts of their life were quite fluid:

I have been temporarily engaging in distance teaching for medical reasons, which has notalways been an optimal situation. I had twice the students over the summer than Iexpected.

On one hand, the professor’s ability to continue to teach through technology washelpful. It allowed students to be served. On the other hand, as the professor noted, herclasses were larger, which made virtual teaching a less than optimal experience. Aboveall, the professor was dealing with medical issues. This is a good example of how technol-ogy, a feature implicated by academic capitalism theory, impacted one professor’s worklife. Surely, larger class sizes and the pressures of technology are not unique to this strivinguniversity, but it is important to stress that this professor, in addition to others, believed thelarger teaching loads were part of Esperanza’s attempt to move more students through theirprograms at a faster pace in order to enhance graduation rates. Thus, technology brokedown boundaries between home life and work life and ensured that Esperanza Universityimproved graduate rates in a most efficient manner.

While many faculty members struggled with the lack of boundaries between worklife and other parts of their lives, others engaged with their work in ways and at levelsthat encouraged such fluidity. For instance, some faculty offered comments such as thefollowing:

I will do what it takes to meet the standards. Work more hours.

I like my research and I find the time to do what is necessary keep it going. I sleep verylittle.

Trying to obtain more extramural grants to support students and their research. Myworking hours are almost 80–90 hours a week.

Some faculty see the pervasive nature of their work as a complex struggle that theyhave to negotiate while others actually facilitate it (Gornall and Salisbury 2012). There

1106 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

are two ways to deal with the complexity of these findings. An agentic perspectivesuggests that these professors are fully aware of the decisions and actions they aretaking (Archer 2003; Gornall and Salisbury 2012). At the other extreme, it might besuggested that neoliberalism has so effectively pervaded these professors that theysubject themselves to its logic: constant working, individual self-sacrifice, a constant dis-ciplining of self. Gornall and Salisbury (2012) dealt with this same tension in their paperon hyperprofessionalism. Ultimately, Gornall and Salisbury suggested that the issue isnot the different ways of work and levels of balance that people are comfortable with,but having the sense that one can set aside time and space without penalty or guilt.

It was clear that the striving aspirations at Esperanza led to amore frenetic pacewherework was spilling into other aspects of faculty life in new ways. Consequently, anotherexperience that faculty members described was a constant attempt to ‘outsmart’ time.

Managing and outsmarting time

As we examined faculty comments, we concluded that the pressure faculty felt was dueto a lack of boundaries, which led them to think carefully about their time. These find-ings resonate with Walker’s (2009) rendition of academic capitalism. Recall thatWalker argued that neoliberalism, and thereby academic capitalism, produces a distinctideology about time. Specifically, Walker (2009, 497) wrote ‘time becomes a limitedresource used to get grants and accumulate publications and patents’. Similarly,Ylijoki (2013, 9) illustrated how faculty carefully outsmarted time by saving it for‘real work’ of research and teaching.

In this study, facultywere constantly trying to outsmart time in very particularways: byspending more time on research and grant writing and less time on other aspects of theirwork (i.e. teaching, advising, or service). Specifically, out of 180 faculty members, themajority indicated that they had made changes to their work habits because of the univer-sity’s research aspirations and 86 offered comments similar to the following:

I have learned to more efficiently perform my teaching responsibilities so that I can focusmore on research including grant writing and publishing. I had difficulty finding the timeto write manuscripts with all of my other duties but have been able to slowly change that.I have tried to spend more time on research activities, but we are a small department andhelping to keep the department running seems to keep adding up, so if I want to do moreresearch I must work harder and faster.

I have learned how to teach more efficiently and how to find more time for my research/writing.

In the comments above, it is clear that the university’s striving for heightenedresearch status has compelled faculty to manage their time in a more efficientmanner. Efficiency is, of course, a central aim as well as an ideology that has longcharacterized capitalist markets, having its roots in the Taylorist mode of production.

