The Erosion of Academic Dignity in the Face of Performance Management: A Case From Poland

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to explore the connection between performance management introduced at Polish universities and the consequent erosion of the dignity of junior academics, as well as doctoral students. There is a growing number of critics who claim that modern changes of the organization of university, based on the market fundamentalism and performance management paradigm, undermine the academic culture, ethos and trust, and weaken the cultural mission of the university as an institution. I focus on the following question: how recent reforms of the university affect the dignity in and of academia? I start from the historically grounded assumption that such dignity is dependent on the autonomy and freedom of research and teaching. I present the initial analysis of extensive interviews I conducted with Polish doctoral candidates and junior academics who decided to spend some time in Swedish academia. In this way, I have gained a possibility of comparison of two different systems performed by par...