Individual agency in contemporary academic life: The lived experience of internationalising the university curriculum in an increasingly competitive global marketplace

Abstract

This article has two aims. First it highlights and affirms what is already known about the disposition of several western nation states towards a global education marketplace (Singh and Doherty, 2004), the effects of globalisation upon the individual agency of university academics in education and performative education cultures (Ball, 2006, 2009; Grek, 2009; Lingard, 2010; Lingard and Rawolle, 2009, 2010). In particular, the article's context concerns the concepts of student recruitment and retention within an international programme of study in a major university in Australia. Second, the article provides an analysis of a small amount of data to show that attempts by one university academic working within this programme of study, to change and enhance the pedagogical value of the curriculum for students so that the university retains students, has to occur within an overarching and evaluative strategy measured in recruitment performance indicators expressed as numbers. This occurs to the detriment of a pedagogical and evaluative strategy that enhances the broader social agendas relating to the social and political significance of higher education qualifications. In stark terms, the article shows that evaluative measures adopted by this university quantify the university's growth in international reputation for research, ideas and the recruitment of educational experience, without seeming to quantify and qualify what that experience actually is. In the view of one university academic, performance (Garrick, 2006, 2010) through the provision of quality education programmes in contemporary education systems seems simply a matter of saying that you have performed.