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What happens when neoliberalism as a structural and structuring force is taken up within institutions of higher education, and works upon academics in higher education individually? Employing a critical authoethnographic approach, this paper explores the way technologies of research performance management, specifically, work to produce academics (and academic managers) as particular kinds of neoliberal subject. The struggle to make oneself visible is seen to occur under the gaze of academic normativity – the norms of academic practice that include both locally negotiated practices and the performative demands of auditing and metrics that characterise the neoliberal university. The paper indicates how the dual process of being worked upon and working upon ourselves can produce personally harmful effects. The result is a process of systemic violence. This paper invites higher education workers and policy-makers to think higher education otherwise and to reconsider our personal and collective complicity in the processes shaping higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Young people who have spent all or part of their childhoods in public care are at particular risk of social exclusion as adults and yet the pathway out of exclusion identified by policy-makers at both European and national levels, namely, education, is very difficult to access. Using data from a five-country study of the post-compulsory educational pathways of young people in public care, this paper examines the rates of participation of young people in further and higher education and considers what might account for the gap, looking at two factors: the impact of background social class on educational support and the educational intentions and practices of the care system. The paper concludes by considering the policy context and some possible tensions between policy aims and young people’s contexts and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Accreditation is fast becoming the dominant method of evaluation used in the European Higher Education Area. This paper traces the political process supporting the introduction of this method in Europe and identifies different theoretical understandings and practices which shed light on how we can interpret the spread and role of accreditation in Europe, before discussing current trends in European and US accreditation, which could pave the way for a joint research agenda. In the conclusion, some possible implications of current developments are briefly presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]