Questioning Care in Higher Education: Resisting Definitions as Radical 303141828X, 9783031418280

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Questioning Care in Higher Education Resisting Definitions as Radical Sally Baker · Rachel Burke

Questioning Care in Higher Education

Sally Baker · Rachel Burke

Questioning Care in Higher Education Resisting Definitions as Radical

Sally Baker Australian National University Canberra, ACT, Australia

Rachel Burke University of Newcastle Australia Newcastle, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-3-031-41828-0 ISBN 978-3-031-41829-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Marina Lohrbach_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

This book responds to the underexplored personal-institutional-political business of (not) caring in higher education and asks questions of why adopting a caring position in higher education can be viewed as radical, and what we can do to counter that view. For this book, the most compelling warrant for attending to issues of care comes from the staff and students, whose thoughts, observations, and opinions will provide illustrations throughout Part II. Working also from the authors’ empirical, professional, and personal experiences and observations of how higher education systematically, structurally, and actively promotes a lack of care when it comes to supporting students and staff to live ‘good lives’, this book offers a critical and timely call to action. For Sally, the seeds of ideas for this book were arguably sown a long time ago, watered by a series of experiences (as a student and staff member) that enhanced our already robust sense of injustice, a contrarian spirit, and a compulsion to prove myself to perceived critics (well, mostly myself). And yet, writing this book—well-intentioned, extensively researched, deeply felt, and exhaustively revised—constitutes a risk. Speaking out and using voice as a critical act of activist care involves writing oneself out and opening oneself to critique and potential harm. Nonetheless, we seek to contribute to collective conversations about the importance of care in higher education, motivated by the significance

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and timeliness of issues raised in the relevant literature, and the participant experiences and perspectives that enrich and inform our empirical work. While we refer to ‘university’ rather than ‘college’ or ‘vocational education’, we hope that our discussion has relevance across the higher education sector.

Motivations for Writing a Book on Care and Higher Education Sally As an academic at an ‘elite’ university in Australia, I am beyond lucky: I get paid well to do what I know I am good at: teaching, advocating, researching, and writing. I make a meaningful and tangible contribution to the development of my students, my colleagues, my School, my community, my field. Why on earth then would I feel so compelled to take the risk of writing this book and biting the hand that feeds me by taking higher education to task? After a lot (a LOT!) of reflection and reflexive engagement, I have identified three constellations of experiences that drove me to the madness of writing this book. Firstly, I have a lot of feelings that I need to translate into something that feels productive. I have crafted a career out of channelling my frustration, distress, and rage at the absence of care—what we will call a care vacuum (see Chapter 5)— created by endemic unkindness: political shifts to the right, neoliberal decision-making, conservative, hostile, and cruel policies, and overzealous and arbitrary bureaucrats/cy. The hegemonic elements of these violences, so often captured by a sad lament that ‘this is how it’s always been done’ or a weak apology that ‘our systems won’t allow us to make that happen’, drive me wild with indignant rage. My frustration at having to sacrifice my time and energy to do more with less—which plays out most often at the interpersonal level with family, friends, students, and colleagues—creates a guilty and furious resentment. Our complicity in the perpetuation of these undercaring structures through our continued playing of ‘the game’ (the rules of which are never fully clear, nor negotiated) prompts potent anger. These feelings are matched, in the main, by positive ones related to accomplishment, satisfaction, pride (with an ever-watchful eye on my ego), and the warmth of collegiality. And while I often feel like I am

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dancing on the edge of burnout (see Chapter 5), my outrage offers me a source of fuel to keep going, to continue raging against the machine (until I can’t—the completion of this book was hindered by one bout of exhaustion after another thanks to the legacy of COVID lockdowns). Working from and against perceived injustices allowed me to engage in what I call ‘to spite you’ research, with an agenda that sets out to shine a mirror back on the academy and its wilful ignorance of its careless failings and make a research-informed case for moving away from the ‘business as usual’ that we know serves few and disadvantages many. Secondly, the deepest cuts in my (professional) psyche have come from working with people who actively eschew their duty of and to care by sabotaging, undermining, and creating miserable working conditions (and who are celebrated despite this poor behaviour). These behaviours emerge because of the bespoke hierarchical power structures of a sector that is competitive, ego-driven, and prioritises metrics over people. The experience of working with such people and in such conditions has been profoundly painful, and this is a pain I would prefer newly arrived colleagues in the academy to not experience. Thirdly, as an activist-scholar, I have paid the costs of speaking out about the absence of institutional care. In one case, my contribution to vocal opposition to a deeply uncaring (and actively hostile) decision of the university I worked for at the time almost definitely led to the termination of a fixed-term contract. Speaking up and speaking out is, I argue throughout this book, an act of activist care that can be risky for the speaker, and the consequences need to be carefully considered before doing so. As such, caring can currently be considered a radical act, in the sense of the person caring incurring risks that may critically endanger the possibilities for self-care. This idea that caring is radical and risky is mind-boggling, and the idiocy of this situation is my third motivational thrust for writing this book. As a sociologist, my critical lens is firmly stuck in the ‘on’ position; I feel like I can see that the emperor is wholly naked, and I cannot unsee it! Rachel As a first-in-family university graduate, I feel truly privileged to have experienced the transformative potential of higher education, and the associated positive impacts for my family and the communities in which I live and work. My gratitude for these opportunities does not reflect

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a belief that university participation is the only pathway to transformative learning, nor a disregard for the sacrifices, challenges, and losses that can accompany higher education. Likewise, I do not wish to convey overly simplistic ideas about university qualifications as a panacea for social injustice nor disregard the historically entrenched power relations that continue to disadvantage students from particular socio-economic, linguistic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. Rather, as an academic, researcher, and advocate—roles that, as a child, I never dreamed would be possible for me—I seek to honour the many acts of generosity that have furthered my learning opportunities by contributing to collective efforts to create more accessible and responsive higher education. While I am firmly committed to the ideals of true widening participation—and have benefited directly from this agenda—I have also witnessed how a place in a classroom does not necessarily equate to an equitable learning opportunity. The proverbial playing field is never level, and true educational access relies on recognition that the particular ways of knowing and doing at university are reflective of deeply engrained power relations. As we explore in this book, socioeconomic, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, gendered, and health-related factors can impact how we navigate the epistemological, ontological, and sociocultural foundations, structures, and expectations of the academy (see Chapter 4). Genuine widening participation therefore requires the breaking down of these expectations, and the facilitation of multiple knowledge forms and practices to meaningfully transform the academy to be more democratic, more inclusive, and more representative. For me, the practice of care is at the heart of this requirement for the academy to evolve, to adapt, and to transform. As a student and staff member, I have experienced and witnessed diverse manifestations and impacts of care, undercare, carelessness, care vacuums, and collective care. Co-authoring this book has provided a valuable opportunity to reflect on these experiences. Yet, as I journey alongside colleagues and students with First Nations backgrounds, refugee and asylum seeker experiences, complex health challenges, endemic poverty, and ongoing intergenerational trauma, I am deeply aware that I have not experienced many of the cruellest and most insidious forms of undercare and carelessness in higher education. I therefore make no claim to write from a representative position on these issues. Rather, I seek to learn from the writing of

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scholars with lived experience, and the student and staff perspectives that are interwoven throughout our discussion, to join in collective, honest, and hope-filled conversations about the challenges, the complexities, and the possibilities associated with care in higher education. Canberra, Australia Newcastle, Australia

Sally Baker Rachel Burke

Acknowledgements

No one writes a book alone, even in a team there are others who have fed the beast/soothed the baby/inspired as muses. To all of our colleagues and students, particularly those who contributed voices, experiences, scathing critique, and laughter, we see you, feel you, and hear you! Thank you, thank you, thank you. For Sally, this book was a hard labour, and try as I might, I couldn’t birth it alone. It just would not have come into being without Rachel’s generous doula gift of caring and care-full co-authorship. To her, I am forever grateful! I also express my heartfelt gratitude to all the lost weekends of writing and crying, and worrying: big hugs and thanks to Micah, my sweet rainbow babe, who graciously shared her mum with this book; to Shane, the wonderful husband I picked up along the way while writing this book; to Molly and my glorious grandbabies, Harper and Poppy; and to my colleagues—especially my Shut up And Write co-writers. I also extend gratitude to Meg Rose and Phillipa Bellemore who both read and commented on drafts of the early parts of this book - thank you! For Rachel, co-authoring this book has been a labour of love; an opportunity to reflect on experiences and interactions, intentions, disappointments, and concerns, and above all, hopes for contributing to the important work of foregrounding care in higher education. To Sally, I thank you for the many hours of rich and robust conversation, the exchange of ideas, the imagining of possibilities, and the making of plans. It has been wonderful to complete this work with you! To my family,

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thank you for supporting my engagement with this project and the time spent in numerous and extended writing sessions. Finally, to my friends, colleagues, and students, whose many acts of care continue to move and inspire me, I offer my heartfelt thanks. We also wish to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which we have undertaken this work, the Pambalong Clan of the Awabakal people, and pay our grateful respects to the Elders past, present, and emerging. We recognise that this Land has always been a place of knowledge, teaching, and learning, and that sovereignty was never ceded.

Contents

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Introduction Why Bother Caring About Care in Higher Education? Why Now? Making the Case for Considering Care in ‘Post-COVID’ Higher Education Methodological Warrant Scoping the Literature Empirical Insights Honouring the Vulnerability Involved in Sharing About Caring Outline of the Book References

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Part I Setting Out the Context 2

What Is Care? Introduction The Feminist Roots of Care Scholarship A Relational Ethics of Care Care Ethics and (Social) Justice Tronto’s Five Moral Elements of a Political Ethics of Care Micro: Caring at the Individual-to-Individual Level Caring as Emotional Labour Self-Care Macro: Caring at the Political, Global, and Ideological Levels

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Chrono: The Temporality of Care The Tyranny of Clock Time Meso: Caring at the Institutional Level Summary: How Can We Define Care When Talking About Higher Education? References

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What Do Universities Care About? Introduction Where Does Care Feature in a Philosophy of Higher Education? Ontological Care: Being and Becoming Caring in Higher Education Epistemic Care in Higher Education Caring Values in Higher Education Summary: So, What Do Universities Actually Care About? References

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What Hinders Care in Higher Education? Introduction Unfettered Growth and Being Competitive in Educational Markets Higher Education as a Public or Private Good? The Growth of the Student ‘Market’: Massification and Diversification Working in Higher Education: Competition, Acceleration, Precarity Stratification, Individualisation, Competition Academic Work Under Surveillance Gendered Inequities of Working in Higher Education Racialised Inequities of Studying and Working in Higher Education Classed Inequities of Studying and Working in Higher Education Linguistic Exclusion Casualisation Timescapes of Higher Education

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The Impacts of COVID on the Capacity to Care in Higher Education Summary References

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Part II Where Does Care Fit in Higher Education? 5

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Are Universities Caring Institutions? Introduction Care as a Response to Misfortune Universities Take It for Granted That They Know What Students and Staff Need Care for Those Who Care (Student-Carers) Care from Those Who Care (Staff Carers) Universities Commodify and Outsource Care Universities Adopt a Paternalistic Approach to Determining Care Needs Universities Disproportionately Focus on Caregiving University Requirements Create Perceived Barriers Rather Than Facilitators to Caring Universities Unevenly Distribute Care Work Along Class, Gender, and Ethnicity Lines A Note on Language: Is Care the Right Word for Higher Education? Summary References

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Why Care? Introduction Care as ‘Vocational Responsibility’ Working in the Caring Professions Discretionary Effort: The Individual Imperative to Care ‘Compelled to Care’: Care as a Personal Disposition Emotional Components of a Caring Disposition The Costs of Caring: Why People Stop Caring (as Much) Detached Care Resulting from the Caring Too Much: Compassion Fatigue and Burnout Paternalism

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Privileged Irresponsibility: Care Passes Aplenty Summary: Creating or Filling Care Vacuums References

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Why Is Caring Considered Radical in Higher Education? Introduction Care as Political Awareness Care as (Radical) Solidarity Care as Sharing and Being Vulnerable Care as Speaking Up Self-Care Summary References

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Part III Moving Towards a More Caring University 8

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Rethinking Institutional Care in Higher Education Introduction Purpose Care as an Institutional Aim Sharing the (Purpose of) Caring: Relationship and Connection Power Power Dynamics and Care in Higher Education Resources to Practice Care Care as a Means of Illuminating Hierarchies and Privileged Irresponsibility Plurality and Particularity Recognising Diverse Care Needs Recognising Diverse Care Practices Responding to Diverse and Individualised Care Needs Summary References

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Imagining More Caring Universities Introduction Reframing Tronto’s (2010) Seven Signs to Imagine More Caring Universities Care Is Proactive, Well-Considered, and Involves Care for, About, and With

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Care is Based on Wide and Careful Consultation Care Is Valued, Rewarded, and a Purposive Part of ‘Core Business’ Care Practices Recognise All People and Their Diverse Needs Care is Relational and Reciprocal Care is Acknowledged and Discussed Collectively and with Adequate Space and Time Care Work is Enacted Equitably by All People Regardless of Particular Identity Markers People Are not Asked to Care so Much that They Neglect Self-Care/Use up All Available Time/Energy Returning to Some Key Questions Posed in the Book What is the Institution When Talking About Care? What is the Purpose of Higher Education, When Thinking About Care? How Can We Prioritise Self-Care Without It Being Viewed as Selfishness or Privileged Irresponsibility? Working Towards Greater Care in Higher Education Considering the Affective Dimension: Acknowledging and Valuing Emotions Considering the Temporal: Making Time for Collegial and Convivial Care Considering the Reflexive: Acknowledging Vulnerability, Actively Listening The Fundamental Importance of Solidarity for Change Summary Conclusions References Index

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About the Authors

Sally Baker is an Associate Professor of Migration and Education at the Australian National University. Sally’s teaching and research interests centre on language, literacies, transition, and equity in higher education, particularly with regard to culturally and linguistically marginalised students, and refugee students in particular. Rachel Burke is an applied linguist in the School of Education at University of Newcastle, Australia. Rachel’s research and advocacy focus on strengths-based approaches to languages education for learners from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, including people with refugee experiences. Sally and Rachel are Co-Chairs of the Australian Refugee Education Special Interest Group for/with students from refugee backgrounds, supported by the Refugee Council of Australia (http://www.refugee-edu cation.org/).

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Introduction

The ideas in this book have been germinating for some time and, as our writing will illustrate, our responses to the question of why bother caring in higher education have inevitably been motivated by our own personal, professional, and political experiences and imperatives. As you likely expect, we do not have definitive answers to any of the questions that we pose in this book. Instead, our intention is to contribute to the hitherto small but steadily expanding space for collective consideration of the ways in which care in higher education is currently practiced, to generate interest in the complexities, nuances, and opportunities presented by a scholarly focus on care; and to call attention to our responsibility to give and receive care in our roles—whether student, staff, or member of the wider higher education community. Our underlying premise in this book is that we all have a part to play in working to make higher education a more caring space and to model this for other institutions. Before we go on, it is first necessary to offer some fundamental premises about care/caring. Care is notoriously difficult to define; as we outline in Chapter 2, the ways that care is defined, discussed, and debated are as varying and variable as the people who have taken up the challenge to work with this highly amorphous concept (discourse, phenomenon, practice, perspective, ethics). As this book will discuss, the word ‘care’ is not necessarily the best word; perhaps ‘kindness’, ‘compassion’, or ‘empathy’ would work better (see Chapter 4)? Indeed, why © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7_1

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should we stick with only one term, when we know that one-size-fits-all approaches are rarely useful for dealing with the mess and complexity of human interactions (and what can be messier and more complex than the idea of care, underpinned as it is by notions of dependency, vulnerability, needs, responses, emotions, and responsibilities?). It is because it is deeply situated, nuanced, culturally informed, and layered that care is difficult (if not impossible) to categorically define. As we will outline in Chapter 2, care in higher education has been discussed in the literature as many things: relational, layered, complex, context-dependent, changeable, nurturing, and extracting. Expressions of care in higher education can be physical, emotional, and interpersonal; care can manifest as ‘checking in’, a smile, a touch on the shoulder, some advice, an extension, signing a form, saying ‘no’, advocacy, a kind word, or silence, pause, space. In the absence of a shared definition of care, we invite readers to consider their own understandings of manifestations of care in higher education, suggesting that in seeking to flesh out the nature and impact of care, it is also important to consider what care is not. For instance, we suggest that care is not the sacrificial giving of self; it can involve the displacement of self-interest at times, but it does not require us to give up ourselves to others. Care is not only an external relationship or projection of energy; we must also include and prioritise care for ourselves. Care is not predicting and attending to the needs of everyone: this is both unfeasible and undesirable. Care is not something that can be abstracted and fixed in a contract, role description, or a manual; while it is the case that some roles have more explicit ‘caring’ duties, we are all involved in care chains. Care is not something that can be explicitly taught in professional development training, although we all learn to care through role modelling and our engagement with the world. And importantly for this book, care happens beyond the individual; care also permeates institutions, as collections of people involved in caring relations. In this book, we consider the antithesis to care not in terms of ‘being uncaring’—for none of us are incapable of care—but as being busy, time-poor, and over-burdened. Care/ing relies primarily on the resources of time, interest, and energy and, to a lesser extent, material goods; busy-ness exhausts these resources. What better context to discuss care than the ever-busy, idiosyncratic bureaucracy of higher education?! The evolving role of higher education (public good or private good, or something in-between?), competing temporalities (slow bureaucracy, fast neoliberal tempos) and the hybrid

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systems of the academy (somewhat archaic, somewhat corporate, somewhat creative, and somewhat radical) make universities an ideal case study for exploring questions of care. Despite care being well-theorised at both the macro (moral, political, ideological) and micro (individual, practice) levels, it has arguably been underexplored at the meso (institutional) level. Care, therefore, warrants further attention.

Why Bother Caring About Care in Higher Education? Caring is a fundamental component of human relations and connectedness. The significance of care in education is a relatively well-established conversation in the scholarly literature on primary schooling, less so in the work that describes high school, and relatively invisible in the tertiary contexts. Where discussions about care do exist in the university context, they are primarily (and rightly?) concerned with defining caring higher education teaching (Barrow, 2015; Trout, 2018), or the needs and experiences of caregiving students (Brooks, 2012; Moreau & Kerner, 2015), and academics (Amsler & Motta, 2019). From a disciplinary perspective, most of the literature that attends to care as part of higher education relates to teacher education (Chatelier & Rudolph, 2018; Huber, 2010; Sumison, 2000; Trout, 2018) and human geography (Askins, 2009; Jones & Whittle, 2021; Lawson, 2009; Wood et al., 2020). Two other significant intersecting themes that emerge from a review of this literature are the focus on the gendered nature of caring, with many scholars noting the dominance of ideas of care as feminised (Acker, 1996; Moreau & Kerner, 2015; Sumison, 2000), and the diversity in terms of cultural dimensions of what it means to care in higher education contexts (Mariskind, 2014; Trout, 2018). All these elements of caring in higher education will be explored in detail in Part II. A dominant theme across the small body of work that has focused on care in the context of higher education relates to the challenges posed by the neoliberal, competitive logics that drive contemporary work (study, teaching, research, practice) in the academy, resulting in what Bosanquet (2017) describes as a situation of ‘undercare’. A key feature of academic life is measurement—of productivity, of progress, of profit. There is no metric for care; indeed, taking time/using resources to care may be seen as counter-productive to attaining many of the key performance expectations that are established and maintained as markers of ‘success’ for

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staff in the contemporary institution. The push towards individualised approaches means that university structures dominantly require students to self-diagnose issues and find appropriate supports. Consequently, this often results in more articulate, confident students and those who are most familiar with the structures and processes of the university being the ones who seek support. For ‘at-risk’ students, assistance is largely offered only once they have been identified in the system because of poor results. Tett et al.’s (2017) exploration of students’ perceptions of care in higher education suggests that many students do not perceive their needs as being a priority for their lecturers, with several noting anxiety about asking for help because of their awareness of the time pressure that their lecturers face (see Chapter 3 for a fuller discussion of the challenges of academic work). While there is a deepening academic conversation emerging about the role of care in higher education, as evidenced by the emergence of academic journals or scholarly special interest groups, this has yet to constitute a significant line of scholarly inquiry. Rather, much like the ways that language and culture are often taken up unproblematically and treated as assumed and invisible phenomena in education (Burke, 2022; Manathunga, 2019; Stevenson & Baker, 2018), care is a taken-for-granted rhythm of daily educational practice and routine. Such assumptions are arguably among the root causes of the endemic issues that many students experience with inequitable access to and participation in education, which play out along intersectional lines relating to social class, gender, Indigeneity, ethnicity, disability, regionality, age, and prior educational experience. Despite the strong consensus in the literature that caring is a fundamental element of teaching, the literature also attests to a dearth of exploration about what caring means, looks like, feels like, and how it is valued (or not) in the massified and diversified higher education context (Lynch, 2010; Walker & Gleaves, 2016; Zembylas, 2017), for both students and staff. There has not, to date, been a comprehensive study of what constitutes care, including perceptions from students and staff, in the institution of higher education. There is little that has explored the shape of higher education through a care lens (albeit see Tronto, 2018), or considered where care fits into the institutional, structural, and systemic levels of the academy. The focus on individual educators (for example, Chatelier & Rudolph, 2018; Trout, 2018; Walker & Gleaves, 2016; Walker-Greaves, 2019), and to a lesser extent on the perceptions of students (Anderson

