Here are some of the things we discussed in the bureaucratization discussion group (I think Sophia might have more from the post-its to add later):
- The tendency of bureaucracy to beget more bureaucracy
- Minutes from University Court: endless committees, no solutions
- How it feels to encounter bureaucracy
- Bureaucracy aims to quantify the unquantifiable
- The drive towards innovation can sometimes be a driver of bureaucratization (anything new is good, whether or not it solves problems or creates new ones)
- The consumer mindset that the financialization of the university imposes on students is hard to escape; e.g. lecturers cannot change assessments less than one year in advance for fears that the course would be being ‘mis-sold’
- University governance is totally opaque: org. charts are indecipherable and there is a lack of proper minutes from important meetings
- Bureaucracy is a way to obfuscate, to avoid responsibility
- Bureaucracy makes it impossible for staff to engage meaningfully with students
- The opacity of the university’s bureaucratic governance system makes it hard for students to lobby for change within the university (Who/what office/governing body to direct concerns/critiques at?)
- Project idea: creating an interactive website or resource that maps out and explains the university’s system of governance. Could incorporate a decision-making flow chart, videos explaining different offices/deciding bodies and a clarified org. chart. Would aim to make explicit how the university is run and put a face to the name of university management, so to speak
These are really interesting points.
A few thoughts that spring to mind (in no particular order!):
Thinking in regards to the community notes I posted, there seems to be some areas of commonality here. In terms of how bureaucracy hinders meaningful engagement between staff and students (and perhaps also causes antagonism between academic and professional staff?), bureaucracy could be seen as a contributing factor towards a sense of isolation and lack of communities? Or understood as a factor that keeps separate ‘communities’ within the uni apart?
The dehumanising effect of encountering bureaucracy (and being made to enforce bureaucracy!) must cause real harm in the relationships between individuals and communities. What wider effect does that have on the university as a whole? What does it do the individuals who inhabit it? Does it make them fulfilled, happy, engaged, willing to listen/learn/impart knowledge? Do we want our universities to be places that model new, healthier, more humane ways of interacting within an institution, as places that don’t just mimic the damaging ‘ways of doing’ of the corporate world?
Just a few of the thoughts that spring to mind 🙂
Hi Sean, insightful and interesting comment – as a member of professional staff who are oft portrayed as petty bureaucrats I have much to say about this subject. It might be nice to discuss the marginalisation of and blame intentionally directed at professional staff, who are a cohort of committed individuals split into disparate silos. Their concern for their own continuity of employment makes them puppets and scapegoats easily manipulated to implement anything they are tasked with and provide cover for the real villains. Our policy twonks and bureaucrats remain hidden behind a cleverly constructed smoke screen as they commercialise education and move us further from a better “model” university. (I’ve had a bad week, apologies).
As someone with 10+ years of professional experience in the public sector I can definitely sympathise and relate to a lot of the experiences you describe Alison!
Sean’s analysis calls to mind David Graeber’s idea of ‘bullshit jobs’. These are jobs that really don’t contribute anything useful at all–in fact they make working life of people doing productive and valuable work awkward and difficult. Here’s an article outlining this idea: https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
I think this is an excellent analysis of a huge number of people’s real experiences of the ‘world of work’ – its a place where many people feel pointless, demeaned, and as if they are making the world a worse place (which is why it slightly breaks my heart whenever I hear someone from the university extoll the benefits of x or y uni experience as useful in gaining entry to the workforce, as if it’s some great place everyone should be striving to get into!).
Records of the notes from individuals that came together under this theme (I’ve tried to group them):
Free education: democratic, liberated, accessible to all
Document the university’s finances and private profit–uni as a class actor
Explore how age impacts higher education
Effects/causes of bureaucratization
Effective ways to resist bureaucratization
An ethnography of bureaucratic absurdity, including audio visual element
Flexibility and responsiveness in course organization–resisting bureaucracy
How is the university governed? (flow chart)–look at ways universities can be governed
Making links between departments and courses/proposing a more fluid structure
Explore interdisciplinarity
Casualization, especially relating to tutors
Full accounting of tutors’ effective work hours, preparation etc. Casual contracts