On this note, expenditures of time were not only reapportioned in ways that favoredresearch, but in ways that centered faculty as resource generators. Surely, research andits byproducts vary across discipline, meaning that some researchers, such as those inscience or engineering, are more likely to do research that can generate fiscal resources(Metcalfe and Slaughter 2008; Slaughter and Cantwell 2012) while faculty in the huma-nities are more likely to do research that yields mostly cultural resources (a book authorwins a prestigious award) (Melguizo and Strober 2007). No matter the discipline or the

Studies in Higher Education 1107

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

kind of resource, faculty in this study noted how the university’s aspirations led to theirtransformation into resource generators.

One professor explained that he was ‘being bullied into writing more grants.’Othersnoted:

[I am] more focused with time, spend less time on things that do not contribute to successin research and grant writing.

[I am] trying to devote more time to research/grant writing, less to service, and doingteaching more efficiently.

More focused research grant submissions. Less time preparing for teaching.

Yes, [I have made changes]. I am now pursuing external funding to support my research. Iam hoping to buy off some of my teaching time so I can research and write more.

That faculty consistently felt the need and actually did reallocate time in favor ofgrant writing points to the fact that striving contexts push faculty to create ‘new circuitsof knowledge,’ as suggested by academic capitalism (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004;Slaughter and Cantwell 2012). These new circuits of knowledge promote ‘a moveaway from peer review’ and from faculty’s ‘professional judgment as arbiters of excel-lence.’ In other words, the creation and legitimization of knowledge comes to be shapedprimarily by special interests. Faculty expertise and skills are leveraged as fungibleassets that might be traded for fiscal dollars with non-governmental, governmental,for-profit and/or not-for-profit sectors (Slaughter and Cantwell 2012).

Additionally, as the last set of comments indicated, when faculty managed to wingrants they tended to move further away from their teaching responsibilities. A few pro-fessors mentioned:

I have significant research funding now and have bought out of classes to focus onresearch. In my first four years, funding was very difficult to obtain and now I knowhow to be more successful with external funding.

[Now], less time is allocated to teaching because I have a lower teaching load due tohaving received some major grants.

While these findings resonate with academic capitalism because faculty are posi-tioned and/or understand themselves as resource generators, they also highlight howstriving contexts may lead to the outsourcing of teaching, probably to non-tenure-track faculty who receive less pay, little or limited benefits, and who have limitedvoice in terms of governance (Kezar and Sam 2011; Purcell 2007). Leveraging facultyskill sets in hopes of attracting external fiscal dollars while saving on faculty pay by out-sourcing to adjunct professors is a prime example of how the teaching, learning andknowledge production functions of higher education are squeezed from various anglesand towards resource generation. Next, we address the heightened surveillance that striv-ing yielded on faculty work life and point to the connections to academic capitalism.

Surveillance

We argue that striving led to heightened sense of surveillance, and consequently thatthis sense of surveillance added to the pressure faculty felt. In short, surveillance isthe sense that one must constantly watch oneself and the sense that others are watching,

1108 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

or perhaps more precisely, evaluating. Surveillance, we argue, leads to the conceptual-ization of universities and scholars as market participants and competitors, meaningthat it aligns well with the principals of neoliberalism (Ball 2003; Sauder and Epseland2009; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004; Ylijoki 2013).

As we identified the sub-theme surveillance, we saw that it came from and was pro-jected in multiple directions. For instance, faculty described the constant sense that theywere being monitored, often with measures that they did not fully understand or thatthey did not fully agree with (number of publications, impact rates, or grant funding),but they also described how they more carefully watched themselves. The followingfaculty member acknowledged that publication (and thus productivity) was important,but shebelieved that, given theuniversity’s strivingorientation, new surveillancemeasureswould privilege very narrow forms of publications. Of this, the professor noted:

I value the publication of many types of academic writing, including book chapters andbooks as well as articles in more popular magazines. I believe this has much moreimpact than writing for journals only read by students and scholars.

Another professor wrote ‘there is much more pressure to publish in peer-reviewedjournals’ and yet another faculty commented:

I feel pressure not necessarily to have more research activities, but to be particularly con-cerned about how distinctive my research is (reputation of journal, consulting versus pureresearch, group work versus solo work).