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et al., 2020; Moreau, 2016) is welcome, but conceals the responsibility of the institution to care, and to consider how such care might look, feel and be experienced. The overt focus on teaching also conceals the broader remit of what universities do—teaching is but one set of activities (and relatively subordinated to research in the neoliberal institution); other aspects of higher education include accreditation, quality assurance, training, evaluation, human resourcing, management, accounting, advocacy, community engagement, philanthropy, and international relations. By focusing almost exclusively on one part of the ecology of higher education, we risk losing sight of the bigger picture. Care is nebulous; it is both tacit and demonstrated, it is diffuse, it reaches across and into all the activities of the academy (rather than being located solely in the teaching-learning relationship). Unlike power, care is most evident when it is absent. The lack of shared understandings of care results in universities being, at best, ‘undercaring’ institutions (Bosanquet, 2017), and at worst, mental ill-health factories. Without recognition of care (as a synonym for connectedness, engagement, empathy, love) as the beating heart of education á la Nel Noddings’ foundational work on relational ethic of care (see Chapter 2), it remains undervalued, uncounted in workloads, and unevenly distributed. It is certainly a contributing factor behind the prevalence of inequality in the distribution of ‘goods’ (regarding opportunities and rewards including career advancement) and contributes significantly to burn out and attrition (for students and staff). Care takes time, energy, emotions, resources; it is counter to the individualistic, competitive drivers that have permeated higher education in the last four decades. And while higher education is not the only industry to keenly adopt neoliberal ideology, academia is perhaps unique in the operationalisation of ego in keeping its staff (particularly academics) complicit in the competitive logics that create the structures and conditions they navigate. Yet despite the compelling reasons to avoid taking on unpaid, unacknowledged, resource-intensive caring work, there are of course abundant benefits to caring. and people continue to care in many diverse ways within and outside of their roles in their workplace. In the work domain, much like the personal domain, care can be hugely beneficial, bringing joy, interpersonal nourishment, satisfaction, and professional fulfilment (Noddings, 1984; Tronto, 1993). Reciprocating kindness and generosity reminds us of our connections with others (Nilsson et al., 2015). For many people working in universities, this connection—to students,

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to colleagues, to their field/discipline, to professional associations and networks, to other institutions, and sectors—is why they entered the profession, and why they remain despite increasingly unfavourable conditions. However, unlike the focus on negative dimensions of un(der)care in higher education, these benefits are rarely written about, hence our intention here is to explore the opportunities and potentials for change. A question that frames this book—‘Why bother caring about care in higher education?’—is both stupidly easy and impossibly difficult to answer. From an abstract/de-contextualised perspective, of course we can agree that caring is important and valuable: who can argue against the idea of care? However, when we start to look at what caring involves and who does the caring in higher education settings, the complexity unfolds: it is subordinated along gendered, classed, and racialised lines, it is conspicuous in its absence from institutional policy definitions and mandates, and, where present, is often presented as an individual responsibility. The central premise of this book is that without a shared understanding of care/ing as part of all our work in higher education (including the ‘work’ of studying), it remains invisible and ignored, creating the conditions for it being the unacknowledged work of the passionate few. The absence of shared understandings of how to recognise, value and ‘do’ care in higher education means that responding to the question of ‘why bother’ remains difficult. Ultimately, Joan Tronto’s (2010) reflections led to the point of departure for this book: for institutions to be caring, they (as a collection of people, rather than a ‘thing’) first need to create the space and conditions to discuss, debate, negotiate, contest, and craft consensus on what care can/should/will look like: … how does the institution come to understand its needs? How does it negotiate needs within itself? Which needs are taken as legitimate? How are responsibilities within the organization allocated? Who actually gives the care? How are the reception and effectiveness of care work evaluated? (p. 168)

Tronto (2010) outlines three tenets of ‘good’ institutional care: (1) clarity around the purpose of care; (2) recognition of power relations; and (3) a need for pluralistic, responsive care. It therefore follows that the better forms of institutional care are ‘highly deliberate and explicit about

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how to best meet the needs of the people who they serve’ and have ‘adequate and well-conceived space within which to resolve such conflict [that arise in the negotiating of needs and responses]’ (p. 169). It is our intention in this book to offer both critique of the present situation, and hope for the future of the valuing of, prioritisation, and enactment of care in higher education. We do so by attempting to ask questions of the system through exploring the discourses and accounts of (under) care described in the literature, as well as seeking the thoughts of students and staff members working in higher education on their perceptions of whether universities are caring institutions. In the next section, we will outline how COVID has arguably intensified the rationale for a focus on care in higher education.

Why Now? Making the Case for Considering Care in ‘Post-COVID’ Higher Education We started writing this book in the middle of multiple crises, all of which impacted on our care/ing, and our work in higher education. A contract was issued in 2019, with the impacts of climate change very present: bush fires, floods, storms; when we started to gather data in 2020, COVID had landed, and it felt like the world turned upside down. We were forced inside, forced online, forced to rethink our roles—at home, at work; we were exhausted by the conditions we collectively endured; we were lucky that we suffered no lasting physical impacts, but we were caught up in the compound fatigue that many in the sector experienced, and still do. As such, this book took nearly four years to write—not so much an example of slow scholarship as a project that could not be prioritised when family, students, colleagues, and ourselves needed so much more time-space-energy than we had imagined. In sum, it felt like COVID changed everything in higher education but realistically it changed very little—perhaps it’s more reasonable to say that the existing hurdles to ‘care’ were amplified, and as people at the chalkface (with coursework, doctoral students, colleagues), we felt these keenly. It’s fair to say we still struggle with the resulting compound burnout, and the caring-relational impacts of this. Over the past decade, higher education has witnessed, been subject to and responded to significant political, economic, social, and public healthrelated challenges. The world was already bruised by the time a global pandemic was called in March 2020. In a matter of weeks, the old-world

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order was thrown into disarray after alarmingly high rates of transmission of and deaths related to the novel coronavirus (henceforth COVID) that developed in 2019 and spread rapidly across the globe in 2020. Life as we knew it had to stop, the collective pause button was pressed, and things that were hitherto thought impossible—the cessation of constant travel, the universal movement of work and schooling into the home, the visibility of the limitations of supply chains (evidenced most visibly with toilet paper shortages)—replaced the old rhythms of cosmopolitan and forced hyper-mobility, independence, and autonomy. The world was temporarily closed down; yet among the fear and grief and likelihood of global recession, green shoots of hope also started sprouting. It was an opportunity to press the reset button and move to a ‘new normal’ in recognition that the ‘old normal’ was not serving us well; whether we have done or not still remains to be seen. Largely thanks to the magnified gaze that COVID has shone on us and the things that we have long taken for granted (not least good public health), care has become a global and pressing concern. One of the most powerful motifs at the start of the pandemic was the public recognition of the wonderful but woefully underpaid people who work on the front line to care for people’s needs (nurses, teachers, supermarket workers, agedcare workers, delivery drivers)—exemplified in the UK, for example, with the ‘Clap for Our Carers’ movement in 2020 to celebrate National Health Service staff who were at the frontline of the battle against COVID. Yet, this public outpouring of gratitude was never matched by a commensurate increase in other forms of value, with governments—such as the UK1 — widely freezing public sector wages as they stare down negative economic forecasts resulting from the ripple effects of COVID. While COVID has opened up greater awareness of our collective reliance on the caring professions, the persistent undervaluing of fundamental ‘caring’ roles— evidenced through the casualisation of the workforce, through zero-hour contracts, through low wages—makes displays of public gratitude ring hollow. Higher education, like schooling, was brutally exposed to the impacts of the pandemic, and the importance of care was magnified but caring was much harder to do. This is due in no small part to care not being

1 NHS staff were not included in the pay freeze (Jolly, 2020).

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well understood in the context of higher education. It is therefore essential that we develop better understandings because COVID has exposed the scales of endemic ‘undercare’ that circulate in modern societies and leave virtually no one feeling cared for or valued, particularly those tasked with public caring (see Chapter 2 for further exploration of the distinctions between public and private caring, and care versus service). The place, role, and responsibility for/of care has therefore been pulled into sharp relief because of COVID, in ways that were unimaginable when the proposal for this book was written. What started as an academic concern with care in higher education has morphed into a real, tangible, bubbling cauldron of issues and hurts, opportunities and hopes. It feels more timely, more relevant, more important than it did when the idea for this book grew from a seed of a personal, academic, and practical imperative to ask questions of who cares, how we care, and whether we can collectively trouble for better forms of care (and whether that collective activity itself constitutes care).

Methodological Warrant This book draws on data gathered from a variety of projects that have focused on the broad topic of equity in higher education, as well as data gathered explicitly for this book. In this book, we have blended our readings of the literature, empirical insights gathered with people currently employed or enrolled in higher education, and our own reflections where pertinent. Scoping the Literature Given the multifaceted and slippery nature of care, it was necessary to cast the net out wide; as a result, the literature that we have drawn upon covers many different traditions: sociology, social psychology, cultural studies, critical studies, feminist studies, organisational studies, higher education studies (and much of the literature is polyphonic, speaking from multiple standpoints). The multiplicity of this literature includes essays, empirical studies, funded reports, media, and blog posts. Part I of this book explores the discourses and themes circulating through, across and within this literature as we seek to ‘pin down’ a series of working definitions: of care, of the higher education sector, of what universities care about.

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Empirical Insights Part II of the book features the voices of students and staff participants from four studies of higher education undertaken in Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom between late 2020 and mid-2022. These studies documented the insights, opinions, and experiences of 31 staff and 16 students working and studying across a range of disciplines and in a variety of institutions, including regional, urban, research-intensive, and universities with greater than average enrolments from traditionally underrepresented cohorts. Data was gathered via online surveys, semistructured interviews, and focus groups that explored issues of care, inclusion/exclusion, participation, and social justice in higher education. Key themes from our review of the scholarly literature guided our engagement with the participants’ data, and we interweave insights from both these sources throughout our discussion. Staff participants were employed in various roles including student welfare, equity, diversity and inclusion, and academic positions ranging from early career to professorial, on ongoing, fixed term, and sessional contracts. Student participants were undertaking undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral degrees as either international or domestic students, across a range of areas including biological, earth, and environmental sciences, psychology, English language, medicine, biotechnology and biomolecular sciences and law, sociology, and migration studies. Staff and student participants self-identified as coming from a range of ethnic, sociocultural, and linguistic backgrounds, with varied carer responsibilities, educational histories, and experiences of ableism, health discrimination, sexism, and institutional racism. It is these participants’ stories—their challenges, their triumphs, and most of all, their hope— that give life to our discussion of care in higher education. All names are pseudonyms. Honouring the Vulnerability Involved in Sharing About Caring Being vulnerable is both a key condition and consequence of care. Part of acknowledging that none of us are truly independent, that we are all involved in care/ing, requires us to acknowledge that we are all ‘vulnerable to becoming more or less derivatively dependent’ at some point in our lives (Kittay, 2015, p. 57). Our societal refusal to acknowledge and plan for this is a significant contributor to the problematic invisibility of

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care in our institutions. For Nel Noddings, the exposing of oneself to being vulnerable is a direct result of displacing one’s motivations to be concerned with (care for) the self: I allow my motive energy to be shared; I put it at the service of others. It is clear that my vulnerability is potentially increased when I care, for I can be hurt through the other as well as through myself. But my strength and hope are also increased… (1984, p. 33)

While the experiences of vulnerability are no doubt common for many—if not all—who are engaged in higher education, the sharing of these feelings (and fears) is not. This concealing of our feelings, fears, hopes, and experiences about care/ing is hegemonic; if we pretend that speaking (back) to the caring and emotional dimension of our engagement with higher education (whether work or study, advocacy, research, teaching, relationships) is irrelevant or inappropriate, we are complicit in maintaining the un(der)caring status quo that many of us suffer under. In this book, we will sit with the discomfort of expressing (exposing??) our vulnerabilities to enact what Askins and Blazek call for in their 2017 account of their reflections on their own experiences of working in academia: …we believe that insecurity is already a defining feature of contemporary academia, and working through – and with – emotions, emphasising care and notions of communal, respectful, affirmative ethics, is a way to make inequalities visible and begin to address them. This call is about understanding critically what emotions are already doing, how they are working and being put to work in social relations, in our lives, and in our academic knowledge production and practices, and where care has the capability to intervene. (p. 1099)

While we are not naïve enough to think a book alone will lead to the kinds of transformations needed to shift higher education into a more human-centred, holistic, and kind model, we are hopeful that this book will contribute to discussions and debates about how higher education might reform itself following the window of opportunity offered by the impacts of COVID on the sector. This involves opening a (risky) space to be willful (Ahmed, 2014), speak out, and encourage others to engage in dialogue about what might offer the possibilities for emancipatory and transgressive education (hooks, 1994). This also ideally involves speaking

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beyond the arbitrary boundaries placed around academia, to engage ‘outsiders’ (who may well be potential future ‘insiders’) to consider the role of care in public institutions like universities. Following Wood et al. (2020), we view this as a matter of social justice in terms of recognising the marginalising impacts on particular groups, and how without this recognition injustice will prevail, minding their argument that ‘scholarship that remains insulated within academic circles and rarely extends into the lived geographies of marginalized groups is not sufficiently radical or caring’ (p. 436). This stifling of who engages with what ‘counts’ as appropriate care in university life is antithetical to the project of caring. Ultimately, the solution that emerges from pushing for transformation following consideration of whether universities are caring institutions, and whether the caring that happens will continue to be radical, can be found in the collective. We cannot trouble for change on our own; this kind of radical care takes up too much energy, represents too much of a risk, offers too little leverage to enact change. This book is thus an intention to trouble for a collective response. As Joan Tronto (2013) succinctly articulates, the collective offers hopeful possibilities: As our interdependence in caring grows greater, we need to rethink how we parse out our time, energy, work and resources to make certain that we, as well as those around us, are well cared for. We cannot rethink those questions in isolation, we can only do so collectively… perhaps it is not too late. (p. xv)

We will return to these more hopeful ideas in Part III of this book.

Outline of the Book This book is centrally framed by a question of whether universities are caring institutions. As we will illustrate in Chapter 2, the concept of caring has no shared definition that can be easily ‘operationalised’ by universities but, as this book will demonstrate, there are certainly commonalities across the conceptualisations, experiences, and practices that are represented in the scholarly literature. Similarly, there is (perhaps understandably) no list of constitutive caring practices in education, although the literature offers lessons from the chalkface (both school and higher education). By conceptually and empirically unpacking what it means to care in higher education—and what the consequences are of

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engaging in care—this book seeks to open space to reclaim and normalise care as part of our collective endeavours, thus resisting the individualistic logics of how higher education is currently configured. The aims of the book are to: . Conceptually and empirically unpack what it means to care and be cared for in higher education for students and staff. . Examine the experiences and perceptions of students and staff with regard to care in higher education. . To consider the conditions that would make universities more caring, so as to resist endemic ‘undercare’ in higher education (Bosanquet, 2017). The remit of this book—looking at the entirety of higher education is foolhardy at best—is ambitious in scope, and this has resulted in many pauses, revisions, and delays to the crafting of what you are now reading. A major hurdle has been the impact of COVID and its parasitical effect on resources: space, energy, time, focus, and relationships but the more significant challenge has been to distil the complexity of an entire sector into a book. This book is split in three sections. Part I is a review of the scholarly literature, setting out what you need to know about how care has been discussed, researched, conceptualised, and the current shape, feel, and debates about higher education before we can move to discussion of whether universities are caring institutions, and how care is experienced in contemporary higher education. Chapter 2 seeks to excavate the complex and slippery notion of care through scoping the literature on ethics, politics, moral development, embodiment, emotions, and time. This chapter offers an overview of care scholarship, starting from its feminist roots and its strong grounding in the work relating to ethics of care and moral development, and explores how care has been theorised at the macro, meso, micro, and chronological levels. Chapter 3 then moves on to scope the contours of contemporary higher education, asking what universities care about at a philosophical level, before moving to what gets in the way of caring happening at the practical level in Chapter 4. Here we examine care-barriers, such as the marketisation of higher education, the competitive logics that drive institutional behaviours, the diversified and massified student body, the experience of working in higher education,

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the timescape of higher education, and the ‘precarity norm’ (Shahjahan, 2015). We then move in Part II to make the case for why attention to care in higher education is needed, timely, and everyone’s business. In this section of the book, we thread the data gathered from the four studies into arguments about how care is perceived, experienced, and enacted by students and staff from three international perspectives (Australia, South Africa, and the UK). Chapter 5 asks whether universities are ‘caring institutions’, using Joan Tronto’s (2010) seven signs of ‘uncaring institutions’. In Chapter 6, we ask ‘why care?’, exploring the dispositions, needs, agendas, and rationalities of caring, before turning our attention to questions of why people stop caring (as much), and how power operates to offer ‘care passes’ (Tronto, 1993). In Chapter 7 we examine what contributes to the idea that care is ‘radical’, considering its links to activism and advocacy, solidarity, and self-care. In Part III of this book, we shift our gaze from the critical to the cautiously optimistic. In Chapter 8, we imagine what a more caring university would look like, drawing on our observations and hopes, the empirical data we have gathered, and our reading of the academic literature. In Chapter 9, we seek to leverage from this imagining to invert Tronto’s (2010) seven signs to think about what would need to happen for universities to be seen-experienced-felt as caring institutions. Here we offer ideas of how we might bring a set of more caring and care-full conditions to our work (as students, educators, professional staff, leadership, alumni, community members) in higher education.

References Acker, S. (1996). Carry on caring: The work of women teachers. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 16, 21–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1393124 Ahmed, S. (2014). Wilful subjects. Duke University Press. Amsler, S., & Motta, S. (2019). The marketised university and the politics of motherhood. Gender and Education, 31(1), 82–99. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09540253.2017.1296116 Anderson, V., Rabello, R., Wass, R., Golding, C., Rangi, A., Eteuati, E., Bristowe, Z., & Waller, A. (2020). Good teaching as care in higher education. Higher Education, 79(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-003 92-6

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Askins, K. (2009). ‘That’s just what I do’: Placing emotion in academic activism. Emotion, Space and Society, 2, 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa. 2009.03.005 Askins, K., & Blazek, M. (2017). Feeling our way: Academia, emotions and a politics of care. Social & Cultural Geography, 18(8), 1086–1105. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1240224 Barrow, M. (2015). Caring in teaching: A complicated relationship. The Journal of Effective Teaching, 15(2), 45–59. Bosanquet, A. (2017). Undercare in the academy. The Slow Academic [Online]: https://theslowacademic.com/?s=undercare Brooks, R. (2012). Student-parents and higher education: A cross-national comparison. Journal of Educational Policy, 27 (3), 423–439. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/02680939.2011.613598 Burke, R. (2022). Academic staff engagement with institutional language support: Insights into the navigation of linguistic identities in higher education. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education. Online first: https://doi. org/10.1080/15348458.2022.2098133 Chatelier, S., & Rudolph, S. (2018). Teacher responsibility: Shifting care from student to (professional) self? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2017.1291328 hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. Huber, M. (2010). Caring for students: Pedagogy and professionalism in an age of anxiety. Emotion, Space and Society, 3, 71–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.emospa.2009.06.002 Jolly, A. (2020). Statutory neglect and care in a pandemic. International Social Work, 63(5), 671–675. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872820941916 Jones, S., & Whittle, R. (2021). Researcher self-care and caring in the research community. Area, 53(2), 381–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12703 Kittay, E. (2015). A theory of justice as fair terms of social life given our inevitable dependency and our inextricable interdependency. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics & political theory (pp. 51–71). Oxford University Press. Lawson, V. (2009). Instead of radical geography, how about caring geography? Antipode, 41(1), 210–213. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.006 65.x Lynch, K. (2010). Carelessness: A hidden doxa of higher education. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9(1), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 147402220935010

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Manathunga, C. (2019). ‘Timescapes’ in doctoral education: The politics of temporal equity in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 38(6), 1227–1239. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.162 9880 Mariskind, C. (2014). Teachers’ care in higher education: Contesting gendered constructions. Gender and Education, 26(3), 306–320. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09540253.2014.901736 Moreau, M. P. (2016). Regulating the student body/ies: University policies and student parents. British Educational Research Journal, 42(5), 906–925. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3234 Moreau, M. P., & Kerner, C. (2015). Care in academia: An exploration of student parents’ experiences. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36(2), 215–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2013.814533 Nilsson, M., Ejlertsson, G., Andersson, I., & Blomqvist, K. (2015). Caring as a salutogenic aspect in teachers’ lives. Teaching and Teacher Education, 46, 51–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.10.009 Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics & moral education. University of California Press. Shahjahan, R. (2015). Being ‘lazy’ and slowing down: Toward decolonizing time, our body, and pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47 (5), 488–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2014.880645 Stevenson, J., & Baker, S. (2018). Refugees in higher education: Debate. Emerald Publishing Limited. Sumison, J. (2000). Caring and empowerment: A teacher educator’s reflection on an ethical dilemma. Teaching in Higher Education, 5(2), 167–179. https:// doi.org/10.1080/135625100114821 Tett, L., Cree, V., Mullins, E., & Christie, H. (2017). Narratives of care amongst undergraduate students. Pastoral Care in Education, 35(3), 166– 178. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2017.1363813 Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. Routledge. Tronto, J. (2010). Creating caring institutions: Politics, plurality, and purpose. Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/174 96535.2010.484259 Tronto, J. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York University Press. Tronto, J. (2018). Higher education for citizens of caring democracies. South African Journal of Higher Education, 32(6), 6–18. https://doi.org/10. 20853/32-6-2710 Trout, M. (2018). Embodying care: Igniting a critical turn into a teacher educator’s relational practice. Studying Teacher Education, 14(1), 39–55. https:// doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2017.1404976

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Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2016). Constructing the caring higher education teacher: A theoretical framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 65–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.11.013 Walker-Greaves, C. (2019). Is caring pedagogy really so progressive? Exploring the conceptual and practical impediments to operationalizing care in higher education. In P. Gibbs & A. Peterson (Eds.), Higher education and hope (pp. 93–112). Palgrave Macmillan. Wood, L., Swanson, K., & Colley, D. (2020). Tenets for a radical care ethics in geography. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 19(2), 424–447. Zembylas, M. (2017). Practicing an ethic of discomfort as an ethic of care in higher education teaching. CRISTAL: Critical Studies in Teaching & Learning, 5(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v5i1.97

PART I

Setting Out the Context

In this part of the book, we draw on key themes from our reading of a constellation of literature to situate this project. In Chapter 2, we start by reviewing the (often feminist) literature on care so as to craft a working definition that can be applied to higher education contexts. We have explored this literature from four levels: the micro (individual, personal); the macro (international, societal, discursive); the meso (institutional); and the chrono/temporal. Threaded throughout these domains is a consistent focus on relations, recognition, representation, and responses. We have also navigated the scholarly engagement with ethics of care; moral education; duty of care; and emotional labour. In Chapter 3, we turn our attention to what universities care about, examining the ontological, epistemological, and axiological indicators of what is valued, before turning to critique in Chapter 4, asking what it is that hinders care in higher education. These reviews of the literature offer a grounding for Part II, where we turn our attention to the empirical: to the lived experiences of students and staff who study, work, and care/ are cared for (or not) in higher education.

CHAPTER 2

What Is Care?

