David Graeber was an anthropologist, anarchist activist and author of influential books often critique Capitalism, bureaucracy, debt, and institutional power. As an anarchist academic, he also expressed criticism of universities and used them as case studies. His book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Graeber, 2019) expands on his essay (Graeber, 2013) which investigates the theory that a sizeable percentage of jobs are meaningless and add little value to society. In this book, a particular provocation caught my attention and made me reflect on my interactions with UAL’s myriad of administrators. His provocation is that in the late nineties, administrators and executives took over the management of universities and began to prioritise activities that had little to do with pedagogy. As a consequence, universities have increasingly hired administrators to deal with the ever-increasing admin to do. Graeber casually suggests that this is evident through senior management’s briefings on strategy, innovation, and student experience, and next to no mention of teaching.
This observation certainly resonates with my own experience at working at uni and there is, phrasing this in a Graeber way, increasing “bullshitification” in my role, such as being more attentive to student surveys, registers, and admissions data– not necessarily the very real phenomena that the data is meant to reflect, but a tending to the data itself, to meet targets of data collection and completion. As a counter argument, universities have had to adapt to changes in government funding and political choices that require universities to operate more like companies in a competitive yet homogenising marketplace, and data collection is mostly due to external auditing.
One concern is how administrative tasks essentially necessitate the input of students and how the student experience becomes tainted with emails, briefings, and reminders to participate in surveys, register attendance, and participate in activities that are initiated for the metrics they fulfil.
Teaching at UAL is often not prioritised enough and my course has not had an increase in faculty fractions and hiring budgets despite being stretched. What effect will this have on teaching? Can teachers be freed up to teach more or is being more attentive to administration the source of more administration, in the same way that adding more lanes on a motorway just increases more traffic?
David Graeber’s over-arching message is ‘things don’t have to be this way’; he was a radical optimist. Perhaps as educators we need to reimagine the college as downscaling in administrative tasks towards an appreciation for the qualities of teaching that are not quantifiable.
Next steps in applying the learning:
- To critically reflect on how university management focuses on administration by choice and be attentive to how that minimises teaching time.
- Use Graeber’s taxonomy to recognise weaknesses and avoid the trap of being drawn into exercises that bear no discernible improvement to student experience, pedagogy, or good management practices.
- Consider reaching out more to admin support to mitigate an increase in admin while being attentive as to how this may still sap valuable time.
- Take on a ‘radical optimist’ mindset to promote a degrowth of administration and make manifest the teaching-oriented culture that is fulfilling for both staff and students.
Reference List
Graeber, D., 2013. On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: A work rant. Strike Magazine, 3(1), p.5.
Graeber, D., 2019. Bullshit jobs: The rise of pointless work, and what we can do about it.