Neoliberal Policy and Academic Freedom: A Case Study From Florida (United States)

• In Event: 18.014 - The Future of Academic Freedom: Identifying Global Threats and Defining Universal Values

Abstract

In 2015, the state of Florida adopted a performance funding system that utilizes various measures related to student retention, completion rates, and job placement to assess the effectiveness of its state colleges. During the 2016-17 academic year, the author of this study conducted thirty-two interviews with faculty members and administrators in the Florida state college system during a larger ethnographic study of remediation reforms. Data shed light on a surprising issue - the chilling effect performance funding can have on academic freedom, in general, and faculty criticism of state-initiated reforms, in particular.
Findings indicate that three aspects of performance funding have had particularly negative consequences to academic freedom and collegiality between institutions in Florida. First, administrators and faculty members who believed that reforms were passed in an “overnight fashion” felt unable to push back against policy because, as one administrator put it, “the financial health of [their] institution was on the line.” Second, institutions that developed promising approaches to promoting student success and creating a more equitable environment were incentivized to see other state colleges as “rivals,” rather than as colleagues with whom innovative ideas could be shared and cultivated. Third, colleges were incentivized to meet “meaningless quantitative measures that did not promote deep learning.” For example, one college invested considerable money in an expansion of its athletics programs simply to increase the number of first-time, full-time enrolled students. And yet, faculty and administrators were powerless to publicly criticize the funding formula due to pressure from institutional boards of trustees to win “the performance funding arms race.”
Therefore, this paper takes a critical view of funding that is aligned with “performance” and policy that is enacted without faculty consultation. It also raises questions concerning the compatibility of neoliberal values with institutional autonomy and educational equity. Finally, it offers a prominent example of how institutions can be compelled by state-level actors to adopt neoliberal attitudes to the production and dissemination of knowledge, even when such attitudes are antithetical to essential traditional scholarly values, such as academic freedom and shared governance.

Author

• Michael Lanford, University of North Georgia