Introduction To commence, we seek to craft a working definition and conceptualisation of care, before tailoring that definition to the higher education context. However, this task is incredibly challenging due to the deeply polysemous character of care. Derived from the Latin (cura) and the Germanicinfluenced old English (caru, noun; carian, verb), the etymology of the word ‘care’ suggests that its primary (Latin and Germanic) meaning relates to burden (suffering grief, lament, and sorrow), with a secondary meaning relating to solicitude (the provision of welfare for others; Reich, 1995). In modern English, the meaning of ‘care’ is considerably more polysemous: as a verb, care is synonymous with supervising, protecting, maintaining, managing, keeping, guiding, supporting, worrying, bothering, minding, loving, attending, comforting; as a noun, care connotes acts of custodianship, looking after, making decisions, carefulness, judiciousness, feelings of anxiety and humanitarian concern, kindness , generosity, and concern. As Tronto (2013) succinctly describes, care is ‘love, burden, action, disposition, reaching out to something, relationships, convictions’ (p. x), underpinned by an openness in our being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1927/2011). Caring takes place across multiple timescales, distances, and intensities (Noddings, 1984). At its broadest, care can be understood as an ‘essential activity for the social fabric’ (Abel & Nelson, 1990, p. 4), as ‘both value and practice’ © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7_2

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(Held, 2005), or as the work that maintains, continues, and repairs the world (Fisher & Tronto, 1990), with context/relationship-specific caring practices nested within this broad understanding. For Engster (2005), caring includes ‘everything we do directly to help others to meet their basic needs, develop or sustain their basic capabilities, and alleviate or avoid pain or suffering, in an attentive, responsive and respectful manner’ (p. 55, emphasis in original). According to Joan Tronto (1993), care has specific and universal elements (culturally constructed), requires resources (material goods, time, skills, energy), and—importantly—sets a standard to measure the ‘adequacy’ of caregiving and care-receiving. This includes self-care and care for non-human objects. Interconnections and networks of care underpin caring practices; as Carol Gilligan (1982) notes, ‘The ideal of care is thus an activity of relationship, of seeing and responding to need, taking care of the world by sustaining the web of connection so that no one is left alone’ (p. 62). Overall, we are persuaded by Kittay’s (2002) simple reminder that care is necessary for a person to both survive and thrive. When crafting an understanding of care, it is essential to consider context and nuance. Care is deeply situated—or ‘rooted in particularity’, as Hamington writes (2015, p. 90)—rendering one-size-fits-all definitions of care neither useful nor desirable. Care needs to be understood as essentially pluralistic, concerned as it is with complex webs of relationships, ethics, power, and justice that operate and develop out of contexts. To this point, we acknowledge that any working definition of care that we propose here is also subject to both the particularities represented within the scholarly literature on which we draw—which are by no means representative of all experiences—and our own personal, cultural, social, and ideological framings. Thus, while on the surface care appears to be benign (or have a ‘feel-good aura’, Code, 2015, p. 16), it is much more complex. As Bondi (2008) notes, care is ‘double-edged and paradoxical’ (p. 249), and, depending on surrounding social structures, expectations, and practices, it can ‘inspir[e]ing a vast range of strong feelings in both care-givers and care-recipients’; ‘care oppresses and inspires; it hurts and it nurtures; it demeans and it fulfils; it enrages and it moves; it evokes love and it evokes hate’ (ibid., 250). When focused exclusively on the individual level, care practices may conceal the wider (societal, structural, and systemic) elements that can simplify and abstract care to ‘service’. Kittay (2015) further complicates the notion and practice of care, reminding us that ‘care in its descriptive sense is akin to a commodity,

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something people need and desire that can be of varying quality, distributed fairly or unfairly, and in adequate or inadequate doses’ (p. 52). The commodification of care, and its conflation with service, constitutes/is constituted by deep and persistent social, economic, racial, and gendered inequalities. This collapsing of care and service also conceals the power dynamics that underpin these two different phenomena. As Tronto (2013) articulates, care requesters are more powerful in service, but care providers are more powerful in care. Failing to differentiate between care and service in contexts like higher education thus risks masking institutional responsibility by dislocating a sense of power to individuals, particularly if coupled with the identity of ‘consumer’. Further, the idea that care—as an act of solicitude or maintenance, repair, and continuation—is ‘natural’ (based on familial/maternal relations) is particularly problematic. While the privileging of family and home offers a model of care to which most can relate; there are significant challenges associated with taking up an idealised, rosy view of the home and the ‘universally accessible’ caring (Noddings, 1984) that takes place there. Familial roles and patterns can be based on deeply uneven gendered dependencies, which are both labours of love and burdens, are predominantly undertaken by women (Kittay, 2002), and are under-supported by society and government. This leaves the one-caring in need of care that is either unavailable or must be passed on or bought. As Ruddick (2002) notes in her review of Kittay’s work, dependency is ‘not a condition we outgrow or a misfortune we can avoid’ (p. 215); we are all enveloped in care and dependency at some point in our lives. However, care or dependency in the familial/home context does not translate easily to other contexts, where power dynamics and status/ hierarchy operate in different ways. As Tronto (2010) argues, it is necessary to explicate parts of care that are often unspoken/tacit in families and unpack ‘certain assumptions about the purposes of care, about meeting the particular needs of individuals, and about the internal allocation of power’ (p. 160). Therefore, while care and dependency are part of the human condition (e.g., Kittay, 2002; Noddings, 1984; Ruddick, 2002), they do not always come ‘naturally’. The Feminist Roots of Care Scholarship It is important to note that the staff and student experiences that underpin the discussions in this book relate to higher education in Australia, South

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Africa, and the UK. We recognise that higher education is organised differently in other parts of the world, including where education is offered in gender separated contexts, and that these differences impact conceptualisations of and assumptions about care. In writing about care in higher education in Australia, South Africa, and the UK, we also acknowledge the importance of cultural context and recognise that historically entrenched power relations determine which epistemological traditions are foregrounded in the literature; a point we revisit later in this chapter. The feminist roots of care scholarship in western contexts that are drawn on in this book emerged from work in a specific time and context that was challenging the male-centric gaze that underpinned dominant psychological, sociological, educational, and development theories at the time, all of which had largely ignored care. As Carol Gilligan (1982) argued, psychological theories of moral development—which had been previously based on the work of Freud, Piaget, and Kohlberg—were entirely based upon assumptions that the male experience was both dominant and ‘normal’, with women’s moral development conceptualised as deficient because they did/could not conform to male norms and were therefore subservient to men. Gilligan (1982) wrote, Thus, women not only define themselves in a context of human relationship but also judge themselves in terms of their ability to care. Women’s place in man’s life cycle has been that of nurturer, caretaker, and helpmate, the weaver of those networks of relationships on which she in turn relies. But while women have thus taken care of men, men have, in their theories of psychological development, as in their economic arrangements, tended to assume or devalue that care. (p. 17)

The development of concepts of care is representative of feminist resistance of essentialist and determinist ideas about how gender informs (moral) development, although it is important to note that such ideas have been superseded by the development of sets of much more nuanced and negotiated positions, identities, and subjectivities. Noddings’ (1984) work on caring and moral education was revolutionary when it was published, following Carol Gilligan’s ground-breaking feminist psychological account of care in women’s moral development. In her 1984 book, Noddings contributed an account of caring and moral education that pushed against dominant (masculine, patriarchal) virtue ethics—based on

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rules, rational thought, and reason—and foregrounded the caring imperatives of receptivity, relatedness, and responsiveness. Like Gilligan, Noddings (1984) called for a recalibration of understanding that resisted the prominence (exclusivity) of the male gaze when considering issues of morality and ethics. Shifting from virtue ethics to relational ethics was highly significant because of its focus on dialoguing with others to find out what they perceive as their care needs. Instead of paternalistic assumptions about what others need, Noddings focused her discussion of care on ‘how to meet the other morally’ (p. 4), recognising that good caring cannot be the imposition of what others consider necessary through the abstraction of ethics to objective and hypothetical scenarios. Similarly, Fisher and Tronto (1990) argued for a sisterhood-as-equality view of caring, based on an assumption of mutual obligation and recognition ‘that anyone may need care at any time’ (p. 54). Care features centrally in the challenging of the dominance of the male lens in discussions of morality, particularly regarding the way that society and institutions have been structured by the division of public and private spheres. The assumed responsibility of women to give care is strongly connected to the traditional division of men and women between the private and public spheres, with a particular group of men still holding most power in the public domain—as evidenced by the number of males (usually white, middle class, privately educated) in positions of leadership, while women and others remain ascribed primary responsibility for the home. The uneven distribution of caring responsibilities is intersectional, with people who occupy marginal subject positions in society—drawn along classed, racialised, ableist, and gender identity lines—likely to be in subordinated and largely invisible care jobs that service the more ‘privileged’ (Tronto, 1993, 2013). The impacts of COVID have certainly highlighted the vital importance of these care jobs in society, and yet at the time of writing this public recognition has not translated into greater socioeconomic value for the care and the workers. Alsop et al. (2008) definition foregrounds the intersecting factors of care: … [care is] a physical and emotional practice, involving a moral orientation which, though not rooted in essentialist gender differences, is located within gendered (and racialised) normative frameworks around obligations and responsibilities, particularly in relation to the family. Moreover, care

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involves costs that are similarly multidimensional, encompassing financial, temporal, emotional, and identity elements. (p. 625)

The case of education offers a pertinent example of how the public and private can blur and how gender and care play significant roles. Teaching has long been considered a caring profession (Acker, 1995; Chatelier & Rudolph, 2018; Lolich & Lynch, 2017; Noddings, 1984), but is structured in ways that are gendered and unevenly distributed. As Mariskind (2014) observes, this is largely due to a Cartesian dualistic split between mind and embodied/affective notions of what counts as care: …caring about, pedagogical (or academic) care, instrumental care, and challenge are seen as masculine and involving the mind, while caring for, pastoral care, relational care, and support are considered feminine and associated with the body and emotions. (p. 316)

Maternal connotations of care in teaching have deep roots. In Acker’s (1995) ethnographic study of a Canadian primary school, Acker observed how the model of teaching in primary (one teacher per class) mimics ‘mother-like intense attachments and dedication… in their kitchenlike classrooms’ (p. 23); however, Acker problematises these maternal connotations, arguing that mothering discourses disguise the fact that classrooms are workplaces. Like critiques of Noddings’ (1984) conceptualisation of a relational ethic of caring based on home relations, the imposing of familial dynamics on contexts that require more interpersonal distance does a disservice to everyone involved—it places an unconscionable care burden on some, excuses others from the practice of care, and creates gaps that people, children, and adults, can fall through. While working with maternal ‘caring scripts’ creates the possibilities for cultural assemblages of support, the blurring of the public and private domains of home and teaching as work, thereby creates the conditions for caring to be seen as ‘women’s work’ (expected, unvalued), particularly with/for people who sit outside the dominant policy subject (white, middle-class), and felt as a burden (Acker, 1995; Restler, 2019; see Chapters 4 and 5). As Acker (1995) warns, these assumptions create dangerous expectations that rely on feelings (of guilt, of joy, of passion for the craft, of duty): Teachers’ caring activities, then, have from one perspective been seen as derived from their teacher identities; from another, as part of ’women’s

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ways’; and from a third, as a consequence of the social expectations that women’s caring work should blur the distinction between labour and love. (p. 24)

The assumptions of teaching as caring are not benign; such beliefs not only rest on a problematic blurring of the public and private, of the professional and the familial, they also actively work to subordinate women in education. Care is thus complex and intersects with issues of gendered (and racialised and classed, although these are less prevalent in the literature) inequalities. The polysemy of care creates a significant challenge to crafting a definition that can operate as a departure point for considering context-specific care, such as the focus of this book—care in higher education. In what follows, we examine the significance of care ethics to developing theoretical understandings of care, particularly in terms of relationships to social justice. Following this, we explore varied and varying uptakes of the notion, discourse, and practices of care, using an ecological frame to examine care at the micro/individual, meso/ institutional, macro/ideological, and chrono/temporal levels.

A Relational Ethics of Care If care is taken to be an ongoing social process, and therefore not something that can be granted or withheld (Tronto, 2013), it stands to reason that care is deeply relational, even if the care is for oneself. The fundamental need for relating and connecting suggests care emanates from ‘the deeply social character of our existence and the ways that caring relations of dependency, frailty, grief and love all shape the ways we reason and act in the world’ (Lawson, 2009, p. 210). At its essence, Virginia Held (2005) argues that an ethics of care is centred around ‘the compelling moral salience of attending to and meeting the needs of the particular others for whom we take responsibility’ (p. 2). Our very raison d’être, therefore, is grounded in the ways that we both relate and maintain those relations through acts, dispositions, and shared understandings of care, in full recognition that we are all always involved in care relations (Held, 2005; Lawson, 2009; Noddings, 1984; Tronto, 1993, 2013). As Noddings (1984) writes:

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It is the recognition of and longing for that relatedness that form the foundation of our ethic; and the joy that accompanies fulfilment of our caring enhances our commitment to the ethical ideal that sustains us as one-caring. (p. 6)

For Noddings (1984), an ethic of caring is possible when related to an ethical idea; an ethic of caring ‘strives to maintain the caring attitude’ (p. 105). Our relatedness is key to the sustenance of an ethics of care and as such, the relational nature of humanity is foregrounded, with care not viewed as altruistic, but as beginning with non-selfish motivations to sustain the self and others. From an African perspective, our essential inter-relatedness is captured under the notion of ubuntu, known by various terms in different languages, which is a key driver for both ethics of care and morality (for example, Etieyibo, 2017; Waghid, 2019). According to this concept, within complex interrelated care chains (responsibilities, duties, intentions, desires to care within the institutions of relationships; see Stone, 2019), maintenance of relationships and selves is fundamental. However, a multidirectional view of maintenance is necessary. While Noddings (1984) argues that in particular the one-caring must be maintained, ‘for [they are] the immediate source of caring… everything depends on the strength and beauty of her ideal’ (p. 105), this perpetuates the unidirectionality critiqued by Hoagland (1990). It is thus important to highlight that the one-caring must also self-nurture and be cared for to sustain their energy and will to care. Care Ethics and (Social) Justice The call for justice and transformation is at the heart of care scholarship and practice (Wood et al., 2020). There is debate over whether ethics of care and ethics of justice, or ethics of affiliation and ethics of autonomy (Rumsey, 1997), can co-exist (Held, 2005); as scholars have articulated, this tension emerges from the universalist/individualist/masculine focus of justice on fairness and rights, while a collective/feminist ethics of care focuses on the particularities of relationships, responsibilities, and needs (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984; Rumsey, 1997; Sander-Staudt, 2006; Slote, 2001). Held (2005) describes this incompatibility as encapsulated in the idea that ‘justice protects equality and freedom [whereas] care fosters social bonds and cooperation’ (p. 8). Similarly, Card (1990) holds

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that justice and care operate at different levels, with care the more basic of the two principles: In one sense caring is more basic to human life than justice: we can survive without justice more easily than without caring. However, this is part of the human tragedy because, in another sense, justice is also basic: life can be worth living despite the absence of caring from most people in the world, but in a densely populated high-tech world, life is not apt to be worth living without justice from a great many people, including many whom we will never know. (p. 107)

For Joan Tronto (1993), conceptualisations of care must be embedded within a theory of justice because of the political implications that care brings. There is also debate about whether care ethics can exist as an entity, given its focus on situational cases, rather than the more objective focus of virtue ethics (Noddings, 1984). In contradiction to Noddings’ position, scholars have argued that a more productive approach is to embed care ethics within virtue ethics by conceptualising care as an important moral virtue (for example, Slote, 2001). However, Sander-Staudt’s (2006) metaethical argument about care foregrounds how the relationship between care and virtue ethic frameworks can be better understood as ‘an open marriage, rather than an exclusive partnership’ (p. 37) to avoid an assimilationist view that would conceal the nuance that care and feminist ethics offer. In her 2005 book, Virginia Held examines how care and justice can intersect, foregrounding the essential place of care in underpinning other virtues, such as justice, respect, fidelity, compassion, honesty, integrity, and courage: Care is probably the most deeply fundamental value. There can be care without justice: There has historically been little justice in the family, but care and life have gone on without it. There can be no justice without care, however, for without care no child would survive and there would be no persons to respect. (p. 10)

If the idea that care is the moral foundation stone of virtue ethics, and that an ethics of care is fundamentally relational (between selves, and self and others), it therefore follows that there is a strong relationship between care and social/relational justice, and care and rights. Tronto (2013) asserts that we have three rights to care:

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(1) the right to receive care. (2) the right to care; and (3) the right to participate in public process to determine how society enacts/protects the first two rights. However, in capitalist systems, the right to access care is deeply uneven in its position, value, visibility, and enactments, and subject to issues of quality and recognition of needs. Tronto (2013) refers to Nancy Fraser’s (1995) thesis on three key dimensions of social justice: redistribution, representation, and recognition, with the notion of recognition particularly useful for assessing needs. Fraser (1989) outlines an argument for a focus on discourse of needs, or a ‘politics of needs interpretation’, to disrupt hegemonic thinking about the provision of actual needs, or the ‘distribution of satisfactions’ (p. 202). By questioning needs claims, which Fraser argues ‘tend to be nested, connected to one another in ramified chains of “in-order-to” relations’ (p. 293), it is possible to examine the political, epistemological, and moral interests at play in determining who needs what. Normative approaches to determining needs are often universalist as opposed to particularist, based on masculine virtues rather than feminine caring relations. Ultimately, the endemic unevenness that creates structural marginalisation is a core issue for justice, fairness, and kindness when some get to decide what care is given to others, often without consultation or due consideration of specificities or context-dependent factors (Kittay, 2002; Tronto, 1993, 2013). This societal inequity is described by Fraser (1989) as ‘stratified, differentiated into social groups with unequal status, power, and access to resources, and traversed by pervasive axes of inequality along lines of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and age’ (p. 296). The depoliticising of social needs, as opposed to the primacy of economic needs, is political and gendered, resulting in the truncation of ‘in-order-to relations’, and what care scholars might call caring relations, for the interpretation of people’s needs. Ultimately Fraser’s analysis of the prioritisation of economic needs over social needs (care) highlights how this serves to divorce the domestic (traditionally feminine) from the economic and the political (traditionally masculine) domains, and thus furthers the marginalisation of care to ‘women’s work’, as per the feminist critique of Gilligan, Noddings, and Tronto. Examining how needs are determined and met illuminates the complexity of care, and how responding to needs can be a mode of

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domination and the exertion of power. The politics of needs interpretation therefore exposes the (deliberate) creation and/or perpetuation of social injustices and inequities that both impact on/are impacted by caring. As Tronto (2013) reminds us, the intricate care chains that we are all involved in make us all complicit in the giving and receiving of macro (societal, political) care, if we take a democratic view of care, meaning that we all bear some responsibility because of the complexity and consequences of our actions; albeit at different levels. Tronto’s Five Moral Elements of a Political Ethics of Care For Tronto, an ethics of care is essentially a political idea, underpinned by an understanding of the centrality of relations but foregrounding responsibility as extending beyond kin-like relations and outwards to the ‘other’. Responsibility as a political ideal retains the plurality and relational characteristics that she ascribes to care but pulls in the power domain and questions the hegemonic/masculine ideas about responsibility that frame modern society. In order to conceive a caring democracy, Tronto argues that all citizens must eschew the idea that others know better of their caring needs and wants and take responsibility for understanding their own needs ‘within a wider framework of responsibility’ (p. 120). Current conceptions of responsibility permit the uneven distribution of care through concealment of who gets a ‘caring pass’ through the ‘diffuse assignment of responsibility’ (p. 51). For Tronto, a democratic ethic of care would view all citizens as part of collective chains and networks of caring, thus invalidating the ‘privileged irresponsibility’ that certain constellations of gender, race, class, able-bodiment, and language background can buy. Such a reconstitution of the position of care in society and politics could be held as radical, but as the impacts of COVID have clearly illustrated, Tronto’s arguments are more relevant than ever. According to Tronto (1993, 2013), there are five moral elements of political ethics of care: . . . . .

