Crafting neoliberal futures in the strategic plans of Estonian universities

Abstract

This article aims to understand how universities as institutional agents imagine and construct neoliberal near futures for themselves. I examine the strategic plans of three major public universities in Estonia. I treat these documents as certain kinds of future-oriented narratives, using analytical insights from narrative research. My particular focus is on how these future visions create gender-based and other hierarchies, exclusions and inequalities for particular categories of (differently positioned) actors in the context of universities.I suggest that rather than being passive victims of the agenda of neoliberalisation, these universities should be seen as actively creating this ideology. This is manifested in the logic and language of neoliberalism used in the strategic plans. I identified and examined three key elements of this: 1) internationalisation 2) excellence and competition 3) the enterprising university. All three narratives and their implications are intertwined and reinforce each other to produce inequalities in academic settings.The desirable futures constructed in the strategic plans suggest that universities are not able or willing to offer resistance or alternative future paths to the prevalent neoliberal ideology. Instead, they are establishing themselves as advocates for neoliberalisation.