University governance and academic work in a neoliberal landscape of higher education : preparation for research assessment exercise (RAE) 2020 in Hong Kong

Abstract

The impact of neoliberalism in higher education has been widely discussed and debated, yet most analyses, conducted at the macro philosophical level, have viewed the changes on university governance and academic work in different countries as slavishly bound by more global neoliberal factors without paying sufficient attention to the local contextual factors. This study contributes to the theoretical debate on ‘how the global is reproduced with local characteristics’ in studies of neoliberalism in higher education by providing a Hong Kong case assisted with empirical data. This study adopted a qualitative research design to examine the actual quotidian effects of RAE 2020 within higher education institutions and on working academics in Hong Kong. The qualitative data of the present study were mainly collected 1) from university policy documents on RAE 2020 from two government-funded universities in Hong Kong and 2) through in-depth interview (i.e., semi-structured interview, text-based interview) with sixteen RAE-eligible academics in disciplines of Social Sciences and Education (SSE) from the two case universities. The findings suggest that, first, the university governance in coping with RAE 2020 could be considered as a hybrid and multifaceted discourse that tacked between managerialism and collegiality. Similarities (strategy type) and differences (varied intensity) were identified in terms of the managerial effects brought about by RAE 2020 within the two case universities. Second, the academics displayed different forms of masked resistance in response to RAE 2020, mainly around two issues: ‘RAE as a system for assessing research quality: What and how does it assess?’ and ‘the effects of RAE 2020: Does it fit for purpose?’. Third, the academics’ research, writing and publishing trajectories in preparation for RAE 2020 revealed to be a complex and nuanced process of negotiating what counts as ‘quality’ and ‘impact’. They worked around the managerial values underpinning university monitoring policies on RAE 2020 to produce and disseminate knowledge in line with, or at least not contradictory to their scholarly ethos. This study discusses how neoliberal and managerial forces, as manifested in the RAE 2020 policy, were locally interpreted, resisted and negotiated (and why) as they were shaped by different local contextual factors in the specific academic environment. These local contextual factors mainly include Hong Kong’s strong international profile and colonial history, the government-university relationship, the institutional mission and culture, and the disciplinary knowledge tradition (e.g., publication outlet, research type/agenda). This study further proposes a framework for examining the ‘local reproduction of global neoliberal forces’ in higher education. This framework could be considered as a toolkit, consisting of multi-layered perspectives (socio-cultural and educational, institutional and individual levels), and local contextual factors, for researchers to draw upon in conducting multi-faceted analysis of how global neoliberal forces interact with the local contextual factors within and across different levels. In addition, some significant issues of interest are raised; and possible suggestions for enhancing research accountability are proposed in this study for policy makers, university administrators and academics in Hong Kong and beyond.