Attentiveness (caring about ) Responsibility (caring for) Competence (caregiving ) Responsiveness (care-receiving ) Trust and solidarity (caring with)

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As with any complex conceptualisation of a deeply contested human phenomenon, Tronto’s elements are nested and intersecting, as opposed to operating in isolation. The ideas behind the element of attentiveness are related to recognition: of unmet needs, of preferences, of interests. As Tronto (1993) described, ‘in order to recognise that others have needs that are not being met, one needs to be in a position to recognise others’ (p. 131). Attentiveness also requires empathy, so that one can see the world from the perspective of the one in need (Swartz et al., 2018). Responsibility offers a response to this recognition of needs, with an intention to take on the burden of responding, with the one-caring doing so beyond obligation. The notion of competence asks technical, moral, and political questions of how well care can be given, while responsiveness refers to evaluation and communication, particularly in terms of opening space to offer feedback/listening to and adjusting care based on that feedback. Tronto’s conception of an ethics of care requires individuals to reflexively consider their individual circumstances and relative privilege and has strong connections with Foucault’s (1986) notion of ‘care of the self’. Foucault’s writing on ethics developed over the course of his career, starting with a reading through the lens of the other but transferring to a greater focus on the self in his later writings. Although this ‘inward turn’ has been critiqued for its self-indulgence (Boer, 2014), the repositioning of the locus of ethical thinking away from the ‘other’ to the self, with ‘knowing thyself’ achieved through ongoing introspective and reflexive practice, was a significant contribution to thinking both about how this then permits care for others, and to the role and function of power as a tool of compliance and contestation (Bondy, 2016). Rogers (2012) extended this self-awareness to include an account of the self through questioning the limitations of one’s own knowledge, shifting the edict to ‘know thyself: I know that I know nothing’. Of particular significance is the focus on relationship and intersubjective engagement as integral to care of the self. This is foregrounded in Bondy’s (2016) reading of how Foucault’s thinking on care for the self relates to English-only education in the US, as she argues how engaging together in mentorship relations can constitute resistance against hegemonic, normalising discourses, as ‘there is a reciprocal exchange of recognizing how our thoughts and actions contribute to our own and others’ normalization and domination’ (p. 776). The role of mentoring foregrounds how resistance, as an

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instantiation of the radical potential of care of the self, requires guidance and mentorship; it cannot be taken as a given. Tronto’s final element—that of solidarity and trust (caring with)—an addition to the previous four which she first introduced in her 1993 book—is perhaps the most significant for the argument put forward in this book. Solidarity means taking collective responsibility; foregrounding the collective nature of care by rethinking citizens as both receivers and givers of care and requiring us to think seriously about the nature of caring needs in society. This focus on collectivising is itself radical when set against the dominance of neoliberal, individualising discourses, policies, and practices that have permeated many, if not all, of our public institutions, including higher education. Collective action, as an enactment of an ethics of care/care for the self, requires truth-telling, or ‘parrhesia’ in Foucault’s terms, for speaking up and out, particularly on behalf of marginalised colleagues or citizens. Foucault’s (1983/2001) notion of parrhesia (or ‘fearless speech’) examines understandings of truth in the nexus of power/knowledge/ethics and the creation of subjectivity through care of the self, ‘creating a new possibility, a self that can question ruthlessly and without fear of politics’ (Freund, 2009, p. 524). Parrhesia, then, is transformative in its commitment to frankness, truth, critique, and duty, all of which constitute a danger to the speaker: In parrhesia, the speaker uses [their] freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy. (Foucault, 1983/2001, pp. 19–20)

The risk inherent in speaking out is in the political space of speaking truth to power, particularly when speaking from or for a marginal position. This risk foregrounds the radical nature of truth-telling, as Maxwell (2019) argues, ‘truth-telling that finds vindication and empowerment not in the dominant group which refuses to hear it, but in a vulnerable, mutually dependent public of outsiders’ (p. 39). As an act of risky solidarity, speaking out is constitutive of Tronto’s notion of ‘caring with’, and this theme will be explored in more detail in Chapter 7. The second condition of caring with is the development of trust. As Held (2005) outlines, the significance of trust for ‘good care’ cannot be overestimated:

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Trust is fragile and can be shattered in a single event; to rebuild it may take long stretches of time and many expressions of care, or the rebuilding may be impossible. Relations of trust are among the most important of personal and social assets. To develop well and flourish, children need to trust those who care for them, and the providers of such care need to trust the fellow members of their communities that the trust of their children will not be misplaced. … To work well, societies need to cultivate trust between citizens and between citizens and governments; to achieve whatever improvements of which societies are capable, the cooperation that trust makes possible is needed. Care is not the same thing as trust, but caring relations should be characterized by trust, and caring and trust sustain each other. (p. 42)

The centrality of trust in caring with is perhaps made most visible when it is absent. The ideologies that underpin most governments’ thinking on public policy and practice have critically endangered the possibilities for care in most public and private institutions. The insidious impacts of neoliberalism have eroded community responsibilities for care through the push to individual responsibility (thus diminishing the role of the state in people’s lives); through the belief that the market can best respond to needs and organise public services (such as education, healthcare, social welfare); and through a commitment to decreasing public resources to increase competition, self-investment, self-entrepreneurship (captured under human capital thinking; see Chapter 4 for more discussion of this). The bureaucratisation of public institutions, such as higher education, is not new; however, the impacts of neoliberal economics have intensified the erosion of key aspects of institutional life. Most significant of these injuries are the precaritisation of the workforce through casualisation and the proliferation of zero-hour contracts; the endangering of networks through outsourcing and tendering, resulting in insecurity and loss of key staff; a commitment to short-term thinking, relating strongly to the political cycles; and a lack of belief in the electorate to tolerate complexity and difficult decisions.1 As Fisher and Tronto (1990) lamented over thirty years ago, Bureaucracy, by its nature, distorts and fragments the caring process through its division of labour, through the hierarchy of authority and power, and through its need to reduce problems to standard form. Caring 1 These issues will be discussed further in Chapter 4.

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is considered just and equal in the bureaucratic context when the bureaucracy fulfills its rational functions [all of which means that] trust is an ephemeral quality. (p. 50)

In the higher education context, the high levels of insecurity and precarity—in Australia, prior to COVID, 70% of undergraduate teaching was, on average, conducted by casual academics2 —have impacted the capacity for trust to develop between the sector, institutions, and individuals. Moreover, the failure of many governments to support the higher education sector in the immediate aftermath of COVID has contributed to this destabilisation of trust in institutions that are ‘supposed’ to care for us. Rather than ‘ephemeral’,—built as it should be on shared reliability, respect, and responsibilities—has become almost impossible in higher education. In what follows, we now turn to exploring care as various and interconnecting: at the micro (individual), the meso (institutional), the macro (ideological/political), and the chronological (temporal) levels.

Micro: Caring at the Individual-to-Individual Level The micro-level focus on caring relations, particularly in literature on educational care, has primarily focused on individual interactions. The centrality of relationships (between self and others; between various selves) is a shared theme in the conceptualisations of care (Fisher & Tronto, 1990; Gilligan, 1982; Held, 2005; Noddings, 1984; Tronto, 1993), and is advanced as a defining feminist departure from the dominance of (masculine) virtue ethics, which was based on abstractions and generalisations, mostly if not all of which were developed through an exclusively male lens. Noddings (1984) attested that relation is ‘ontologically basic’ (p. 3), with the focus on the inherent relationality of care part of the development of a suite of perspectives (ethics, morality, view of self and world, ideologies) which are created in relation to the ‘other’.

2 Since COVID this percentage has massively dropped due to what Daly (2020) calls the “casual pandemic”, with universities unwilling or unable to justify the costs of employing casual staff.

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Our ontological relationality is a condition of being. Heidegger’s account of the meaning of being suggests that our reality, or our being-inthe world, requires us to understand our embeddedness in and openness to the world, which is inextricably connected to care. Hamington (2015) extends this ontology, noting that we are caring corporeal beings, where ‘care is described as a performance of the body/self, and how such performances of the body can spark understanding across constructed intersectional divides’ (p. 81). Such ontological accounts foreground our constant being/becoming through presence or existence in the world and the construction of being through co-presence with other beings, which was described by Heidegger (1927/2011) as ‘the existential totality’ of being in the world (p. 237); a primordial condition that underpins being. As Horrigan-Kelly et al. (2016) articulate, ‘Heidegger’s care structure exposes what is of most consequence or importance to the human being. It exposes what the human being is concerned with or cares about’ (p. 3). Care, therefore, is an essential component of our engagement as (human) beings in the world with other beings, constructed/ing through our temporal existence and embeddedness in the world. The work of Nel Noddings is foundational in terms of foregrounding the relational nature of care. Noddings (1984) explored and developed a relational ethics of care through asking what it means to care (one-caring) and to receive care (cared-for). Her thesis that care is ‘rooted in receptivity, relatedness and responsiveness’ (p. 2) highlights the reciprocity at the heart of care; as she argues ‘both parties contribute to the relation; my caring must be somehow completed in the other if the relationship is to be described as caring’ (p. 4). The relational component is fundamental for initiating, sustaining and, when necessary, ending caring. For Noddings, while care occurs in multiple domains (and across scales, timescapes, and contexts), the basic components of care remain consistent: care requires openness and receptiveness to others, followed by engrossment, motivational displacement, and reciprocity. Engrossment is the concentrated attentiveness to, and listening, looking and ‘feeling with’ others that permits us to displace our own motives for those of an/others. Engrossment is perhaps not natural and not always evident; rather, as Diller (1998) writes, we are more likely to note when people are not being attentive (‘you’re not paying attention to me!’), thus suggesting that engrossment in fact ‘demands a serious effort and discipline’ (p. 328). Noddings (1984) recognises how engrossment can be compromised by multiple demands for care, with our attention divided,

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and the demands of several ‘cared-fors’ resulting in guilt and conflict, leaving us ‘overburdened and our caring turns into “cares and burdens”’ (p. 18). Similarly, there are challenges inherent in the asymmetry in reciprocity; co-dependence in the relationship between one-caring and cared-for relies on nurturing ethical ideals and the ethical self, or ‘an active relation between my actual self and a vision of my ideal self as one-caring and cared-for’ (Noddings, 1984, p. 49). If the caring given is not recognised by the one receiving, the caring contract breaks down and resentment can build. Such risks are inherent when teaching in diverse and complex contexts. The conditions for engrossment are sustained through chains of concentric caring circles, which create the conditions of readiness for caring. Such circles, as described by Noddings (1984) operate over three intensities, distances, and scales, the first two of which are proximal. The inner (smallest) circle is the most intimate circle, where engrossment is strongest, most often fuelled by the bonds of (familial) love and the greatest possibility of reciprocity. The second circle is one of personal regard, concerned with care for those who exist in our personal sphere but with whom we do not share intimate bonds. The third, largest circle relates to care for those not yet encountered, but who are likely to be linked to those we already care for (Noddings’ example is that of a future in-law, whose connection to an intimate opens the readiness to care). According to Noddings (1984), the lack of relative proximity lessens the obligation to care for distant others, as the probability of the care being reciprocated and completed is less likely. The relational character of care at the micro level is therefore wellestablished in Noddings’ early work. However, who constitutes the ‘other’ is a key point of debate in care scholarship. Indeed, Noddings (1984) has been roundly critiqued for her argument that an ethics of care must recognise that most intimate situations of caring are based on a model of natural care (based on mothering and close, familial bonds) rather than moral arguments relating to strangers (for example, see Card, 1990; Fisher & Tronto, 1990; Hoagland, 1990). Noddings’ (1984) distinction between caring for (the personal/private domain, intimates) and caring about (public domain, strangers3 /people not yet encountered) suggests a hierarchical view of caring—if ethical caring is based on the

3 Noddings’ original example of starving children in Africa has been roundly critiqued.

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notion of natural care, which Sowerby (1993) critiques as essentialist, it risks erasure of the moral need to care for strangers. For Card (1990), this ‘regarding as ethically insignificant our relationships with people remote from ourselves is a constituent of racism and xenophobia’ (p. 102), thus highlighting the strong connections between an ethics of caring and ethics of justice, which Card argues Noddings refutes. While Noddings’ (1984) argument was based on the idea that we cannot care for everyone in the world because we have finite capacities, she acknowledged the critique levelled against her treatment of the ‘non-intimate’ person in her later work (Noddings, 1990). In her response to the critique of scholars such as Card, Noddings argued that a shift from conceiving ‘love’ to ‘trust’ in the affective links of personal and formal chains of caring can help to develop a notion of caring chains that can extend to the stranger via ‘group chains’ and trusted institutions to deliver our care. A further critique of Noddings’ work is the notion that caring for the ethical self ‘can emerge only from a caring for others’, with sense of the physical self (knowing one’s own feelings) preceding care for others [empathy] (1984, p. 14). As Hoagland (1990) argues, this idea that the ethical self can only emerge from caring is problematic, limiting the opportunities for an ethical separation and relation of oneself, which Hoagland argues is vital for recognising difference. As others have also argued, Noddings’ (1984) early work was colour-blind and ignored community/cultural influences on care (Trout, 2018); the premise of Noddings’ work thus inhibits the kind of critiques of structures and ideologies that permit the denial of difference and therefore lead to insidious forms of discrimination. While the centring of Noddings’ discussion of caring on the motherchild dyadic relationship is understandable as a shared and (ideally) universal experience, the dynamics and directionality of the caring relationship have been subject to robust critique. Fisher and Tronto (1990) argue that such a definition of care has an ‘excessive focus on the motivation for caring’ (p.37). Similarly, for Hoagland (1990), the unidirectionality of engrossment (from the one-caring and directed to the one-cared, a la parent to child), reinforces the power of oppressive institutions to permit the conditions for enablement of exploitation of the one-caring by the one-cared for. The idea of engrossment, and its attendant displacement of motivation, are argued to be a condition of enslavement (Hoagland, 1990), and place an unfair and disproportionate burden on the one-caring, especially when in professional contexts such

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as teaching (Lewis & Pearce, 2022). The uneven dependency model on which Noddings based her notion of naturalistic care is thus argued to ‘obscure its profoundly social and frequently problematic character’ (Fisher & Tronto, 1990, p. 29), which can then arguably be used to both permit and justify the underpayment/undervaluing of care in society (Kittay, 2002; Tronto, 2013). Caring as Emotional Labour The emotional costs and rewards of caring are well-recognised in the scholarly literature. Of salience to care in the context of higher education is the notion of emotional labour, following Arlie Hochschild’s (2012) conceptualisation of the commercialisation of feelings in particular service industries. Similarly emerging at a time of foundational feminist thinking and writing (originally published in 1983, sandwiched between Carol Gilligan’s and Nel Noddings’ books), Hochschild shone a light on the ways that some professions and roles depend on the commercialisation of a worker’s feelings, through what she called ‘the managed heart’. In her study of American airline attendants, Hochschild observed how the airline harnessed, standardised, and operationalised the feelings of their frontline workers. Hochschild termed this as ‘emotional labour’, ‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display; emotional labour is sold for a wage and therefore as exchange value’ (2012, p. 7). This management is mandatory, often as a condition of working in jobs which have a public-facing service component which means that emotions ‘fall under the sway of large organisations, social engineering and the profit motive’ (ibid., 19). These workers—or the ‘emotional proletariat’ according to Macdonald and Sirianni (1996)— must sell their ‘best face’, conceal the messiness of human emotions, and relinquish their right to express authentic feelings so as to protect the reputation of the employer. This requires significant energy and attention, with workers needing to ‘transmute’ their private emotions into public ones as part of their contracted transactions. There is a clear and compelling case to be made for ‘frontline’ higher education work—whether academic or professional, ongoing, or casual, teaching or support—to also be considered emotional labour (Koster, 2011; Lynch, 2010; Meanwell & Kleiner, 2014; Rickett & Morris, 2020). There is a clear link between Hochschild’s notion of emotional labour and the idea of caring/care work, with both concerned with the bringing

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of self to an activity, and both having concerns with the classed, gendered, and racialised emotional work undertaken by people in service/caring roles. As a component of paid caring, emotional labour carries significant risks to the carer. Being able to transmute feelings requires workers to go beyond selling a smile; it involves the worker being able to bracket off a part of themselves that remains theirs, unmanaged by the organisation they work for. This is often tacitly expected (although the airline workers in Hochschild’s study were explicitly trained to navigate the emotional components of their roles, meaning that these feeling rules were fixed and standardised in training manuals), making it difficult to know how much to give and how much to retain. When displays of emotion are sold to people we do not know, or know well and cannot control, we may find ourselves in a state of estrangement from what our face shows and what our ‘true’ feelings are. If we are unable to skilfully mark a boundary between public display and private feelings, which hold different sets of feeling rules, care work/emotional labour can result in burnout (if we care/give too much of ourselves) or estrangement (if we detach too much from our role to protect ourselves). These challenges in the specific context of higher education will be considered further in Part II. Self-Care The most micro form of care is care-for-self, which is fundamental to the practice and ethic of care. For Noddings (1984), the reciprocity in caring for others necessarily involves and feeds us, arguing that when we care/ are cared-for, we care for ourselves. Similarly, Nilsson et al. (2015) argue that the relationality of care needs to include ourselves, ‘caring means having the courage to listen to one’s own needs’ (p. 57), which requires both courage and encouragement. In Tronto’s (2013) imagining of a caring democracy, she argues that a central component of being inclusive requires a recasting of ourselves as potentially vulnerable and embroiled in overlapping care relations, including self-care. Definitions of self-care are as nebulous as definitions of care, but we can adapt Fisher and Tronto’s (1990) simple definition of care to the self: the work I do to maintain, continue, and repair myself, although this notion of self cannot be cleaved from the broader networks in which we live (Jones & Whittle, 2021). And while Lemon’s (2022) point that self-care can be ‘an icky word’ (p. 1), with connotations of selfish, self-interested, navel-gazing behaviours is

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valid, the high potential for burnout and despondency in higher education (Aloka, 2022; Converso et al., 2019; Fetherston et al., 2021), means self-care is necessary and no longer optional. Including a focus on self as part of care relations at the micro level is clearly imperative; without explicitly centring oneself in caring, only partial care can ever be offered. As such, caring at the micro level is concerned primarily with the relations and dynamics between individuals, accounting for sociocultural dynamics that are pertinent to the context. If based primarily on the familial model of care (particularly the maternal model), the nuances of more complex and messy relations get lost and deficit or simplistic notions prevail.

Macro: Caring at the Political, Global, and Ideological Levels At the macro/political level, Joan Tronto (1993, 2010, 2013) has made a compelling argument for rethinking democracy through a more carecentred lens, arguing that care is currently a peripheral rather than a central concern to democratic institutions and decision-makers who are predominantly interested in economic issues. The power of economics to dictate policy and political decisions has been robustly illustrated in governmental responses to the enduring consequences and risks of the pandemic (not to mention, climate change). Covid thus provides a stark and dangerous context against which to remind ourselves of Tronto’s (2013) angry questioning of the primacy of economics over all other imperatives: Why has so much in human life and in politics turned into discussions about selfishness, greed and profit? Why has the language of economics seemingly come to replace all other forms of political language? (p. xi)

Tronto’s account of how care is conceptualised and operationalised in governing exposes how when caring is based on assumptions of independence, autonomy, and agentic decision-making, it perpetuates/is perpetuated by societal inequalities, which play out along gendered, classed, and racialised lines. Such assumptions deny the shared experience of all being entangled in caring circles—either/and as cared-for and one-caring—and create the conditions for the marginalisation of care through the development of ‘care passes’ that are emblematic of ‘privileged irresponsibility’,

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which Tronto defines as the opportunity to ignore certain forms of hardship and needed care (see Chapter 6). As such, Tronto (1993) has argued that ‘[t]o call attention to care is to raise questions about the adequacy of care in our society… Such an inquiry will lead to a profound rethinking of moral and political life’ (p. 111), arguing that caring should be understood as ‘democratic training’ (p. 167). For Tronto, similar to Noddings, care should be considered a critical standard by which to ‘measure how well that society is able to adhere to other virtues as well’ (1993, p. 154). The integrity of care is a significant concern; as Tronto (1993) reminds us, not all care is good care. To examine its integrity, we are prompted by the plurality and variability of care to dig into the ontological and epistemological assumptions that underpin our ideas of care. Normative, taken-for-granted thinking about care conceals its cultural biases, gendered inequities, and class-based unevenness. Engster (2005) makes the point that definitions of caring often originate from western, privileged conceptions of what constitutes a ‘good life’; therefore, we must be cautious of how uptake of general definitions can negate the experiences of people caring from marginal/non-dominant positions. As such, a holistic account of care is also a useful contribution to a working definition, because as Bozalek et al. (2014) note, …good care is dependent both upon the integration of all of the elements as a whole and the quality of each one of the elements themselves. Care involves more than good intentions. (p. 456)

Holistic views are, however, out of favour in contemporary societies that are governed according to western (as opposed to Indigenous) and liberal (as opposed to collectivist) hegemonic norms and ideals, where dichotomies (for example, individual—community, public—private, regulation—freedom) prevail. Such ‘abyssal thinking’ (Santos, 2007) constitutes epistemological violence through the subordination of some forms of knowledge and understandings, and ontological violence in its denial of the whole through separation into discrete parts. Santos (2007) argues that resisting abyssal thinking requires a radical shift in approach, one that is collective and involves engaged citizenry, to develop an ecology

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of diverse knowledges4 through ‘solidary participation in the construction of a personal and collective future’ (p. 79). With Santos’ expanded ecology of knowledge, including knowledge practices and interventions/ contextualised and localised hierarchy of what counts as knowledge, there is clearly a space for caring-as-knowledge/knowledge-as-caring (see Chapter 3 for discussion in the context of higher education). According to Tronto’s macro view, care is both moral and political, involving three key understandings: . Firstly, that humans are interdependent, and this is not a threat to autonomy. . Secondly, the economic language of ‘interests’ works to further the neoliberal project (see Chapter 4) and should be shifted to a focus on ‘needs’. . Thirdly, politically, the focus needs to move away from moral detachment to a focus on moral engagement as a desirable social and civic disposition. The uptake of these three shifts in thinking, feeling, and doing in political and institutional life could be radical; as Tronto (1993) speculates, ‘The world will look different if we move care from its current peripheral location to a place near the centre of human life’ (p. 101). For both Tronto (1998) and Noddings (2001), a focus on care helps to illuminate the problematic separation of public and private spheres; if care is understood only as an individual/private matter, it ignores the institutional/public context of caring. A more fluid and hybrid understanding of how care flows between public and private domains, and influences, facilitates, stymies, and informs activities as a result, would help to resist the endemic marginalisation of care. Such understandings require a much deeper and more nuanced engagement with the scholarship on care than contemporary democracies—driven as they are by the neoliberal economic imperatives that underpin expansive/extractive capitalism and the potency of arguments about individualism, entitlement, and aspirations for ‘the good life’—are prepared to invest. As Tronto (1993) argues,

4 However, Santos makes the point that an ecology of knowledges would also necessarily create an ecology of ignorances.

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[t]o treat care as shabby and unimportant helps to maintain the positions of the powerful vis-à-vis those who do care for them… The mechanisms of this dismissal are subtle, and they are of course filtered through existing structures of sexism and racism. (p. 124)

The marginalisation of care is inescapably political, and therefore deliberate. The political and contested nature of care is underpinned by the (mis)use of power to determine not only needs and responses, but also who should do the care. The question of what ‘counts’ as care, and who gets to decide is determined by the power dynamics at play; Tronto’s (2013) work exposes how societal ‘norms’ and political mechanisms and justifications allow some to ‘bear the burdens (and joys) of care and allow others to escape them’ (pp. 32–33), with some people given ‘passes’ on the basis of protection, production, taking-care-of-my-own, bootstrap, and charity. The protection pass operates as a largely patriarchal avoidance of responsibility on the basis that the avoider is working in a protective capacity, at the societal level such as working in the police service, or in the domestic sphere with the patriarchal assumption that men need to protect the vulnerable (women and children) and should therefore be exempt from providing other kinds of care, such as looking after children. The production pass refers to the work that goes into gathering resources (earning a salary, producing food), whereas the caring-for-my-own pass excuses engaging with the distant other (the one not yet encountered) because of the need to attend to the proximal others. The bootstrap pass permits avoidance on the neoliberal imperative to focus on one’s personal responsibility, while the charity pass permits avoidance based on ‘sufficient’ giving through charitable organisations (see Chapter 6 for further discussion of care passes). The dominant ideology of neoliberalism and the fervent belief in the regulating power of the market further contributes to the purchasing of ‘care passes’ and perpetuates global labour and resources disparities. The notion of care chains was developed by Hochschild (2012) to describe how inequitable global labour chains—specifically the relationship between the global north and south regarding labour mobility— contribute to the transferral of responsibility and care work from wealthy to poverty-stricken countries and cohorts. This is exemplified by Hochschild with reference to less wealthy people (largely women) from the global south leaving their families behind to move to richer countries to care for the children/needs of wealthy families. These care chains

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expose the ‘privileged irresponsibility’, to use Tronto’s term, of wealthier nations/people, who can afford to buy care by taking advantage of global disparities in wealth distribution. The acceptance that some people in powerful positions can use such ‘care passes’ to buy care and avoid their caring responsibilities on the basis of their privilege (seemingly because of their role in the economy, but also because of their gender, race, class, language backgrounds, resources) means acceptance that some forms of care should be undertaken by the less-privileged, which in turn leaves these carers with less capacity to participate in democratic citizenry. These hegemonic dynamics result in what Tronto (1993, 2013) calls ‘privileged irresponsibility’, whereby the deeply uneven sharing of care continues because it is taken-forgranted that this status quo is the only option available. Ultimately, these insidious dynamics are fuelled by a wilful benign neglect/ignorance of how complicit we all are in this distributive injustice. To remedy such inequality, we must all be prepared to give up the passes that we hold to reorder society to hold care in a more central and constitutive position in our democracies: Caring democracy thus requires a commitment to genuine equality of voice, and of reducing power differentials as much as possible in order to create the conditions for a meaningful democratic discussion of the nature of responsibility in society. (p. 33)

Tronto’s work at the macro level, complemented by Hochschild’s work on care chains, illustrates how without focus on care in global, political, and ideological debates, inequalities and injustices will prevail. Without explicit recognition of how we are all entangled in relationships that involve caring—even if not in the present moment—societal, economic, and political constructions will continue the undervaluing and outsourcing of care. This then does damage by neglecting the labour involved in maintaining, continuing, and repairing our world/s, much of which is felt as well as physically experienced.