The comments above illustrate how striving yields surveillance as well the need tocompete for publication spots in particular journals. The comments also suggest howsurveillance by others led to a sense of self-doubt and self-surveillance. For instance,some professors wondered whether their work would be viewed as valuable and legit-imate as their university strove for more prestige and status. Professors wrote the fol-lowing comments:

My research includes educational research that largely focuses on improving success ofnon-exceptional students. This may become undervalued.

Unique circumstances require my position be heavily service-oriented. Also, several‘research’ endeavors are not credited as research endeavors.

I am concerned whether only big money research will be valued here or whether those ofus with unique lines of inquiry that do not generate big bucks will not be given the samecredit for scholarly work.

As the above quotes suggest, faculty self-surveilled because of the surveillance theyfelt projected onto them and which they attributed to striving. Based on fieldwork, itseems that that professors’ perceptions were correct; recall that faculty evaluation prac-tices were changing and had resulted in recent tenure denials. What is compelling aboutthe professors quoted just above is that they self-surveilled because they wondered iftheir research would still be considered a legitimate, valuable contribution. Thisfinding is important; it highlights the anxiety of finding oneself inside of an increasinglycompetitive and market-like context. The findings also resonate with Bansel et al.’s(2008) analysis of Australian academics’ experiences in universities that havebecome more market- and accountability-oriented. They wrote:

Studies in Higher Education 1109

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

While on the one hand specifying more clearly than ever before what is required to besuccessful, [the accountability culture] works on individual subjects to make them‘unsure whether [they] are doing enough, doing the right thing, doing as much asothers, or as well as others, constantly looking to improve, to be better, to be excellent’(Ball 2003, 220). They effectively individualise academics by pitting them against eachother in an intensified competition, and, at the same time, produce them as generic sub-jects who are shaped by the necessity of a particular kind of productivity. (Bansel et al.2008, 676)

That faculty in a striving context reported an increased sense of surveillance illus-trates another reason as to why it is fruitful to consider striving from an academic capi-talist or a rather than the frequently used cultural resource based theories. Surveillancereflects neoliberalism because of its power to transform individuals into competitorswho are hyperaware of how they spend their time and that the outcomes of the timethey spend will eventually be measured in some way. The problem is not accountabilityitself, but the narrow ways in which accountability, and thus, the surveillance is admi-nistered in a neoliberal, market-driven context (Ball 2003; Christensen 2004; Sauderand Epseland 2009).

Discussion and implications

Our faculty-student rations are outrageous. Our department needs more faculty. We arepressured to ‘produce’ more Ph.D.’s … Moreover, the emphasis on external fundingwill require us to shift time from undergraduate education, but we have thousands ofsurvey students we have to teach per semester. It is untenable and impossible.

As we begin the discussion of our findings, it is important to point out that althoughsome of the findings from this study reflect themes that are common in the larger litera-ture on the academic profession, they emerged when faculty were specifically asked todiscuss their work in light of a striving context. In other words, faculty commenteddirectly in relation to their experience in a striving context. Taken together, weshowed that faculty reported a heightened sense of pressure. The pressure, we argue,emanated from three features that faculty related to Esperanza’s striving aspirations.For one, faculty felt that the boundaries between work life and other aspects of theirlife had dissipated. Second, faculty described the need to constantly manage or ‘out-smart’ (Walker 2009) time in very particular ways. Finally, faculty reported a heigh-tened sense of surveillance.

With regard to the lack of boundaries, this finding resonates with a larger body ofliterature that notes a hurried, more multidimensional and increasingly fluid academiccareer (Austin 2002; Gornall and Salisbury 2012; Menzies and Newson 2005; Nikunen2012). Striving, it seems, exacerbates this problem in new ways. Esperanza’s facultyincreasingly felt the need to do more in order to cope with the striving context andthat meant sleeping less, working on weekends, and, as one professor noted, takingadvantage of technological tools to teach.

Future research needs to more carefully explore the role and relationship betweenfaculty and technology inside striving universities. Like the general higher educationfield, online learning and virtual tools have become ‘facts of life’, but the extent towhich technology is being used to maximize faculty output, particularly in terms ofmoving more students through classes or increasing faculty output in some fashionis a specific line of inquiry that should be taken up in future work.