Chrono: The Temporality of Care The relevance of time and temporality underpins our capacity to undertake, invest in, and practice care, and this is acutely felt in higher education (see Chapter 4). When we say ‘I don’t care’ about something, we often

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mean ‘I don’t want to dedicate time or energy’ to thinking about/doing something. As such, time is central to our intention and capacity to care, although this is mostly tacit in the literature on care. As Papastephanou (2015) argues in the context of higher education, an ethic of time recognises ‘various temporal modalities’ (p. 168) and disrupts tacit assumptions about how managing chronos (measurable time) is optimal, which in turn creates an ‘“ideal type” of the achiever’ (p. 170) and perpetuates symbolic and temporal violence on those who are time-compromised (such as parents and carers). In academia, Papastephanou argues that this latent disregard for the ethics of time results in a colonising logic via the ‘glorification of future time’ (p. 170)—a culturally situated notion—which again disregards the needs of many for the limited lens of the few. A sociological account of care can help us to better understand how time not only influences, mediates, facilitates, and impedes care, but is a constituent component of care. Barbara Adam’s (for example, 2000, 2003) foundational work on time offers a theoretical frame to move beyond singular and taken-for-granted conceptions of time. In this way, her analysis shares many commonalities with the care scholars discussed above, particularly Joan Tronto’s macro/political lens. As a starting point, Adam’s work challenges the assumed and hegemonic neutrality of time, noting how ‘neutral, decontextualized, empty time of calendars and clocks’ ignores the ways in which ‘social time’ is ‘experienced, constructed, recounted, recorded and commodified’ (2000, p. 126). A more complex and holistic view of time needs to probe its various qualities, modalities, and perspectives, and a critical sociological account of time pushes us to consider how time influences and is influenced by what we value. As such, it also helps us to develop a sense of why we care (or not) for/with/about, and what values, beliefs, and pressures inform our relationship to care. Adam’s (2000) notion of the timescape brings context back into the discussion of care, offering an analytic frame to explore the temporal profile of particular phenomena. Adam offers the ‘4T’ frame to consider the multidimensionality of timescapes: time frame (natural, cosmic, sociocultural), temporality (the time of existence and change), tempo (speed and intensity), and timing (or synchronisation). In Chapter 4, we explore the particularities of the higher education timescape, and its influence and impact on the idea of caring institutions. In the remainder of this section, we explore Barbara Adam’s work to establish a more general/societal-level understanding of the relationship between time and care.

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The Tyranny of Clock Time When we think about time, our initial response (depending on our cultural situatedness) may be to consider the ‘clock time’ that we use every day to structure and experience life: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc. From a Heideggerian perspective, human beingness is time; the human condition can be explained (in part) by our relationship with three dimensions of time: past, present, and future, and particularly with our anticipation of the finitude of death; although of course, recognising that these concepts are also deeply impacted by epistemic and cultural particularities. Adam (2006) argues that this relationship to the end of life has created myriad cultural rituals and practices to help us transcend our (fear of our) temporariness. Thus, our relationship to time is an inescapable part of our being. The distillation of time into our construction and experiences of the dominant, hegemonic form of clock time thus offers an inadequate explanation of the complexity of our relationship with time, and its role in care. As Adam articulates, ‘[w]ith clock-time, the tie with temporality, contextuality and variation has been severed and contingent rhythmicity replaced with a decontextualized, invariable machine-time’ (p. 123). The dominance of clock time, and particularly the idea of ‘time management’ in some cultures can be explained by the industrial revolution that transformed societies from agricultural to manufacturing interests, moving us from a natural (seasonal, rhythmic) to humanmade (measurable ‘clock time’) dominant timescape. In the industrial timescape, the time frame is constructed and colonising—sold as ‘natural’ (common-sensical and imposed), rather than sociocultural (chosen and continued); the temporality is present/short-term future-focused, driven by evolution and progress, and quantifiable so as to be measurable; the tempo is fast and urgent, with no time provided for contemplation or reflection; and hyper-synchronised across time and space, with technology facilitating a non-stop, 24/7 relationship between work and time. The hegemony of this timescape works to conceal other temporal possibilities and reduces the context-dependency of time through the façade of standardisation of timescapes. The industrial capitalist timescape centres around assumptions of time being scarce and quantifiable, and speed equalling efficiency. In contemporary globalised market-driven societies, these conceptualisations of time as a limited resource and efficiency as a shared and desirable goal have been propagated across multiple spaces, places, and organisations.

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In this dominant timescape, time where ‘nothing happens’, or nothing is ‘achieved’ is considered wasted time. As Adam (2003) writes, the timeis-money ethos means the economy works not on payment for goods/ services, but on payment for time, and for this to work, time needs to be treated as ‘decontextualised, a-situational abstract exchange value’ (p. 97). When time is money, the pursuit of standardised and unitary time is maximally desirable because it contributes towards efficiency, and ultimately to increased profits.5 Adam calls time spent on ‘non-work’/‘non-productive’ time ‘shadow time’, because of its relative lack of productive value, illustrating how society can be unknowingly complicit in creating a hierarchy of valued time. This endemic disregard and marginalisation of unvalued/ shadow time is highly pertinent to discussions of care, connecting back to Tronto’s argument about differential power relationships between ‘care’ and ‘service’. Put crudely, when care cannot be connected to profit, it is tacitly identified as shadow time/work and devalued as a result. This relationship between time, profit, and power is highly significant for explaining why governments and organisations fail to prioritise care, despite the evidence clearly showing that care is fundamental to societal continuance and productivity. In addition to a construction of time as countable and measurable, a fast tempo—considered vital to efficiency, competitiveness, and profitability—is highly valued in industrial societies. Slowness is stigmatised as a result of the role of time in the investment-profit cycle (greater profit for faster production). However, Adam (2003) argues that, conversely, the idea that speed is good is antithetical to productivity, in that it can lead to haste and poorer quality, or it can require the use of more resources (energy, money) that reduces profit. It also requires people to outsource their care, or to use Tronto’s term of ‘privileged irresponsibility’ under the guise of the productivity pass. To be competitive, we must buy-into the idea that it is in our (individual, familial, and organisational) best interests to pay for our caring responsibilities, through investing our resources in ‘services’ in order to go quicker/produce more. As established above, the value and norms around care passes are highly gendered, as are conceptions of time value. As Adam (2003) contends, prevalent accounts of time are heavily gendered and skewed towards masculine notions and 5 That this extractive and dehumanising temporality is also contributing to depletion of natural resources, with catastrophic consequences for the planet is relevant and interconnected to discussions of care, but beyond the boundaries of this conversation.

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experiences; as she argues, if time cannot be quantified and converted into a money value, it leads to a reduction in the carer’s relative power and influence and is antithetical to the ideals of the industrial timescape: productive, efficient, and profitable. A temporality of care and its relational nature therefore extends beyond self-concern to care about others’ futures, which crafts our lived experience of responsibility (‘tending to’ others) in nonreciprocal responsibility for the future in recognition of the differing levels of responsibility we have in differently valued relationships that are conducted in real time. Care, as the ‘existential substance of the social contract’ (Adam & Groves, 2011, p. 23), is always future-directed and primarily turned towards specific others and their futures: In caring for another, we attempt to judge what futures they project for themselves—what they want and need—and what they are becoming, both because of what they want and need and in spite of it. (pp. 22–23)

Jarring against the hegemonic industrial timescape of quantification, measurement, and speed, a timescape informed by an ethic of care foregrounds the slower, more shadow-like activities that constitute and enhance meaningfulness in and of our lives. This idea extends beyond people and the duration of our own life because the value and meaning of what and who we care about can outlive us. As Adam and Groves (2011) beautifully summarise, ‘[t]he futures about which we care are, in this sense, the future of care itself’ (p. 25).

Meso: Caring at the Institutional Level While the micro, macro, and chrono levels of care have received scholarly attention, what we are calling the meso level—that is, attention to care and the institution—is less considered. Two key texts have asked questions of caring at the institutional level: Joan Tronto’s (2010) essay Creating Caring Institutions: Politics, Plurality, and Purpose, and Nel Noddings’ (2015) chapter, Care ethics and ‘caring’ organisations. Both scholars ask questions of whether institutions can be caring and there is disagreement about the simple answer (of course, such a question could never produce one). For Noddings, large organisations are not able to care in the way that an ethics of care sets out, and to do so would entail some level of corruption of care. Noddings’ argument is that organisations, such as schools or universities, are overly paternalistic in their ascribing of

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needs-to-be-met; needs are assumed based on both experiential knowledge, but also hierarchical knowledge (with school systems privileging the knowing of adults over the knowing of children, for example), resulting in ‘too much control and not enough attentive love’ (2015, p. 82). Instead, Noddings argues that organisations focus on ‘caring about’, often via policy, rather than ‘caring for’ in practice: Large organizations such as social services, schools, and nations cannot care directly: that is, they cannot care-for in the sense prescribed by care theory. Caring-for requires a person-to-person relationship in which both carer and cared-for play essential roles. No institution can do this. What it can do is to provide and support the conditions under which caring relations can prosper. If these conditions are met, the population involved—again, both carers and recipients of care—should report positively on the efforts to care. (2015, p. 83)

Tronto, writing in her 2013 book, similarly asks questions of whether institutions can care. She argues that the moral aspects of ethic of care are complicated in institutions because of their complexity. Identifying ‘the locus’ of care-focused decision-making is impossible in institutions; if we view institutions as monolithic and single-purposed/single-minded, we deny that they are in actual fact highly pluralistic. Large institutions usually have multiple sets and levels and layers of needs which change over time and make it difficult to determine needs; as Tronto poses, ‘needs for whom? Needs decided by whom?’ (2013, p. 161). Care is further complicated by the stratification and division of responsibility in institutions through bureaucracy and hierarchies; as Tronto (2013) succinctly notes, ‘Hierarchies pose a threat to care: they divide up the process of responsibility and separate it from the actual work and response to care’ (p. 164), meaning that it is easy for care (as a priority, as a decision, as a practice) to slip between the cracks. In earlier work, Tronto (2010) outlines the challenges of developing a shared understanding of the roles, responsibilities, and moral imperatives for institutions—as collectives of individuals, rather than a depersonalised thing—to strive for. Rather than viewing institutional care as impossible, or extremely difficult, Tronto examines the conditions needed for institutional care. As Tronto and Fisher (1990) argue in their chapter, institutional care is stymied by bureaucracy because of its need for standardisation and schedules, ‘so needs must be standardized to fit

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individuals into bureaucracies’ (p. 49), and through the separation of caregiving from taking care of: Bureaucracy, by its nature, distorts and fragments the caring process through its division of labour, through the hierarchy of authority and power, and through its need to reduce problems to standard form. Caring is considered just and equal in the bureaucratic context when the bureaucracy fulfills its rational functions [meaning that] trust is an ephemeral quality. (p. 50)

Tronto (2010) argues that institutions often apply market-based, competitive logics to measure care (often through ‘customer satisfaction’ metrics); however, underpinning assumptions about people being rational, autonomous, capable of decision-making, and availed of information make the conflation of customer satisfaction and care highly problematic. Moreover, Tronto cites Fisher (1990), who found that care is often considered to be ‘extra’ in so-called ‘caring professions’. The notion of additionality suggests that care/ing sits outside of the daily business/operations of an institution, which contradicts the very notion that institutions, like universities, and professions, like teaching, are inherently caring. Working with this question, Tronto asks: ‘If caring is the “extra”, then how can we ever discuss it in institutional terms? For institutions to provide “extra” is already to move it from the status of “extra” to “routine’” (p. 160). A useful notion for unpicking why people undertake ‘the extra’ in institutional contexts is Organisational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB), which examines the ‘discretionary efforts’ of individuals within organisations, which are argued to increase job satisfaction and a greater sense of meaningfulness at work, through behaviours and practices that are related to care work, such as maintaining, repairing, and supporting relationships (Moorman & Blakely, 1995). OCB is considered to be synonymous with a collectivist orientation, although organisational theory scholars have contested this simplistic conceptualisation (for example, Cohen & Avrahami, 2006). The scholarship suggests a more complex and nuanced relationship between an individual and their organisation, relating to elements such as teams, connection to the organisation, role ambiguity, and in-role performance (Moorman & Blakely, 1995). However, wholly positive associations need to be questioned; according to Bolino et al. (2013), OCB can also erode job satisfaction if employees may feel

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pressure to perform from organisation to give extra, due to instrumental reasons such as fear of losing their job or competitive reasons such as enhancing one’s image and reputation to impress management and advance in the job. Moreover, in the context of ‘job creep’, the extra may become expected, leading to greater dissatisfaction and possible resentment. There may also be personal costs, as extra work can lead to job overload and conflicts in the family. While Tronto clearly establishes the complications of enacting care and inculcating caring cultures in institutions, she does not concur with Noddings’ resolute rejection of the capacity for institutions to care; instead, she argues that good institutional care can exist if it holds three elements: purpose of care, recognition of power relations, and a need for pluralistic, responsive care. Tronto’s (2010) work offers a set of conditions that can explore the caring capacity of an institution, based on whether caring practices are prompted by misfortune, whether people’s needs are taken for granted, whether caring is viewed as a commodity, whether paternalistic notions of vulnerability lock people out of making agentic decisions about their care, whether care is reductively conceived as ‘caregiving’, rather than the more complex and holistic models that exist in the literature. Other features of uncaring institutions include viewing organisational structures as excuses for not providing care, and institutions that distribute care unfairly across gendered, classed, embodied, and ethnic lines. Despite Tronto’s 2010 work, issues of institutional care remain underexplored as ‘care’, although organisational scholarship has offered alternative notions, such as OCB, to explain the ‘extra’ that some people do. Without exploration of the complexities of the dynamics of power, responsibility, duty, and competitiveness—to name but a few—between institution and worker/s, the debate around care at the institutional level has been stymied.

Summary: How Can We Define Care When Talking About Higher Education? To recap, based on the foundational work of Gilligan, Noddings, and Tronto, care/caring is understood in this book as a moral framework, an ethics, a discourse, and a set of practices that are the basis of the repair and maintenance of all that we consider to be meaningful, and is essential for the upkeep of the moral, ethical, physical, social, emotional, economic,

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and philosophical dimensions of our lives. Care operates at all levels of our lives: at the macro (governance/political/ideological), at the meso (institutional/organisational), and at the micro (individual/practices) levels. Care is deeply context-dependent, cultural, relational, and ontological and is, thus, inherently complex and fluid; simultaneously, care is also made invisible by silences, and it is culturally situated, contested, and slippery, all of which makes debates about care difficult to navigate. Despite this slippage, a book that asks questions of care and its role in higher education needs to land on a working definition—shifting, fluid, contested as it might be—to help the reader follow the arguments and draw their own conclusions. To that end, we propose that the loose definition offered by Fisher and Tronto (1990) of care as work that ‘maintains, continues, and repairs’ can be reconfigured in the university context to include relational and intentional activities of repair, maintenance, and continuation of the academy that happen through teaching, learning, supporting, administering, and governing. This means that care is not limited to the domain of teaching and learning, although this is a key site of relational care. Asking questions about whether universities are caring means that this book is not just concerned with caregiving but also with receiving, recognising, and responsibilising beyond the individuals involved, and looking at the conditions, structures, politics and ideologies, and logics that open and/or constrain institutional (meso level) care. Moreover, there is a compelling argument that caring in the undercaring higher education context is radical; what Mariskind (2014) calls caring-as-activism and what Walker and Gleaves (2016) call caring-asresistance. Care, and particularly self-care, is a ‘defiant act of resistance and push-back’ (Jones & Whittle, 2021, p. 382).

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organisational citizenship behaviour. The Services Industries Journal, 26(8), 889–901. https://doi.org/10.1080/02642060601011707 Converso, D., Sottimano, I., Molinengo, G., & Loera, B. (2019). The unbearable lightness of the academic work: The positive and negative sides of heavy work investment in a sample of Italian University professors and researchers. Sustainability, 11(8), 24–39. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082439 Daly, T. (2020, September 7). COVID-19: The casual pandemic. Connect. http://www.nteu.org.au/article/COVID-19%3A-The-casual-pandemic-% 28Connect-13-02%29-22313 Diller, A. (1998). Review: The ethics of care and education: A new paradigm, its critics, and its educational significance. Curriculum Inquiry, 18(3), 325–342. https://doi.org/10.2307/1179833 Engster, D. (2005). Rethinking care theory: The practice of caring and the obligation to care. Hypatia, 20(3), 50–74. https://www.jstor.org/stable/381 1114 Etieyibo, E. (2017). Moral education, ubuntu and ubuntu-inspired communities. South African Journal of Philosophy, 36(3), 311–325. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/02580136.2017.1269995 Fetherston, C., Fetherston, A., Batt, S., Sully, M., & Wei, R. (2021). Wellbeing and work-life merge in Australian and UK academics. Studies in Higher Education, 46(12), 2774–2788. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020. 1828326 Fisher, B., & Tronto, J. (1990). Towards a feminist theory of caring. In E. Abel & M. Nelson (Eds.), Circles of care: Work and identity in women’s lives (pp. 35–62). State University of New York Press. Foucault, M. (1983/2001). Fearless speech. J. Pearson (Ed.). Semiotext(e). Foucault. M. (1986). The history of sexuality volume 3: The care of the self . Pantheon Books. Fraser, N. (1989). Talking about needs: Interpretive contests as political conflicts in welfare-state societies. Ethics, 99(2), 291–313. https://www.jstor.org/sta ble/2381436 Fraser, N. (1995). From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a ‘post-socialist’ age. New Left Review, 212, 68–93. Freund, M. (2009). ‘Me at university doing teacher training—What a big laugh’: Narrative and parrhesia. Educational Action Research, 17 (4), 523–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790903309383 Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press. Hamington, M. (2015). Care ethics and engaging intersectional difference through the body. Critical Philosophy of Race, 3(1), 79–100. https://doi. org/10.5325/critphilrace.3.1.0079

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Heidegger, M. (1927/2011). Being and time (J. Macquarie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row. Held, V. (2005). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford University Press. Hoagland, S. (1990). Review: Some concerns about Nel Noddings’ “Caring”, Hypatia, 5(1), 109–114. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3809914 Horrigan-Kelly, M., Millar, M., & Dowling, M. (2016). Understanding the key tenets of Heidegger’s philosophy for interpretive phenomenological research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 15, 1–8. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1609406916680634 Hochschild, A. (2012). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press. Jones, S., & Whittle, R. (2021). Researcher self-care and caring in the research community. Area, 53(2), 381–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12703 Kittay, E. (2002). Love’s labor revisited. Hypatia, 17 (3), 237–250. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/3810805 Kittay, E. (2015). A theory of justice as fair terms of social life given our inevitable dependency and our inextricable interdependency. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics & political theory (pp. 51–71). Oxford University Press. Koster, S. (2011). The self-managed heart: Teaching gender and doing emotional labour in a higher education institution. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 19(1), 61–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2011.548988 Lawson, V. (2009). Instead of radical geography, how about caring geography? Antipode, 41(1), 210–213. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.006 65.x Lemon, N. (Ed.) (2022). Creating a place for self-care and wellbeing in higher education. Routledge. Lewis, K., & Pearce, S. (2022). High attaining students, marketisation and the absence of care: Everyday experiences in an urban academy. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 30(2), 261–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366. 2020.1801811 Lolich, L., & Lynch, K. (2017). Aligning the market and affective self: Care and student resistance to entrepreneurial subjectivities. Gender and Education, 29(1), 115–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1197379 Lynch, K. (2010). Carelessness: A hidden doxa of higher education. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9(1), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 147402220935010 Macdonald, C., & Sirianni, C. (1996). Changing experience of work. In C. Macdonald & C. Sirianni (Eds.), Working in the service society (pp. 1–29). Temple University Press.

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Mariskind, C. (2014). Teachers’ care in higher education: Contesting gendered constructions. Gender and Education, 26(3), 306–320. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09540253.2014.901736 Maxwell, L. (2019). The politics and gender of truth-telling in Foucault’s lectures on parrhesia. Contemporary Political Theory, 18(1), 22–42. https:// doi.org/10.1057/s41296-018-0224-5 Meanwell, E., & Kleiner, S. (2014). The emotional experience of first-time teaching: Reflections from graduate instructors, 1997–2006. Teaching Sociology, 42(1), 17–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092055X13508377 Moorman, R. H., & Blakely, G. L. (1995). Individualism-collectivism as an individual difference predictor of organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 16, 127–142. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.403 0160204 Nilsson, M., Ejlertsson, G., Andersson, I., & Blomqvist, K. (2015). Caring as a salutogenic aspect in teachers’ lives. Teaching and Teacher Education, 46, 51–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.10.009 Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics & moral education. University of California Press. Noddings, N. (1990). A response. Hypatia, 5(1), 120–126. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1527-2001.1990.tb00396.x Noddings, N. (2001). The care tradition: Beyond “add women and stir. Theory Into Practice, 40(1), 29–34. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1477215 Noddings, N. (2015). Care ethics and “caring” organisations. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics & political theory (pp. 72–84). Oxford University Press. Papastephanou, M. (2015). Higher education and an ethic of time. In P. Gibbs, O. Ylijoki, C. Guzmán-Valenzuela, & R. Barnett (Eds.), Universities in the flux of time: An exploration of time and temporality in university life (pp. 168– 181). Routledge. Reich, W. (1995). History of the notion of care. In W. Reich (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of bioethics (pp. 319–331). Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Restler, V. (2019). Countervisualities of care: Re-visualizing teacher labor. Gender and Education, 31(5), 643–654. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2018. 1543860 Rickett, B., & Morris, A. (2020). ‘Mopping up tears in the academy’—Workingclass academics, belonging, and the necessity for emotional labour in UK academia. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 42(1), 87– 101. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2020.1834952 Rogers, D. (2012). Research, practice, and the space between: Care of the self within neoliberalized institutions. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 12(3), 242–254.

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Ruddick, S. (2002). An appreciation of love’s labor. Hypatia, 17 (3), 214–224. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3810803 Rumsey, J. (1997). Justice, care, and questionable dichotomies. Hypatia, 12(1), 99–113. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810253 Sander-Staudt, M. (2006). The unhappy marriage of care ethics and virtue ethics. Hypatia, 21(4), 21–39. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4640020 Santos, B. S. (2007). Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledges. Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 30(1), 45–89. http://www. jstor.org/stable/40241677 Slote, M. (2001). Morals from motives. Oxford University Press. Stone, L. (2019). Epilogue: Nel Noddings as trailblazer. Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 20, 124–134. https://doi.org/10.24908/encoun ters.v20i1.13808 Swartz, B., Gachago, D., & Belford, C. (2018). To care or not to care—Reflections on the ethics of blended learning in times of disruption. South African Journal of Higher Education, 32(6), 49–64. https://doi.org/10.20853/326-2659 Sowerby, E. M. (1993). Nel Noddings’ caring: A critical analysis (Doctoral thesis, University of British Columbia). UBC Open Collections. Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. Routledge. Tronto, J. (2010). Creating caring institutions: Politics, plurality, and purpose. Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/174 96535.2010.484259 Tronto, J. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York University Press. Trout, M. (2018). Embodying care: Igniting a critical turn into a teacher educator’s relational practice. Studying Teacher Education, 14(1), 39–55. https:// doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2017.1404976 Waghid, Y. (2019). Towards a philosophy of caring in higher education. Palgrave Macmillan. Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2016). Constructing the caring higher education teacher: A theoretical framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 65–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.11.013 Wood, L., Swanson, K., & Colley, D. (2020). Tenets for a radical care ethics in geography. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 19(2), 424–447.

CHAPTER 3

What Do Universities Care About?

Introduction Accounts of the role played by care in the academy—at the institutional level or by others within the structures of higher education—are scarce. While there is a relatively small but rich body of literature that has examined the expansive area of care in education, the vast majority of this scholarly writing has focused on the schooling system, particularly in the primary sector where strong connections have been made between mothering and teaching (Acker, 1995). The dearth of attention to care in higher education is puzzling, especially when teaching is widely held to be a ‘caring profession’ (Chatelier & Rudolph, 2018; Lolich & Lynch, 2017; Noddings, 1984), one that involves navigating complex sociocultural terrains, emotional labour, and one’s own caring responsibilities—for kin and for self (Hochschild, 2012; Moreau, 2016; O’Brien, 2010; Sumison, 2000). When it comes to what we know about caring in higher education, conversations have tended to focus primarily on caring university teachers/ing (for example, Anderson et al., 2020; Lennon et al., 2018; Walker & Gleaves, 2016), and on the challenges of caring within a neoliberal/neo-managerialist academy (Lynch, 2010). While these conversations are welcome additions to developing richer understandings of what constitute and could guide refinement of caring university policy—including teaching and learning, research, civic/ community engagement, support, leadership, governance—they largely © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7_3

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focus at the personal/individual level and have not, as yet, begun to ask questions of the institutions themselves. Rare examples include Burton and Turbine’s (2019) entreaty for more care and kindness in the academy, justifying this request by evocatively arguing that they are ‘not asking for the moon on a stick’. Given that there is little that examines where care fits in—if at all—at the broader institutional (systemic and structural) levels, it is first necessary to excavate the aspects of the institution of higher education where care can and should be found. In this chapter, we offer a potted account of the conditions within and around higher education that are a backdrop to, and complicate institutional understandings, and the distribution and enactment of care/ ing. We explore various ways of conceiving care within the unique context of higher education, including ontological, epistemic, and valuesrelated considerations. Importantly, we also ask questions about the structural mechanisms and culturally entrenched assumptions that characterise higher education and ultimately hinder the practice of care, seeking to respond to the question: what do universities care about?

Where Does Care Feature in a Philosophy of Higher Education? The move to a massified higher education system has shifted what the ‘higher’ in higher education means (Bengsten & Barnett, 2020), challenging the existing social, economic, and cultural imaginaries that universities constitute and represent to its myriad invested actors (students, staff, researchers, teachers, managers, governors, community members). While previously understood as (elite, privileged, colonial) sites of higher learning (for learning’s sake, to extend what we collectively know, as a social good), universities have evolved into institutions of specialised knowledge and training over the past century (learning for individual advancement and to create an economic good; see Connell, 2019 for an overview). Similarly, the underlying epistemology of higher education has moved towards a fragmented, siloed, and decontextualised division of knowledge into atomised units, further extending the ‘abyssal thinking’ critiqued by de Sousa Santos (2007). As will be discussed in detail throughout this chapter, this evolution of the higher education sector has been driven in no small part by the neoliberal economic ideology that has colonised governance models across the world; this model of managerial,

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market-based logics has radically shifted how universities exist, operate and care for, in, about and with the world. Bengsten and Barnett (2020) offer a definition of the underlying purpose of higher education as ‘as an educational process in which students pass into a space from which they can take up a view of the world, critique it, and yet engage purposively with it’ (p. 4). They outline knowledge, truth, critical thinking, and culture as four pillars of a higher education philosophy, with these pillars concerned with the production, critique, and legitimisation of academic knowledge, the moral and ethical sharing of knowledge and the communal practices of disseminating knowledge through teaching and public intellectual engagement. These pillars also point to the assumed role of universities to be creators and arbiters of truth, although the postmodern turn has expanded ‘truth’ to ‘truths’, and recent political shifts have seen a public derision of the public intellectual or ‘expert’.1 Viewed through Fisher and Tronto’s (1990) definition of care, we can see how Bengsten and Barnett’s (2020) four pillars are concerned with maintaining, repairing, and continuing our academic world, and seeing the interrelatedness between academic knowledge and real-life application. Similarly, Sharon Stein’s (2019) reading of the philosophy of higher education foregrounds relationality. Stein argues that in order to dismantle the hegemony of the totalising modernist uni-versity, it is necessary to imagine alternatives that engage differently with the ontoepistemological dimensions of higher education, meaning ‘we will need to take steps to avoid the circularities that keep us rooted and invested in a colonial mode of existence’ (p. 152). This, Stein argues, requires us to be open to not learning from but being taught by non-dominant educational philosophies. Stein offers one such approach: the Nishnaabeg educational philosophy, which decentres anthropocentric modes of knowing, being, and doing by foregrounding the ecological connectedness of nature and including the wisdom and teaching possibilities offered by animals and other natural phenomena. Thinking about this holistic philosophy

1 English politician Michael Gove famously declared that the British population had

“had enough of experts” at the height of the Brexit referendum campaign (although actual experts have contested the veracity of this claim; for example, Dommett & Pearce, 2019). Issues relating to trust in experts played out on a global scale during the COVID pandemic, with reduced trust seriously impacting on the uptake of public health messaging and actions (Eichengreen et al., 2021).

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helps to illuminate the dominance of hegemonic, colonial, and modernist assumptions that lay at the heart of our (tacit) view of what higher education is, can, and should be. Another notable exception is Waghid’s (2019) description of how drawing on ubuntu, care and rhythm can craft a philosophy of higher education for post-colonial contexts. Through an ubuntu philosophy of higher education, which has clear salience for systems outside of Africa, priority is placed on developing inclusivity, democracy, empathy, concern, and justice (Waghid, 2019), as well as criticality, kindness, and solidarity (Etieyibo, 2017). While such relational philosophies complement, rather than replace, more traditional concerns with knowledge and truth, they do not function as a total philosophy of higher education. Care is peripheral, despite being foundational to the four philosophical pillars. Indeed Barnett (2017) argues that the development of a philosophy of higher education—one that would assess the philosophical roots of the academy, but ‘would enquire also into the possibilities for the university, its further becoming, and into the ways in which and the reasons for which it was falling short of its potential’ (p. 87)—is imperative. While we have neither the space nor expertise to undertake such an epic task, in what follows we attempt to navigate component elements of a caring philosophy of higher education, exploring the ontological, epistemological, and axiological component parts. We track some of the debates and discourses circulating in the higher education literature that relate to the institutional capacity to care. This discussion is necessarily selective, as several books could be, and have been, written on the insidious changes that neoliberal ideology and new public management have brought to bear on higher education. This chapter thus provides the backdrop to the discussion of the challenges to caring in higher education in Part II. Ontological Care: Being and Becoming Caring in Higher Education The position of care within higher education depends on the standpoint of any given observer/participant: with the neoliberal view, care is siloed, abstracted, or ignored in the guise of consumption, streamlining, and efficiency; with the social justice view, care is central to and deeply embedded within the moral project of engaging in and mutually constitutive forms of education. The Heideggerian ontological perception of care as part of the process of becoming can also be extended to caring in education, requiring us to consider higher-order questions of what higher education

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is and what it means to be in/part of higher education. As outlined above, the realities of higher education are in flux, with competing ideologies pushing a spectrum of existences: a dominant hegemonic, neoliberal view of university education as economic, competitive resource at one end, and a moral, social justice-oriented view of university education as emancipatory possibility at the other.2 The dominant mode in the contemporary university is to know, rather than to be, resulting in calls for an ‘ontological turn’ in education (Dall’Alba & Barnacle, 2007; Zembylas, 2017a). While Zembylas’ review of this argument exposes a lack of clarity in this call, Dall’Alba and Barnacle (2007) argue that an ontological focus would disrupt the hegemonic focus on what we know and include a focus on who we are and who we are becoming, following Heidegger’s notions of being- and becoming-in-the world, which as discussed here, have strong connections with care. For Dall’Alba and Barnacle (2007), the ontological turn requires the disruption of the primacy placed on knowing in education through the integration of knowing, doing, and being as a reflexive project of teaching and learning. This shift of viewpoint and existence/interaction with the world has strong implications for care in higher education. Barnacle and Dall’Alba (2017) make the case that an ontological account of care can ‘inform a conception of student engagement that resists, rather than unwittingly reinforces, performativity and neoliberal values’ (p. 1328) through foregrounding the ‘becomingness’ of studying and being a student. They use Noddings’ work on caring to exemplify how care—read ontologically— can be enhanced/enhance learning. These authors extend caring about to include ‘care-about-ideas’ and teachers’ caring for students to include acknowledging the ‘multiple learning trajectories in promoting students’ being and becoming’ (p. 1332). Thirdly, they advocate for reflexivity, particularly on the part of teachers, to demonstrate through their own practices ‘how to care’, ‘not only in terms of promoting passion for ideas and objects, but also through students caring about each other in their interactions’ (p. 1333). The temporal dimension suggested in this focus on becoming is also significant in terms of taking a processual, rather than product or skills-driven, approach to care.

2 Of course, this spectrum is a crude reduction of other complex, overlapping, and graded views of the world and the place of universities within the world.

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A significant frame for thinking about becoming can be found in the transitions literature, which largely focuses on the development of understandings, familiarity, and practices associated with transforming from novice to more expert. The dominant way of thinking about becoming/ transition in higher education is as linear—a series of steps along a ritualised pathway—as well as unidirectional. This conceptualisation may serve universities well, but it rarely reflects the iterative, complex, situated experiences that are the norm; as such, linear and reified notions of transition often collapse into the reductive ‘one-size-fits-all’ thinking that realistically serves no one well. Instead, scholars have suggested that more complex (rhizomatic, non-linear, multidirectional) notions of transition (Gravett, 2021) would better fit with students’ actual lived experiences. Such notions would better suit the becomingness that Barnacle and Dall’Alba (2017) write of and open more possibilities for responsive and tailored care. Writing from an African perspective, scholars such as Etieyibo (2017) and Waghid (2019) have noted the importance of foregrounding the philosophy of ubuntu—humanity, ‘beingness’ (p. 317) and interdependence—in education as a caring philosophy for education. For Etieyibo (2017), ubuntu manifests in moral education as philosophical thinking (critical, collaborative, creative), kindness (generosity and compassion), and as sociability (friendliness), which open space to value our shared humanity and moral responsibility for each other. This ontology further privileges embodied being in the world and in the university in ways that enhance the possibilities for ‘deliberative inquiry, criticality, cultural agency, responsibility, epistemic justice, and unconditional compassion’ (Waghid, 2019, p. 126). Moreover, caring in higher education, as articulated by Waghid (2019), is rhythmic, it has ebbs and flows, moves across timescapes and tempos, linking and disrupting the connections between past-present-future time. These caring rhythms help to expose how attending to care as an ontological condition can illuminate the multiple tempos (slow-bureaucratic, accelerated-production, turn-around times for quality feedback to inform teaching and learning) that complicate being in the academy, whether as a student or staff member.

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Epistemic Care in Higher Education An epistemological view of care/ing in higher education requires us to consider what we know about care, and how we care about knowledge, which is closely connected to/emerges from our being-in-the-world (Dall’Alba & Barnacle, 2007). As will be discussed later in this chapter, the affective dimension of being and knowing is a highly significant component of caring. For now, we will briefly turn to two broad epistemological concerns with regard to the politics of care-knowing in higher education: . Firstly, how situated knowing-as-care (advocacy) challenges ‘traditional’ modes of knowing. . Secondly, how care-as-knowing opens a space for resisting the epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) of reified western epistemologies by calling for the normalisation of valuing ‘other’ (Indigenous, subaltern, subjugated) knowledges through decolonising processes. These two meta-points remind us of the deeply political, contentious, and emancipatory potential that care offers higher education. Knowing-as-Care The idea of epistemic care (knowledge of and for care; caring for/about knowledge) foregrounds how connected our being is with our knowing (Barnacle & Dall’Alba, 2017; Code, 2015; Dalmiya, 2002, 2016; Gwaravanda, 2019) The importance of considering a care-based epistemology is succinctly noted by Dalmiya (2016) when she writes of how carebased epistemology bridges a ‘conceptual gap between good knowing and good caring’ (p. 7). The notion of ‘good knowing’ requires a note here; the very idea that there is an agreed-upon (tacit, unexplained) idea of what ‘good’ means is challenged by care ethicists and feminist scholars of knowledge. Contesting the uneven power dynamics that determine what counts as knowing is central to the accountability that underpins carebased epistemology; as Dalmiya (2002) notes, ‘What we pick to know and why we do so become integral to epistemic evaluation (just as much as deliberations on who we pick to care about and why are central to caring)’ (p. 49). What this notion does is challenge positivist notions of ‘a truth’, to advance the plurality of lived and experienced knowledges; indeed, Dalmiya clarifies that, ‘caring is not the “other” of reason and that

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our lived experiences of caring and being cared for can be useful resources for truth-seeking’ (2016, p. 1). The openness to ‘other’, as part of the ontological project of becoming, is also a foundation stone of care-based epistemology, which Dalmiya (2002) defines as ‘when caring encounters (instead of abstract reasoning) become the paradigm for cognition’ (p. 47). As Dalmiya (2016) notes, caring requires an ‘epistemic reaching out’ (p. 260), pushing us to reject viewing knowledge as absolute truth and instead requiring recognition of what we know and don’t know. Such openness to knowledge mirrors the need in care to be open to others, to be prepared to suspend and probe our unexplored beliefs, and be open to unanticipated outcomes. This openness requires the ontological reflexivity advocated by Dall’Alba and Barnacle (2007), which is necessary if we are to disrupt the myriad epistemic privileges that circulate in society, and acutely in higher education. This association between becoming and knowing (and doing) is captured by Zagzebski (2004) as a relationship between our care for ourselves/others and our care for our/their truths: …we often care that others care about what we care about, which means that we care about their having true beliefs about what we care about, and we also care, at least to some extent, about what they care about. So, we care about being good informants to others, which requires that we have the qualities that make us trustworthy and credible. All of these epistemic goods are things that we care about in addition to true belief. (p. 355)

The notion of situated knowing is borrowed from Haraway’s (e.g., 1988) foundational work on how disrupting the hegemonic accounts of knowledge—what she terms ‘science’—is part of an imperative to ‘insist on better accounts of the world’ (p. 579) through the legitimisation of situated and embodied knowledges. Haraway advocates for this alternative account of the world (compared to objective, rationalist, positivist notions of what counts as knowledge), writing: I am arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people’s lives. I am arguing for the view from the body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity. (p. 589)

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Haraway’s notion of situated knowledges, while not explicitly concerned with care as a scholarly frame, is essentially concerned with care. Indeed, this political project is at the heart of epistemic care, in the sense that it cares about knowledges and for knowers through the opening of our knowledge to others. Haraway’s postmodern take accounts for the hegemony inherent in pretending that there is a truth without subjectivity, or the ‘god trick of seeing everything from nowhere’ (p. 581), which creates the conditions for ‘various forms of unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims [where] Irresponsible means unable to be called into account’ (p. 583). Uptake of the understanding that knowledges are situated could open space for contestation—an important mechanism for embedding care throughout the onto-epistemological scaffolds of the academy. However, despite offering other (better) accounts of the world, the dominance of scientific (read: western, positivist, obsolete) epistemologies continues to deny the significance of alternative ways of knowing and knowers. From a curricular justice perspective, the absence of care in curricula— bar tokenistic images from an ‘add women and stir’ approach (Noddings, 2001)—is constitutive of both the invisibilisation and privatisation of care and is illustrative of an absence of epistemic care. Rather than elevating the significance of care and women’s contributions to the development of scholarship and knowledge, Noddings fiercely critiques the emptiness of the intention which belies such tokenism actively obscures the gendered and class-based dynamics of care that could be used to probe historical, economic, social, political and personal layers of influence, and examine the contemporary context where men remain dominant despite the sharing of economic responsibility in modern families and partnerships. Noddings (2001) identifies the absence of attention to women’s experiences and interests (captured as ‘homemaking’) in the US social studies curriculum, contrasted against the male-centric focus on nation making, war making, and industry making. Without explicit attention to care under the guise of attention to what and who constitutes ‘the home’, care remains undervalued. Noddings argues that ‘homemaking’ could be a rich addition to the curriculum and could open a space to consider further where care sits and fits, and who does it. This caring about knowledge, and the connections with care (or interest, passion), have been used erroneously to contest the legitimacy of knowledge claims and knowers on the basis of too much care impinging on the objectivity of ‘truth’ (see Code, 2015). The advocate who contests

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or engages in debate with passion and personal interest should not be dismissed on the basis of that care; instead, Code (2015) contends that this is fundamental for disrupting the status quo and moving towards developing the better accounts of the world proposed by Haraway: Such is the compassion that animates the advocacy that makes certain kinds of knowledge possible…. knowing responsibly and well is urgently required for thinking compassionately about and acting to foster social justice. (p. 11)

The lack of openness to other knowledges (through dismissal, ignorance) and the concealment of how care is a constituent component of knowing is epistemically irresponsible, to riff off Code’s (2015) notion of epistemic responsibility, and tantamount to epistemic violence. Care-as-Knowing A critical example of care-as-knowing is the scholarly and activist agenda to decolonise and indigenise higher education, particularly in postcolonial systems, through redressive revision/denaturalisation of curricula, structures, and practices to expand what ‘counts’ as knowledge and who ‘count’ as knowers. In seeking to disrupt the dominance of western epistemology that continues to fuel the epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) enacted by and throughout the academy, decolonisation is an essential manifestation of care-as-knowing in higher education. Here we draw on the robust and growing body of work that explores this topic from a range of ontological, sociocultural, and epistemological positions, seeking to learn from colleagues who write with lived experience of the violence of historically entrenched, ongoing practices of disenfranchisement both within higher education and more broadly. From this work, we note the importance of resisting the construction of a false dichotomy of western/ non-western knowledges, for such siloing of knowledge is unhelpfully reductive and ignores the flows of meaning and understanding that have historically and contemporarily constructed our knowledge (for detailed discussion, see Vickers, 2020). What is important to foreground is the treatment of such flows as unidirectional in dominant discourses of higher education, in line with the imposing and one-way flow of colonialisation: western knowledges are acknowledged as having spilled into Indigenous/ subaltern communities, cultures, vocabularies, knowledge systems but not vice versa, at least not beyond a token engagement with the projects of

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decolonisation and indigenisation of higher education (Acton et al., 2017; Carey & Prince, 2015; Fredericks, 2009; Seats, 2022). The complexities of bidirectional flows of knowledge, understandings, and ways of being in the world are more prominent within scholarly work that engages with these topics from non-dominant, multiple, and subaltern perspectives (see Andreotti et al., 2011). Of course, such work also maintains the inherent value and significance of these ways of knowing and understanding, regardless of the degree to which they are recognised within the academy (Coburn et al., 2013). This call for action to acknowledge the legitimacy of multiple epistemologies (knowledges, knowers) is particularly relevant for higher education, where the hegemony of colonial, western, euro-centric, patriarchal epistemologies has remained prevalent via ‘the canon’ for centuries. Exploring the history of higher education reveals uncomfortable truths about the colonial foundations of many universities. Indeed, Bunda et al. (2012) argue that universities have long been ‘implicated in colonising logics’ (p. 950), both in terms of benefitting from the project of imperialism in colonial (particularly Anglophone) countries, and in the development of universities under colonial rule in colonised contexts (see Connell, 2019 for an overview; also see Keet et al., 2017; Shahjahan & Morgan, 2016; Stein, 2020). The stranglehold of what Canadian scholar, Sharon Stein (2019) calls the coloniality of modern existence, or the universality of objective rationalism of the sciences,3 denies a holistic, rich, and layered view of intersecting and plural knowledges on two levels: firstly, what counts as content and methodology in higher education teaching and research; and secondly, the epistemology of the academy— as an atomised and standardised collection of knowledge traditions rather than ecologies of interconnected knowledges. This is instantiated in myriad forms in the academy, but of particular timeliness and significance is the hierarchy of knowledges (privileging western, scientific, quantitative knowledge over non-western, human-centred, qualitative)4 in the teaching, learning, research, and organisational activities of higher 3 We continue to use the term ‘science’ to capture the dominance of these ways of knowing (and recognising that this is not representative of the emergence of new ways of knowing in the scientific fields), as per critical scholars such as Haraway (1988) and de Sousa Santos (2007). 4 This is a reduction of the epistemological complexity of the academy (see Connell, 2019 for a detailed account).