1110 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

Our data also suggested that striving led to an intense obsession with time and time-use. In this way, time was a resource that faculty worked to manage, maximize, and pre-serve for the ‘real work’ (Ylijoki 2013). Specifically, faculty reported a need to preservetime for research as well as grant writing. This finding points to the need to study strivingwith a robust lens that retains an appreciation for both cultural and fiscal resource gener-ation (Leslie et al. 2012). Pusser and Marginson’s (2012) recent writing on the effect ofrankings from a globalization perspective provides a potential starting point. Ultimately,‘outsmarting time’ and being highly aware of time allocation reflects a core tenet of aca-demic capitalism: that faculty are expected to be resource generators for their univer-sities, which allows for the creation of new circuits of knowledge creation andlegitimization. Future researchmustmore precisely study if and how striving universitieswork to enhance relationships with governmental, non-governmental, for-profit sectorsin order to explore if and how knowledge production shifts in these sites.

Finally, faculty described an increased sense of surveillance, which is a theme thatcan also be located in the larger literature on the academic profession (Sauder and Epse-land 2009). However, striving contexts seem to increase the intensity of this feature.Specifically, faculty described how, due to the striving context, certain kinds ofresearch and particular publication outlets seemed more valuable. Funded research orpublications in high impact outlets seemed to be the kind of work products thatfaculty felt compelled to produce. This heightened surveillance also meant that somefaculty began to doubt the value of their work. A few professors wondered about theviability of a research agenda that was not likely to generate resources or that maynot ‘make it’ into any of the high impact journals. This is an incredibly importantinsight that we aim to take up in future work by investigating how faculty changetheir research agendas or writing habits when located inside a striving university.Whether or not striving contexts compel faculty to adjust their research and scholarlyendeavors in ways that homogenize knowledge production is a critical question deser-ving of future study. For example, one might consider what forms of surveillanceemerge in striving universities; what new circuits of knowledge are created in strivingcontexts; do these practices and forms yield a shift in knowledge production?

It is clear that each of these findings highlights how striving impacts the facultywork experience, and that there is merit in considering striving from the critical politi-cal-economic lens provided by academic capitalism. We close by outlining morespecifically the theoretical implications for positioning striving as another manifestationof academic capitalism.

Academic capitalism as a lens for studying striving

Academic capitalism has helped the field see that universities encourage faculty toengage with industry via structures and policies that allow industry to capitalize on pro-found research outcomes at the cost of the public good. Academic capitalism shines alight on the transformation of faculty members into managed professionals who laborfor the knowledge economy. To elucidate how academic capitalism plays out in strivingcontexts is to frame striving first and foremost as a sign of the political-economic times.It is also a challenge to the predominant cultural resource theories that tend to frame theemerging literature on striving and faculty careers inside striving universities (Gardner2010, 2013; Gonzales 2012; O’Meara and Bloomgarden 2011; Rusch and Wilbur2007; Tuchman 2009). We insist that it is important to question how cultural resourcescomplement or pave the way for fiscal resources, as suggested by the recent work of

Studies in Higher Education 1111

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

Leslie and colleagues (2012), Pusser andMarginson (2012) and Gonzales (2012). Thus,while striving might be foregrounded in a political-economic perspective, like aca-demic capitalism, the cultural resource perspective should be retained in some fashion.

Furthermore, by understanding striving as a unique manifestation of academiccapitalism, we can begin to see how striving is a serious departure from a higher edu-cation that serves a public good. This also means we can question the fact that strivinghas come to be understood as a ‘normal’ or ‘to be expected’ next step for post-second-ary organizations (O’Meara and Bloomgarden 2011). Most stories of striving aredetached from critical political-economic perspectives, and presented instead as a sen-sible strategy to enhance reputation. Unfortunately, it is assumed that to enhance repu-tation or status according to ranking measures says little for the kinds of teaching andlearning experiences that may unfold inside universities. For example, Umbach andWarzinkzik (2005) showed that ‘best practices’ for teaching were least found/documen-ted inside elite research universities (also see Terosky 2010).

Understanding striving as another way to move towards the market forces us tothink that rising research expectations are about much more than producing researchfor prestige (cultural resources). Instead, research can better be understood as a mech-anism to create knowledge that industry or special interests need/want and financinguniversities that are no longer viewed as public goods worthy of investment (Harvey2007). In other words, as critical scholars, we believe that it is important to questionthe laudability of striving, and to point up the neoliberal principles that underline it.

It is important to show how striving, a form of academic capitalism, converged onthe individual experience. This requires movement from structural level insight tomicro-level happenings and experiences. As Walker (2009) insisted, time and spaceare elements of academic capitalism that can be quite useful in micro-level studies ofstriving. It will be key for researchers to consider the element of agency in suchwork. Scholars will have to decide to what extent efforts will be made to studyfaculty members’ ability to negotiate or even resist the pressures wrought by strivingand academic capitalism. In other words, future scholarship will have to deal withthe tensions related to the fluidity of academic work: are such conditions a productof faculty agency and ‘pleasure’ (Gornall and Salisbury 2012) or a sort of false con-sciousness that leads professors to their own self-disciplining.

Taken together, our work showed that faculty members were under pressure, com-pelled to act as singular, self-sufficient individuals who had to manage and outsmarttime. Following the neoliberal logic, faculty worked as ‘rugged individuals’ (Gonzalesand Rincones 2011; Harvey 2007; Nikunen 2012) with few resources, little sleep, andsometimes at the cost of their personal/family lives to advance in their careers. We offerour findings as a strong impetus to frame future studies of striving with a critical lensthat brings together political-economic and cultural resource perspectives. We believethat by doing so, new questions can be formulated and posed. Finally, our work canserve as a discussion piece for those who lead, study or conduct institutional researchin striving universities in order to consider how such trajectories position faculty, anduniversities, in general, as competitors inside the neoliberal market place.

Notes1. A pseudonym that means ‘hope’ in the Spanish language.2. Tier-one is a concept that is loosely used in the field of higher education to indicate top tier

or elite universities that are also major research universities.

1112 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

ReferencesAllan, K. 2010. The social lens: An invitation to social and sociological theory. Oakland, CA:

Sage Publications.Altbach, P. 1980. The crisis of the professoriate. The ANNALS of the American Academy of

Political and Social Science 448, no. 1: 1–14.Altbach, P. 2001. The American model in comparative perspective. In In defense of higher edu-

cation, ed. P. Altbach and P.J. Gumport, 11–37. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.

Archer, M.S. 2003. Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press.

Archer, L. 2008. Younger academics’ constructions of ‘aunthenticity,’ ‘success’ and pro-fessional identity. Studies in Higher Education 33, no. 4: 385–403.

Austin, A.E. 2002. Preparing the next generation of faculty: Graduate school as socialization tothe academic career. The Journal of Higher Education 73, no. 1: 94–122.

Ball, S. 2003. The teacher’s soul and the terrors of perfomativity. Journal of Education Policy18, no. 2: 215–28.

Bansel, P, and B. Davies. 2005. The time of their lives? Academic workers in neoliberal time(s).Health Sociology Review 14, no. 1: 47–58.

Bansel, P., B. Davies, S. Gannon, and S. Linnell. 2008. Technologies of audit at work on thewriting subject: A discursive analysis. Studies in Higher Education 33, no. 6: 673–83.

Bogdan, R., and S.K. Biklen. 2007. Qualitative research for education: An introduction totheory and methods. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Bowen, H., and J. Schuster. 1986. American professors – a national resource imperiled.New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Boyer, E.L. 1991. The scholarship of teaching from: Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of theprofessoriate. College Teaching 39, no. 1: 11–13.

Campbell, T., and S. Slaughter. 1999. Faculty and administrators’ attitudes toward potential con-flicts of interest, commitment, and equity in university-industry relationships. The Journal ofHigher Education 70, no. 3: 309–52.

Christensen, M. 2004. Accounting by words not numbers: The handmaiden of power in theacademy. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15: 485–512.

Creswell, J.W. 2008. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodsapproaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Davies, B., and E. Peterson. 2005. Neo-liberal discourse in the academy: The forestalling of(collective) resistance. Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences 2, no. 2: 77–98.