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education. Returning to the idea of abyssal thinking advanced by de Sousa Santos (2007), this epistemological subordination clearly creates and perpetuates existing cognitive and epistemic injustice. Efforts to recognise, redress, and reconcile these logics of dominance have been relatively unsuccessful, leading to Stein’s consternation about ‘why we find ourselves in the colonial present’ (p. 163). Stein (2020) critiques universities’ efforts towards decolonisation/ reconciliation, arguing the impacts of what she calls ‘settler colonial violence’ cannot be resolved through rhetoric alone; she notes how ‘it is now common to see calls for universities to “restructure”, “refresh”, “rejuvenate”, “revitalise”, “renew” [with] the underlying assumption [being] that what is fixed with the prefix “re” will be new, better, different’ (p. 157). Such institutional/societal rhetoric remains a substantial impediment to striving for epistemic justice as a form of epistemic care. As Keet et al. (2017) note, writing from the South African context, the marketing potential of the rhetoric of decolonisation means that, …its lure and seduction are unmistaken… It seems that the decolonial will struggle to become a praxis and may instead remain a form of rhetoric – not because it does not have the resources or imaginative capacities, but because the social structure of the academy will disallow it to become a productive reference point. (p. 4)

The academy, with its deep colonial roots, appears to be concerned that it will lose its credibility if the decolonial project is taken seriously, for there is no good reason as to why the colonial structures, practices, and culture should be allowed to persist. Redressive efforts at social justice must permit transformation beyond the surface. Tuck and Yang’s (2012) foundational essay offers a clear rebuke to this annexation of the social justice roots of decolonisation, arguing against the (lazy, reductive, self-serving) use of the term as a metaphor in education, rather than a project of unsettling and dismantling, of systemic transformation. These authors argue that ‘When metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future’ (p. 3). And yet, the metaphor abounds in higher education, with the ‘colonial present’ perpetuated by systemic (hegemonic) resistance to transformation, facilitated by the slow bureaucratic time of the academy (Papastephanou, 2015; Ylijoki, 2014), as well as investment in global

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market logics and the geopolitics of knowledge. Shahjahan and Morgan (2016) offer a critique of the way that colonial logics continues to play a role in sustaining global hierarchies of privilege and knowledge production, noting how intranational organisations such as the OECD create ‘global spaces of equivalence’ through the creation of tools which seek to compare countries against each other, but in ways that ignore and thus perpetuate the privilege that coloniser systems, which work from ‘historically epistemically privileged positions’ (p. 94), are able to maintain their power through the uneven distribution of resources, through what Vickers (2020, p. 173) calls their ‘epistemic arrogance’, or what Anderson (2009) calls the ‘whitestream’ (in resistance to ‘the mainstream’). A further example of the subordination of subaltern knowledges is described by Connell (2014) in terms of the global division of labour and hegemony of the dominant north (‘the metropole’ in the context of research, especially where partnerships between international researchers, especially researchers from the global south (‘periphery’), are prioritised. In such circumstances, colonial dynamics persist, as Connell describes: The role of the periphery is first to supply data, and later to apply knowledge in the form of technology and method. The role of the metropole, as well as producing data, is to collate and process data, producing theory (including methodology), and developing applications that are later exported to the periphery. (2014, p. 211)

The lack of epistemic care (caring for plurality of knowledges, knowers) in higher education is a key area of critical scholarship. The dominance of what Stein (2017) refers to as the ‘global imaginary’ (euro-centric/ western ways of knowing) is perpetuated through the selection of content in curricula, through the language used to teach/assess, and through the boundaries created around formal v. community knowledges. Writing from the South African context, Gwaravanda (2019) argues that eurocentric epistemology ‘disrespects’ African students and their epistemic concerns, leading to critical gaps between students and institutions, which results in attrition and a critical lack of achievement for both parties. Similarly, Andreotti et al. (2011) note how reductive notions of literacy and underpinning ideologies, assumptions, and discourses operate as part of the hegemonic apparatus that maintains status quo through normativity and assumptions of neutrality. This, thus,

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…creates an awkward situation for the introduction of Indigenous knowledges in academic contexts: scholars and educators working with indigenous ways of knowing are called to translate these into the dominant language, logic and technologies in ways that are intelligible and coherent (and, very often, acceptable or palatable) to readers and interpreters in the dominant culture. (p. 44)

Anderson (2009) argues that isolating Indigenous epistemologies from whitestream society ‘effectively removes a large part of our arsenal for combatting the damaging representations of Indigeneity woven into larger society’ (p. 85), and actively helps, rather than disrupts, the postcolonial, white epistemological hegemony of western knowledges in the academy. According to Anderson, more overt discussion/critique of the marginal positioning of Indigenous knowledges and knowers, compared against whitestream epistemologies, is needed to decentre the powerful knowledges of ‘white knowers’: Indigenous studies’ location in the very same regimes of power as ‘[w]estern’ academia requires that its practitioners avail ourselves of the symbolic power of, and launch part of our critique using, a vast array of knowledges. (p. 91)

Similar findings have been reported from other postcolonial contexts, such as Aotearoa New Zealand (for example, Mayeda et al., 2014), Canada (Anderson, 2009; Stein, 2020), as well as ‘non-western’ colonial/‘civilising’ regimes, such as Japan, China, and Soviet Russia (Vickers, 2020), and in schooling contexts (for example, Rahman, 2013). To enact care-as-knowing through anti-racist, redressive, and recognitive action, Nakata’s (2007) notion of the cultural interface can help to negotiate the possibilities and complexities of working with and against the binary of western/non-western onto-epistemologies, crafting space for pluri-epistemic dialogue and thus enacting epistemic care. One such care-full area of potential, working at the cultural interface, is the possibilities offered through decolonising the curriculum and teaching practices. While there are myriad challenges, not least institutional resistance to doing this beyond the surface, and the difficulty of choosing whose voices are heard/represented (Seats, 2022), there is a clear appetite to advance this social justice project, particularly in postcolonial countries like Australia where there is no treaty (yet) or mandated constitutional representation of Indigenous voice in politics. Higher education systems,

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however, do have a mandate to include Indigenous, and to a lesser extent, subaltern content into their curricula as part of what Acton et al. (2017) describe as an agenda of cultural sustainability. Such redressive curricula reforms are also underway in South Africa, as part of an imperative described by Gwaravanda (2019) as the ‘Africanization’ of the South African academy, which aims to prioritise African epistemology in higher education, ‘justifying its uniqueness through showing the elements of relationality, dependence, and interdependence’ and where ‘Communalistic knowledge replaces I with We’. Such efforts belie the kinds of caring values that need to underpin epistemic justice initiatives. Caring Values in Higher Education The axiological dimension of a caring philosophy of education requires us to excavate the values that underpin our construction of higher education. According to Bengsten and Barnett (2020), the cultural pillar of the academy values the democratic citizenry—‘the acquisition of a character fitted for the world’ (p. 12)—as well as interest in the development of capabilities that will help students to engage in the betterment (including transformation if needed), and respect for free speech and reasoned debate. Bengsten and Barnett (2020) summarise the cultural pillar as constituting/constituted by ‘value-empathy’ or ‘cultural-empathy’, which they describe as including ‘the epistemic, cognitive, existential, and personal ability to see, feel, and act into foreign and strange value systems and moral preferences and choices’ (p. 15). This, we contend, constitutes a caring educational aim for higher education. The four pillars as described by Bengsten and Barnett (2020) do not sit in isolation; like all critical ideas, each component bleeds into the other and is made possible by the conditions of collaboration, community, and cooperation. The notion of (higher) education as a communal growth project—and not one restricted to economic growth—is also found in the care literature. Noddings’ work foregrounds the moral, ethical, and citizenry aspects of education, with her ideas about moral education premised on the idea that education can contribute to the development of ‘a more caring, ethical society’ (1984, p. 180). Building on this foundational work, other scholars have extended the idea of moral and caring

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education. For example, the notion of ‘educare’,5 derived from early childhood pedagogy, offers a holistic understanding of the interconnections between caring for whole person and education. This holistic notion represented a move away from the dominant teacher-centred focus on cognitive education; indeed, as Warin (2014) notes, ‘The term “educare” has the potential to help us to elevate the status of care and take it seriously’ (p. 102). While the term ‘educare’ has not been explicitly applied to the higher education context, the idea of considering the whole person in a way that highlights the centrality and importance of care as part of teaching for democracy has been considered by scholars. One such scholar is bell hooks, who advocates for ‘engaged pedagogy’ as a progressive and holistic approach to teaching in higher education. The idea behind engaged pedagogy is that teaching should be exciting and fun, and a joint project for students and teachers, with care at the heart: To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn. That learning process comes easiest to those of us who teach who also believe that there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred, who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can deeply and intimately begin. (hooks, 1994, p. 13)

In line with the ideas behind epistemic care, care as an educational aim is grounded in critical, emancipatory views of education that recognise the ways that education can conversely discriminate and disadvantage if assumptions and power dynamics go unchecked. The care-full opportunities offered by a holistic approach to education are critically eroded by neoliberal, techno-rationalist understandings of teaching (Warin, 2014). Moreover, the endemic patterns of marginalisation experienced by nondominant groups highlight the importance of attending to the politics of care that leak through the sectors and unfold in micro-violences in the classroom. Articulating a set of nuanced and holistic values about care can help avoid reductive articulations of care, as Clouston (2018) describes:

5 ‘Educare’ is distinguished here from educare, the Latin root for the word ‘education’.

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…compassionate care [is] a tick box exercise as opposed to facilitating a meaningful encounter between two or more people with time to listen, be silent, respond and to reflexively challenge personal mindsets. (p. 1019)

Working with the idea of care as an educational aim requires a reflexive unpacking on the part of the teacher (as well as parents and students) about what we hold/assume to be the ontological, epistemological, and axiological dimensions of higher education, with our assumptions unbracketed from the idea that our beliefs and values may close off care to some people. Following Zembylas’ (2017a) argument, it is difficult to suspend our assumptions and develop empathy if we are not supported to do so through a pedagogy of discomfort, which offers a tool for opening space to unpack, feel, and explore the impacts of our assumptions and biases on others. In making this argument, Zembylas foregrounds the role of power and the socio-ethico-political shape of higher education, thereby challenging the idea that caring is neutral (and arguably also contests the idea that caring is ‘natural’) and highlighting the contested perceptions, processes, and practices that it constitutes: Caring teaching becomes “critical”, when it recognises that caring itself is an act full of tensions and ambivalences; hence, enacting caring teaching is an ethical and political practice involving relations that cannot simply be mapped onto existing norms of the ethical and the political. (2017a, 14)

A genuine attempt to enact a greater focus on the valuing of care in higher education—whether ontological, epistemic, or ideologically related—therefore necessitates a reimagining of the very structures and values that underpin the contemporary academy itself.

Summary: So, What Do Universities Actually Care About? Thinking about higher education at the philosophical level helps us to articulate the intentions of higher education and where care fits into these. Universities are sites of becoming: important institutions for transitioning from novice to expert, from student to graduate, from knowledge consumer to knowledge translator/creator. These transitions can be uncomfortable and are rarely linear; they often involve missteps

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and pauses, thus requiring care-full supports. Universities are fundamental sites of knowledge, not just in terms of learning and innovation, but also as an arbiter of ‘what counts’. The decolonising project illustrates the complexities of knowing-as-care/caring-as-knowing, especially in colonised contexts where the legacy violence of dispossession creates hostile and abusive spaces for First Nations peoples. The four pillars of higher education that Bengsten and Barnett (2020) describe give us a sense of where the sector’s guiding values intersect with care, but as we will discuss in Chapter 4, these are often (if not always) in tension with the governance and economic imperatives that drive universities as businesses. We consider whose interests, values, and ways of understanding the world are included in each of these forms of care, and whose perspectives and knowledges are excluded.

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CHAPTER 4

What Hinders Care in Higher Education?

Introduction Much has been written about the shifts that have taken place within global higher education: from elite and bounded to massified and (more) open access, with students configured as customers, and universities as ‘service providers’. The literature is replete with critique of contemporary shifts in higher education brought about by uptake of neoliberal ideology and the organising practices of new public managerialism, which have recrafted higher education as a market, dominated by competitive logics, economic priorities, and efficiency targets. Although the situation is nuanced and highly complex, some broad patterns can be described regarding the ideological imperatives behind the changes seen in international higher education sectors over the last four decades. For example, the imperative to open access to higher education to under-represented student groups has been fuelled by both social justice concerns and economic rationalism, with governments concerned about market efficiencies. Similarly, while changes to higher education have been underpinned by a belief in exponential growth in student enrolments, income, and rankings, this has not been accompanied by growth in public funding, essentially forcing universities to embrace the market as a survival mechanism. As Raewyn Connell (2019) brilliantly summarises, this belief in growth is not benign; it has devastating consequences:

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7_4

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…as university systems have grown to their current size, their problems have also grown and toxic effects have been more painfully felt…The prosperity and the problems are deeply linked… (p. 8)

This has all been accompanied by a fervent commitment to a human capital framing, which views each student as an investor in their futures and assumes that each person is equally able to navigate complex systems to understand how to best service that investment. However, in the ever-expanding university, traditional assumptions about what students know and can do have been displaced by the hyper-diversification of the student body. Universities have been complicit in the rapid growth of the international student market to increase their revenue and fill the gaps created by diminishing public investment in public higher education, which has resulted in a much more multicultural and plurilingual cohort, many of whom enter a markedly different education (knowledgemaking, organisational) system from the ones they knew back home. Prior to COVID, Australia’s ‘mercantile approach’ to international education ‘snowballed into… the nation’s biggest service export industry’ (Ross, 2020a, p. 1351). Likewise, efforts to widen access to previously un- and underrepresented groups have created a more diverse student (and staff) cohort, with students bringing a commensurately rich and diverse range of experiences, expectations and needs to their studies (Gayton, 2020). The assumptions that the academy was built on—responding to students who were largely male, middle class, host language fluent, articulants from a particular cohort of schools—no longer hold weight. And yet they persist in a variety of ways. And while universities often mirror the shifting discourses and ideologies of society at large, this does not excuse their responsibility in maintaining existing traditions, rituals, hierarchies, and other exclusive practices which continue to privilege some and marginalise others. Again, turning to Connell (2019), we should be mindful of the danger of only perpetuating discussions of universities as passive recipients of broader changes; rather, ‘it is vital to recognize that universities and schools themselves are highly active in making inequalities’ (p. 101).

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Unfettered Growth and Being Competitive in Educational Markets Neoliberalism is an ideology that is fundamentally concerned with pushing responsibility away from the governing institution (the state, the university) onto the individual through a belief that the market will sort things out. In higher education, this is partly achieved through explicit tactics, such as the charging of fees for the cost of study, but much of this ideological work in shaping policies, practices, and people is furtive, implicit, and hegemonic. In higher education, John Smyth (2017) describes neoliberalism as an ‘alien interloper’ (p. 27), evoking a parasitical metaphor that, while dramatic, is recognisable to many working in universities across the world. How did this marketised, competitive, economically-driven ideology take hold in higher education—bastions of knowledge production and staffed (in theory at least) by the brightest and most critical in society? The roots of neoliberalism are evident in the economic policies of Pinochet (Chile), then Thatcher (UK) and Reagan (US) in the 1980s but reducing reliance on the public purse through individualisation and raising capital through privatisation of public resources was a seductive idea for many governments after widespread recessions. Subsequent reductions in public investment in higher education—resulting from this shift of responsibility to the individual—fuelled the creation of the global higher education marketplace, with universities competing against each other for students (particularly lucrative international students in preCOVID times), rankings, reputation, and—ultimately—income. Ryan et al. (2017) summarise this as a process whereby the ‘government reallocates and reduces public funds to universities, encouraging userpays options and deregulating to allow market competition-tying public funding to specific results’ (p. 59). This corporatisation of higher education has induced universities ‘to conduct themselves more and more like profit-seeking firms’ (Connell, 2013b, 102). It is no accident that this ideological shift corresponded with the massification of the sector, with expansion of the zeitgeist for the last four decades. As Connell (2019) summarises: A key to the change is that governments began to treat universities, not as cooperating parts of a public education system, but as separate firms, competing in a market and making contracts with the state as

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service providers… Education became the making of human capital; public servants became managers; and cut-throat competition was made to appear natural. Public universities were not only surrounded by a cloud of companies trying to make a profit from them, they were also corporatized from within. (p. 118)

Overall, these market-based reforms have resulted in both growth— larger and more complex organisations, larger and more diversified student cohorts, larger and fiercer competition—and in reduction—less job security, fewer resources, less time, and less care. As will be discussed in Chapter 6 and throughout the book, these reforms have led to significant demoralisation and detrimental effects on mental health and wellbeing. As discussed in Chapter 2, the privileging of economic rationales and the incessant imperative to measure efficiency has critically eroded the conditions needed for care. Abel and Nelson (1990) note how the very nature of caregiving—as ‘intrinsically unpredictable’ (p. 13)— jars with the bureaucratic efficiency of the competitive and corporate university. For educational markets to be created and sustained, competitive dis/ advantage is necessary because inequality is central to the success of the market; for someone to gain, someone else must lose (Connell, 2013a). In higher education, in particular, ‘exclusion is vital. There need to be visible losers, if parents are to be persuaded to pay for their children to become winners’ (Connell, 2013a, p. 282; see also Blackmore, 2009). Education both depends on and perpetuates the ‘haves and have-nots’ through the hegemonic reproduction of privilege which exists under the guise of ‘meritocracy’, and the insidious power of the market is retained through the promotion of the idea of scarcity (Clarke, 2014). With this in mind, we can see how the social justice imperative of widening participation to under-represented cohorts, such as financially disadvantaged, First Nations, rural-background, out-of-home-care, refugee background students, is a fantasy—constantly eroded by the systems and ideologies that promote participation for economic, rather than justice, reasons. Clarke (2014) likens the premise of equity and quality as ‘sublime objects’, circulating in ‘a “fantasmatically” complete and harmonious world… in which the tensions between equity and a quality agenda premised on notions of choice and accountability are occluded’ (p. 587).

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Returning to Abel and Nelson’s (1990) argument, using metrics to evaluate caregiving in higher education (remembering that it is difficult to land on a definition) ‘inevitably involves distortion’ (p. 13). A key apparatus of the market that relies on the notion of scarcity is competition. Universities have zealously embraced the ‘competition fetish’ (Naidoo, 2016). In a jostling marketplace that is both national and global, universities compete against each other in the pursuit of revenue and reputation, with investments in reputational capital (marketing departments, business consultants, public relations) expected to yield profits with increased student enrolments, research funding, philanthropic donations, and favourable public perception. Such claims are made through ‘marketese’ the new corporate language of the academy, with all universities professing to be excellent, world-class, leading, global; indeed, in Marion Bowl’s (2018) analysis of public university materials, she found that higher-ranking universities all professed ‘excellence’, using their position in global ranking systems (which are, of course, an ideological and political construction) to interpellate this. In contrast, Bowl found that lower-ranking institutions linguistically position themselves in servitude to business, to be seen as serving the needs of the local economy. Despite these clear patterns of language use, Bowl found that all universities work hard to present themselves as ‘distinct’ from other universities, with buzzwords like differentiation and distinctiveness employed, so as to ‘soften of the harder edges of competitive differentiation’ (2018, p. 684). Such attempts at concealment tell an interesting story about the market-based shape of higher education: universities do not want to be seen in these hard and uncaring terms, preferring to co-opt softer, more inclusive language of social justice and ‘care’ to promote their competitive agenda. This linguistic trickery can be seen in the ways that the discourses of equity, inclusivity, diversity, and social mobility are taken up by universities to excuse and conceal their economic goals. As Rizvi (2013) reminds us, ‘the success of neoliberalism lies in the fact that it continues to use such traditionally socially democratic notions as equity but has been enormously successful in re-articulating their meaning into market terms’ (p. 276). Commensurately, a separate linguistic turn has colonised the communicative terrain of the academy: the language of numbers. As Bob Lingard (2011) compellingly argues, numbers are used as simplifiers in increasingly complex times, but this ‘political arithmetic’ (p. 356) is dangerously reductive, failing to tell the full story and being easier to manipulate if the data can be skewed. The legitimisation of

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numbers in education, in the guise of enrolment numbers, percentages of equity cohorts, attrition, retention and success figures, funding dollars in, dollars invested in shiny new buildings, etc., has led to the diminishment of the human behind the numbers and is an active contributor to the prevalent undermining of the relational (human–human) in higher education. In line with the competitive logics of neoliberal ideology are the practices of new public managerialism, with its attention to accountability, measurement, and efficiency. The language of numbers described by Lingard (2011) and others is a direct response to the increased need to measure and report, to account and defend, often in short-term cycles rather than with long-term planning. As Blackmore (2009) lamented, ‘Audits for accountability rather than evaluation for improvement are the easy way to manage risk and quality’ (p. 869). For example, in the case of equitable participation in higher education, Lingard et al. (2014) warned how reliance on ‘number-rich measures of equity’ creates ‘multiple layers of technical and numerical mediation to measure equity’, which serve to abstract complex sets of phenomena that cause/represent (in)equity into ‘graphs, grids, league tables and indices’ (p. 711). When such quantification is the only way of accounting for equity, it denies the social justice imperatives and the humanity behind the imperative to grow the system. Such reliance on numbers to improve the representation of under-represented groups serves to preserve the political will, rather than contribute to the cultural and structural reform needed to make higher education more equitable. For university staff, the conditions of new managerialist models of higher education—characterised by increasing hyper-competitiveness, and reduced resources and job stability—have created and sustained the ‘undercaring’ system that they are abused by and complicit in. O’Brien (2010) points to challenges of intensified workload of academics, casualisation, personal life, and own caring needs, especially when the caring is often one-sided (teachers caring, rarely the ones being cared for): ‘Teachers might feel more cared for if institutions were more caring, if they were seen as more than interchangeable workers in the academy’s market economy’ (p. 114). Moreover, as Lynch (2010) compellingly argues, carelessness in modern higher education is considered ‘morally worthy’. All staff who have limits (imposed or decided) on their capacity to work (and care by association) are disadvantaged with idealised neoentrepreneurial subjectivities: ‘Women and men [and others] who cannot