Deyhle, D.L., G.A. Hess, Jr., and M.D. LeCompte. 1992. Approaching ethical issues for quali-tative researchers in education. In The handbook of qualitative research in education, ed. M.D. LeCompte, W.L. Millroy, and J. Preissle, 597–641. Waltham, MA: Academic Press Inc.

Fairweather, J.S. 1996. Faculty work and the public trust: Restoring the value of teaching andpublic service in American academic life. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Fairweather, J.S. 2005. Beyond the rhetoric: Trends in the relative value of teaching and researchin faculty salaries. The Journal of Higher Education 76, no. 4: 401–22.

Gardner, S.K. 2010. Keeping up with the Joneses: Socialization and culture in doctoral edu-cation at one striving institution. The Journal of Higher Education 81, no. 6: 728–49.

Gardner, S.K. 2013. Women faculty departures from a striving institution: Between a rock and ahard place. The Review of Higher Education 36, no. 3: 349–70.

Gonzales, L.D. 2012. Responding to mission creep: Faculty members as cosmopolitan agents.Higher Education 64: 337–53.

Gonzales, L.D. 2013. Faculty sensemaking and mission creep: Interrogating institutionalizedways of knowing and doing legitimacy. Review of Higher Education 36, no. 2: 179–209.

Gonzales, L.D., and R. Rincones. 2011. Interdisciplinary scholars: Negotiating legitimacy at thecore and from the margins. Journal of Further and Higher Education 36, no. 4: 495–518.

Gornall, L., and J. Salisbury. 2012. Compulsive working,‘hyperprofessionality’and the unseenpleasures of academic work. Higher Education Quarterly 66, no. 2: 135–54.

Guion, L.A., D.C. Diehl, and D. McDonald. 2011. Triangulation: Establishing the validity ofqualitative studies. A document prepared for the Department of Family, Youth, andCommunity Sciences, Florida Cooperative Extension Services, University of Florida.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FY/FY39400.pdf

Studies in Higher Education 1113

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

Harvey, D. 2007. A brief history of neoliberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Hsuing, P. 2010. Lives and legacies. A guide to qualitative interviewing. http://www.utsc.

utoronto.ca/~pchsiung/LAL/Kezar, A., and C. Sam. 2011. Understanding non-tenure track faculty new assumptions and the-

ories for conceptualizing behavior. American Behavioral Scientist 55, no. 11: 1419–42.Kirp, D.L. 2003. Shakespeare, Einstein, and the bottom line. Boston, MA: Harvard University

Press.Leslie, L.L., S. Slaughter, B.J. Taylor, and L. Zhang. 2012. How do revenue variations affect

expenditures within US research universities? Research in Higher Education 53, no. 6: 1–26.Longanecker, D.A. (2008, November). Mission differentiation vs. mission creep: Higher edu-

cation’s battle between creationism and evolution. A policy brief prepared by theNational Conference of State Legislators and the Western Interstate Commission ofHigher Education with support from the Lumina Foundation for Education. http://www.wiche.edu/info/gwypf/dal_mission.pdf

Marginson, S. 2010. Creating global public goods. Paper presented as opening keynote for theseminar Global University, November 10, at the University of Virginia, in VA.

Maxwell, J.A. 2012. A realist approach for qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Melguizo, T., and M.H. Strober. 2007. Faculty salaries and the maximization of prestige.

Research in Higher Education 48, no. 6: 633–68.Mendoza, P. 2007. Academic capitalism and doctoral student socialization: A case study. The

Journal of Higher Education 78, no. 1: 71–96.Menzies, H, and J. Newson. 2007. No time to think. Academics’ life in the globally wired uni-

versity. Time and Society 16, no. 1: 83–98.Metcalfe, A.S., and S. Slaughter. 2008. The differential effects of academic capitalism on

women in the academy. In Unfinished agendas: New and continuing gender challengesin higher education, ed. J. Glazer-Raymo, 80–111. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.

Milem, J., J. Berger, and E. Dey. 2000. Faculty time allocation: A study of change over twentyyears. The Journal of Higher Education 71, no. 4: 454–74.

Morphew, C.C. 2000. Institutional diversity, program acquisition and faculty members:Examining academic drift at a new level. Higher Education Policy 13, no. 1: 55–77.

Morphew, C.C. 2009. Conceptualizing change in the institutional diversity of U.S. colleges anduniversities. The Journal of Higher Education 80, no. 3: 243–69.

Morphew, C, and B. Baker. 2004. The cost of prestige: Do new research I universities incurhigher administrative costs? The Review of Higher Education 27, no. 3: 365–84.

Musselin, C. 2007. The transformation of academic work. Facts and analysis. Center for Studiesin Higher Education. Research & Occasional Paper Series from the Center for Studies inHigher Education. http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/docs/ROP.Musselin.4.07.pdf

Nikunen, M. 2012. Changing university work, freedom, flexibility and family. Studies in HigherEducation 37, no. 6: 713–29.

O’Meara, K.A. 2007. Striving for what? Exploring the pursuit of prestige. In Higher education:Handbook of theory and research, vol. 22. ed. J.C. Smart, 121–79. Dordrecht, TheNetherlands: Springer.

O’Meara, K.A., and A. Bloomgarden. 2011. The pursuit of prestige: The experience of insti-tutional striving from a faculty perspective. The Journal of the Professoriate 4, no. 1: 39–73.

Purcell, M. 2007. ‘Skilled, cheap, and desperate’: Non‐tenure‐track faculty and the delusion ofmeritocracy. Antipode 39, no. 1: 121–43.

Pusser, B., and S. Marginson. 2012. Power, politics, and global rankings in higher education. InThe organization of higher education: Managing colleges for a new era. ed. M. Bastedo,86–117. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

Rhoads, R., and C. Torres, eds. 2006. The university, state, and market: The political economy ofglobalization in the Americas. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Rusch, E.A., and C. Wilbur. 2007. Shaping institutional environments: The process of becominglegitimate. The Review of Higher Education 30, no. 3: 301–18.

Sauder, M., and W.N. Espeland. 2009. The discipline of rankings: Tight coupling and organiz-ational change. American Sociological Review 74, no. 1: 63–82.

Schrecker, E. 2010. The lost soul of higher education: Corporatization, the assault on academicfreedom, and the end of the American university. New York, NY: New Press.

1114 L.D. Gonzales et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015

Silva, E.T., and S.S. Slaughter. 1984. Serving power: The making of the academic social scienceexpert. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Slaughter, S., C. Archerd, and T. Campbell. 2004. Boundaries and quandaries: How professorsnegotiate market relations. The Review of Higher Education 28, no. 1: 129–65.

Slaughter, S., and B. Cantwell. 2012. Transatlantic moves to the market: The United States andthe European Union. Higher Education 63, no. 5: 583–606.

Slaughter, S, and L.L. Leslie. 1997. Academic capitalism: Politics, policies, and the entrepre-neurial university. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Slaughter, S., and G. Rhoades. 2000. The neo-liberal university. New Labor Forum 6: 73–79.Slaughter, S., and G. Rhoades. 2004. Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state,

and higher education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Slaughter, S., and G. Rhoades. 2005. From ‘endless frontier’ to ‘basic science for use’: Social

contracts between science and society. Science, Technology and Human Values 30, no. 4:536–72.

Terosky, A.L. 2010. How do they do it? Career strategies of university professors noted fortaking teaching seriously. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching 21, no. 1: 121–45.

Tuchman, G. 2009. Wannabe U – inside the corporate university. Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press.

Veblen, T. 1918. The higher learning in America. New York: Transaction Publishers.Walker, J. 2009. Time as the fourth dimension in the globalization of higher education. The

Journal of Higher Education 80, no. 5: 483–509.Weber, M. 1958. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner

and Sons.Wright, M. 2005. Always at odds? Congruence in faculty beliefs about teaching at a research

university. Journal of Higher Education 76, no. 3: 331–53.Umbach, P.D., and M.R. Wawrzynski. 2005. Faculty do matter: The role of college faculty in

student learning and engagement. Research in Higher Education 46, no. 2: 153–84.Ylijoki, O. 2013. Boundary-work between work and life in the high-speed university. Studies in

Higher Education 38, no. 2: 242–55.

Studies in Higher Education 1115

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Cle

mso

n U

nive

rsity

] at

18:

42 1

9 M

ay 2

015