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work unpaid hours are likely to be severely disadvantaged within the academy’ (2010, p. 58), which Walker and Gleaves (2016) characterise as ‘caring as less than’, in the ways that it subordinates and disadvantages those higher education teachers who dare to care. Similarly, Mariskind (2014) argues: When universities foster individualism and competition between staff, it can be difficult for a caring community to thrive, especially if care is based on a shared responsibility to ensure that all people can live fulfilling lives. (p. 309)

Rosalind Gill (2016) famously wrote about this candidly in her article ‘Academia without walls’, writing evocatively about how ‘This individualising discourse devours us like a flesh-eating bacterium, producing its own toxic waste – shame: I’m a fraud, I’m useless, I’m nothing. It is (of course) deeply gendered, racialised and classed, connected to biographies that produce very different degrees of “entitlement” (or not)’ (p. 51). Further consensus comes from Barnacle and Dall’Alba (2017), who argue that a key problem with dominant student engagement strategies is the need to forego the personal for the public, meaning ‘there is an expectation [that] personal values be set aside or surrendered in favour of values that support a performativity agenda’ (p. 9). This privileging of performativity erodes possibilities for open-ness and risk, with care arguably recognised only when it is professionalised. However, for many university educators, given the competitive logics that privilege individualistic success (in the guise of successful grant applications, publications, citations, metrics of productivity), sadly, Lynch’s lament from 2010, that ‘to be a successful academic is to be unencumbered by caring’ (p. 63), still holds true over a decade later. Higher Education as a Public or Private Good? The shifts in ideology and practice have fed into discussions about the shifting place of higher education in society, and the role (that should be) played. The question of whether universities are public or private goods sits at the heart of issues relating to (un/der)care. According to Connell (2019) universities ‘represent, collectively, a tremendous social asset, produced by the effort of many thousands of workers and students

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over long periods of time’ (p. 8). However, the notion of higher education as a public good, with knowledge produced to support society and to produce better-educated citizens, has shifted in line with the push of investment away from the state and onto the individual, and with the rise of rampant globalisation. As Connell (2013b) scathingly notes, ‘The education system as a whole comes to stand, not for the common interest and self-knowledge of the society, but for ways to extract private advantage at the expense of others’ (p. 106). With global economies increasingly reliant on knowledge economies rather than manual labour, the ‘goods’ of higher education have shifted from ‘the role universities play in challenging, critiquing and holding society to account’ (Williams, 2016, p. 628) to the production of future employees. Higher education is also viewed as a key vehicle for social mobility on the global stage, leading to what Tierney and Almeida (2017) describe as a shift in responsibility for higher education, ‘from a public obligation to a private need’ (p. 101). This has also contributed massively to the growth of the international student market, with cosmopolitan student mobility viewed as a key developer of competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive job market. In the domestic context, the literature speaks to similar methods of leveraging resources and insider knowledge through classed networks to make higher education choices to protect and sustain existing advantage (Cook et al., 2019; Mavelli, 2014), which is both constituted and constituting of the stratification of elite professions, courses, and institutions. As such, the question of whether higher education is a public good has essentially become a question of who pays, and who benefits. Rather than knowledge production being the primary role, with universities legitimised as sites of knowledge production, the increased focus on economic growth has inverted this relationship, with universities now being viewed as in service of the needs of the economy (Tierney & Almeida, 2017; Williams, 2016). Moreover, with institutions and individuals contributing more to the costs of studying, the ownership and main beneficiaries of knowledge production have shifted from the state/society to the institution/individual, meaning the notion of public good has changed, according to Williams (2016) to ‘no longer [be] perceived to be extended to everyone in society but only to those who had experienced HE themselves or directly employed graduates’ (p. 626). This, as Edmond and Berry (2014) argue, has resulted in the privatisation and commodification of higher education and knowledge ‘goods to be bought, sold and

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bid for along with housing, healthcare, energy and basic transportation’ (p. 5). An (unfortunate) outcome of this marketisation and commodification of higher education and competition for students is a fundamental shift in how students are seen, which very much aligns with whether education is viewed (and treated) as a public or a private good. The push to students-as-consumers is part of what Mars et al. (1997) famously termed ‘academic capitalism’. Although their work focused on the shifts in academic labour following the mass-marketisation of higher education, this notion of academic capitalism has significant implications for students too. Within this increasingly marketised sector, Blackmore (2009) argues that students are positioned as consumers (‘user pays’), which raises complex ethical questions about the shape and purpose of higher education. As Blackmore asks, ‘Is teaching and learning in a university based on professional and pedagogical principles, or the contractual arrangements of a producer–consumer relationship?’ According to Bunce et al. (2016), the student-as-consumer position has a direct impact on students’ identification as learners, and with their academic performance. In their UK survey of students, these authors found that a lower learner identity was directly associated with a higher consumer orientation, as was grade goal, with a higher grade goal related to a higher consumer orientation, and fee responsibility and subject choice also positively associating with a consumer orientation. Similarly, Tomlinson’s (2017) study of UK students identified a range of attitudes and subject positions on a scale of student-consumer from active service-user, to positioned consumer, to non-consumer. He argues that the transfer of positioning and contract between university and student has resulted in the uptake of utilitarian values and attitudes, which are reflected in ‘increasing concerns about their “returns”, relative academic performance (grades outcomes) and how their credentials may be consumed by others in the marketplace (their “employability” and “attributes”)’ (p. 465). In line with the student-as-consumer discourse driven by neoliberalism and marketisation is the creation of what Mars et al. (2008) call the ‘state-sponsored student entrepreneur’. The commodification of education and increased servitude to business and the economy has led to the rise of employability and graduate outcomes discourses circulating in higher education systems. With quality of higher education provision increasingly measured (and commodified) according to the ‘employability’ of graduates (Christie, 2017), consumerist attitudes prevail. However,

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as scholars have noted, the notion of choice and employability is incredibly ‘slippery’ (Christie, 2017), again representing the ways that ideology co-opts seemingly transparent and sensible ideas like ‘choice’ to function as part of the marketised apparatus that creates high/low status dichotomies that fuel (empty) ideas about higher education’s role in social mobility: course, profession, institution, country. As Fiona Christie’s (2017) critique illuminates, this constellation of foregrounded ‘informed choice’ and backgrounded market forces, ‘ostensibly encourages prospective students to choose a course based on relevance to an imagined future employment status as defined by a percentage point in a comparative list’ (p. 407). The dominance of the employability agenda fuels the fetishisation of the future that scholars such as Marianna Papastephanou (2015) and Sue Clegg (2010) critique. As Clegg (2010, p. 346) noted, higher education policy ‘assumes a future in which students are projected as good, neoliberal, employable subjects’ (p. 346), which is at odds with the reflections of the students in her study, which Clegg described as ‘messy, fluid and looked to the past as well as the future’ (p. 357). What the graduate metrics and employability statistics don’t tell prospective students is the way that professions are deeply skewed towards those who have the money and networks for positional protection. The ideas of (consumer) choice and social mobility are undermined by an unequal context, where the outcomes of higher education (whether measured holistically or by numerical calculations of ‘graduate outcomes’) are unevenly distributed. The hegemonic shape of higher education and its reproductive character in perpetuating existing (classed, racialised, gendered) power (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990), plays out not only in terms of access to university study, but also in post-graduation opportunities. In the Australian context, Tim Pitman, and colleagues’ (2019) analysis of graduate survey data for relationships between disadvantage and graduate outcomes shows that equity cohorts are both helped and hindered in employment outcomes. In the postcolonial Australian context (albeit without treaty to mandate recognition of First Nations peoples and the impacts of intergenerational trauma), it is perhaps unsurprising that affirmative employment policies ensure that First Nations students do well with graduate outcomes, despite struggling with entry and participation. In contrast, Pitman et al. found that women in non-traditional areas and non-English speaking background graduates struggle with both entry and graduate outcomes. As will be discussed in the following section, ideas about being able to ‘even the field’ through widening participation and

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equitable access agendas are fantastical in the context of neoliberal higher education structures and realities and have important implications for the role and practice of care in staff and student experiences. The Growth of the Student ‘Market’: Massification and Diversification The growth in the higher education sector is a significant backdrop for this consideration of care, particularly in terms of recognising and negotiating needs and responses of a hyper-diversified student and staff population, and the commensurate diversity of experiences, histories, and needs. Irrespective of the imperative—and they jostle for primacy, for widening participation cannot be reduced to any one agenda—the massification and diversification of the student body has created both opportunities and challenges for universities that are directly relevant to institutional ethics of care and capacity to care. While the discourses of access, diversity, and inclusion have circulated in higher education for decades—often used, as we saw previously, for marketing and garnering reputational currency—responses to this cohort have often been stacked, if not limited to, ‘getting students in’. There has been variable attention to supporting the diversified cohort with their studies, and little that has attended to their transitioning out of their studies (Baker et al., 2021). This is a marked omission in the context of over-reliance on international students as a source of revenue (the consequences of which have been brought into sharp focus by the hyper-disruption of COVID), and particularly in the context of widening participation (Gayton, 2020). While too numerous to discuss in detail, we will outline two significant areas of reform that have radically changed the contours of higher education. Firstly, the agenda to widen participation to ‘non-traditional’ students, with ‘traditional’ students being male, middle/upper class, privately educated, able-bodied, dominant language-speaking, metropolitan dwellers, has resulted in a massively diversified student cohort. Secondly, the project of globalisation has offered both new mobilities and new inequities across geographic regions, cultures, and timescapes, with a significant result for universities being the development and competition for the international student market. The imperative to grow higher education systems is often couched in social justice terms, like equity, access, inclusion, and diversity. Universities celebrate their roles in opening access to a wider and more diverse cohort of students (and staff), borrowing heavily from the language of

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marketing to sell a story of leadership and excellence in this field (Bowl, 2018). The ideas behind increasing access to a broader audience of students to ameliorate the relative dis/advantage brought by socioeconomic status, Indigeneity, geographic location, language background, and caring responsibilities are difficult to challenge: who can argue against the seemingly benign discourses of equity and inclusion? However, there are many challenges to doing so in a system that is deeply and historically skewed towards a small cohort of ‘traditional’ students, and within a capitalist and commodified education system. In particular, the reinforcement of higher education as a marketplace means that creating and protecting positional advantage is priority, with the project of equitable participation a key challenge to this because supporting under-represented students to access, engage, and succeed requires resources that could be used to build competitive advantage (Marginson, 2011; Mavelli, 2014; Williams, 2016). As neoliberalism relies on the notion of scarcity to strengthen the market and retain a hegemonic hold on the premium outcomes (for example, income, resources, decision-making roles), perception of status is a university’s ‘primary currency’ (Marginson, 2011), albeit not the message that universities want to communicate, hence the persistent marketing about social inclusion and diversity in university public-facing materials. This argument of artifice—evoking the allegory of the emperor’s new clothes again—has been illustrated by many insightful (and scathing) scholars. For example, in her analysis of the overlaps between neoliberal and widening participation discourses/agendas, Mavelli (2014) notes how widening participation has become part of the ‘neoliberal episteme’, with this ambiguity working as ‘a disciplining framework, which restricts the students’ horizon of who they are and what they could become by turning them into another cog in the machine of neoliberal accumulation’ (p. 864). The dominance of discourses of aspiration, as found in higher education equity policies and architectures that focus on school outreach to increase university participation, is also problematic. In their critical analysis of Australian equity policies, Southgate et al. (2014) identify two subject positions for potential students: the cap(able) individua (a ‘naturally able’ student with a ‘highly individualised and entrepreneurial disposition’, p. 29) and the proper aspirant (a student who displays the capacity ‘to rationally calculate pathways to and through higher education… for maximum benefit’, p. 35). In both these subject positions, aspiration conceals a ‘neoliberal form of hope’ (p. 38), strongly linked

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to (false) belief in the equalising/‘lifting’ potential of a university degree for social mobility. As Williams (2016) notes, this sales-pitch—dressed up as social justice—is sold to the masses ‘as a means of increasing access to the private benefits of HE gained by graduates which take the form of higher earnings and increased job security’ (p. 622), but is much more likely to create advantage for middle-class students, who Williams argues are ‘more likely to embrace this subject position of the entrepreneurial, ever-strategising “go-getter”’ (p. 439). A significant challenge to the social justice project of widening participation—not to be confused with the economic imperative to increase the future knowledge economy workforce—is the vagueness of its rationale; as Stevenson et al. (2010) argue, while governments’ reasons for massifying the student body remain ambiguous (dressed up as social justice but with deep economic roots), ‘[equity] practice is likely to remain the preserve of committed individuals, and, at the local level, will be largely incapable of having a sustained impact on broader institutional cultures and discourse’ (p. 105). This ambiguity and the pushing of responsibility to individuals, often taken up in forms of Organisational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB; see Chapter 6), is particularly pertinent to discussions of care/ing in higher education, as will be discussed throughout the book. A related challenge to the social justice imperative is the policy slippage that allows (promotes) a shallow and short-term approach to equity. In the Australian context, the funding and policy mechanism that directs university equity work is annually allocated, which inadvertently promotes reactive approaches that are counter-productive to making the systemic, structural, and cultural changes needed to disrupt endemic educational disadvantage. As Singh and Mountford-Zimdars (2016) report from the UK context, a lack of clarity in terms of what counts as ‘impact’, and the competitive backdrop (which can play out as recruitment for students in outreach activities in local areas) privileges individual (rather than collaborative) progress, resulting in less collaboration. As a result, these authors found that the two universities in their case study ‘prioritise[d] short-term returns over serving the national common good of enhancing access to higher education for a wider range of students who have the ability to benefit’ (p. 41). However, this is not to say that the challenges fully obscure the opportunities for care presented by the ever-changing conditions. As we discussed above, the massified and diversified student body has created complications for universities in terms of anticipating and responding to

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students’ needs, but a more diverse cohort offers rich lessons in terms of how to provide care-full responses that push against the paternalistic assumptions that have oft-characterised higher education (Lynch, 2010; Lynch et al., 2007; Wood, Swanson & Colley, 2020). There are, therefore, opportunities to reshape the way we ‘do business’ and care in universities, through meaningful consultation with students and community-led participation in establishing care needs, responses, and collaboration, rather than unidirectional, extractive (uncaring) modes of collecting ‘the student voice’. More than anything, the diversified cohort helps to remind us that no one part of the university can be responsible for care; rather it is everyone’s responsibility.

Working in Higher Education: Competition, Acceleration, Precarity In line with shifts in the neoliberal shape of higher education, the nature of academic work has radically shifted. Rather than (outdated) views of academics as leisurely involved in pursuing their own interests and lines of inquiry, university workers experience the typical motifs of any entrepreneurial organisation: competition, acceleration, accountability, and insecurity. These market-driven imperatives have radically shifted the lived experience (or what John Smyth wryly calls ‘getting an academic life’) of working in ‘whackademia’ (Hil, 2012), eroding the ‘traditional’ ideas of academic work: ‘a cushy, nice, clean, well-paid, and not too demanding job, with lots of holidays’, according to Smyth (2017, p. 4), with tongue firmly in cheek. As O’Dwyer et al. (2018) note, ‘there is never enough time, the clock is against us, we are behind schedule, tasks take too much time, time is running out’ (p. 244). Contemporary descriptions of academic work are peppered with negative accounts of where we find ourselves: hurried, overworked, underresourced (human and material resources), bullied. Indeed, the genre of ‘quit lit’ attests to the horrors some have experienced in their pursuit of an academic career (the same logics are also experienced by professional staff members, but these receive much less attention than their academic counterparts). For many workers, academic and professional, the myriad challenges include balancing work and life; negotiating and prioritising personal and professional expectations; navigating career aspirations; locating and utilising supports. These are all intensified for people

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who care whether caring as a parent, a child, a colleague, or an educator, and for those who receive care. The (mostly negative) accounts of shifting academic work are a longstanding feature in the academic literature and industry press. Such challenges are particularly acute for Early Career Academics (ECAs) in a higher education context characterised by McKay and Monk (2017) as a sporting arena, complete with ‘shifting goal posts and an elusive finishing line’ (p. 1252). Taking the metaphor even further, these authors describe experiences of higher education as both a marathon and a sprint, reflecting the fast and slow tempos of the university (see below), arguing that academics require ‘the stamina of athletes’ to endure the ever-shifting accountability challenges. The pressures are different, but the unevenness and insecurity inherent in the higher education context means challenges are still prevalent for mid- and later-career academics (Acker & Wagner, 2019; Casey & Fletcher, 2017), and for professional staff (Bailey et al., 2017). In what follows, we examine how the literature talks about the insidious forces of stratification and competition, how these conditions impact on academic work and inequities within the higher education workforce, before discussing the hostility experienced by casualised employees who are trapped on the outer periphery in insecure work, and the implications for care. Stratification, Individualisation, Competition Work in universities is highly stratified across all the domains: discipline (Faculty-Department- School), role (academic, professional; balanced role; research or teaching only; student-facing, manager), level of responsibility. Universities are also siloed, with processes and structures hindering the cultivation of more ecological practices (for example, holistic knowledge and resource sharing). This stratified shape serves the requirements of the corporate university to be lean and competitive; however, the efficiency drive also results in the reduction of ongoing positions and subsequent erosion of work rights, and the creation of the ‘academic precariat’ (Rajagopal, 2017), which perpetuates gender inequality with women doing the majority of the casualised ‘academic housework’ (O’Keefe & Courtois, 2019: see below for further discussion of gendered marginalisation in higher education).

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Contemporary higher education is frequently characterised as a competition for excellence, or a ‘survival of the fittest’ (Browning et al., 2017), fuelling a problematic fetishization of overwork (Moran, 2020). The affective dimensions of this way of living – and the impact on capacity to care – cannot be understated. As Hey (2004) argues, competition is both seductive and regressive: seductive for the person who feels they are ‘winning’ and regressive for those who are struggling to keep up, and someone can oscillate (wildly, sometimes) between these two points on the affective spectrum. As we will discuss briefly later in this chapter, and at length in Chapters 5 and 6, these paradoxical feelings of un/ der/worth are significantly influenced by gender, as well as social class, ethnicity, sexuality, familial connections to higher education, and myriad other intersectional factors. To be competitive, success in external grant funding is key for individual academics, schools and faculties, and institutions. Applying for research funding, even if not successful, is glorified—evidenced in universities by the preponderance of resources dedicated to ‘pre-grant’ administration. Grant applications symbolise activity, ambition, and accomplishment; they are considered fundamental to building an academic career and becoming a research leader (Acker & Wagner, 2019; Browning et al., 2017). However, the pressure—external and internal—to be successful in competitive research funding creates paradoxical challenges, using up valuable resources (time, energy, relationships) despite the low odds of being funded. Ylijoki (2014) calls this the ‘projectification’ of research, creating short-term and siloed research activity, which has significant implications for time (see later in this chapter). Moreover, the politics of research funding are highly significant and can create high levels of anxiety; in 2021, public announcement of Australian Research Council funding was delayed until Christmas Eve, at which point it transpired that six projects recommended for funding had been vetoed by the (acting) Minister for Education. Such political interference is not new in Australia at least, but it is anti-democratic and has led to fury from international academics (Lu, 2022). The question of whether the cost of ‘paying the piper’ is worth it remains a thorny issue. Casey and Fletcher (2017) respond to this question in their self-study of reaching mid-career status; Ashley (Casey), reflecting on the imperative to apply for grants to become (seen as, feel like) a research leader, writes:

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In all honesty I don’t actually have the time to undertake the project I’ve just applied for and in some respects I have to hope I don’t get it. However, it was more of a case that I couldn’t afford not to apply. If I want to be taken seriously by the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research I need to be seen to aspire for this sort of stuff. (2017, p. 114)

These competitive logics force an individualising, surveilling gaze on the work undertaken in higher education, including domains such as teaching and learning, where student satisfaction surveys—conceived as a method for evaluating and improving teaching—rank educators based on student feedback. At the same time, this allows the institution to pull back, safe in the knowledge that academics will persist in their attempts because of passion for the topic, as well as the seductiveness of the ‘fear of shame’ and ‘thrill of fame’ that competition enforces (Brøgger, 2016). Therefore, the competitive domain can recreate subjectivities in terms of ‘competitor first, colleague second’. In such circumstances, care inevitably falls by the wayside, with competition and self-investment replacing other values, ‘such as kindness, social justice and a love of learning in academia/for academics’ (Clegg & Rowland, 2010, p. 721). Academic Work Under Surveillance Plenty has been written on changes to academic work and working conditions. A key theme in these accounts is the narrowing gaze of the new public management approach, characterised by its obsession with audit culture and efficiency. The productivity imperative is at the heart of institutional aspirations for expansion and increased profit. For academics, this is illustrated by the much maligned ‘publish or perish’ culture in academia, because of the high value currency that publications command as a quantifiable and measurable output of the more intangible and messier knot of practices that constitute ‘research’. This focus on tangible products of work (grant income, publications—especially peer-reviewed articles in top-quartile journals—international research collaborations) fuels self-involvement and perpetuates the dominance of research activity in academic work, and although other components of academic work (teaching, administration, community engagement) are also counted and listed, these tend to be afforded less significance by management. As we will discuss in the next section, the allocation of time and prioritisation of other, more urgent activities such as teaching and administration, can

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easily leave research to be side-lined (Archer, 2008; Miller, 2019). While academics still have some semblance of autonomy and agency to direct their time, the myriad forms of surveillance actively undermine this ‘freedom’; as Raewyn Connell (2019), argues: ‘In relation to the academic and operations staff, the auditing regime embeds distrust. No university worker is trusted to just get on with their job and do it competently’ (p. 130). The surveillance, particularly self-surveillance, is a key mechanism for enacting the entrepreneurial-neoliberal agenda of productivity + efficiency = profit. Surveillance is a central part of education—without assessment or evaluation, for example, we would not know how effective our teaching is, nor know how to adapt it. However, as Collier and Ross (2020) note, surveillance is unevenly enacted across groups, spaces, and times. In research-intensive universities, the valued products of research may also be made public through ranking technologies (nominally created to help with promotion applications), which visualise the achievements of colleagues across a School, Department or Faculty, effectively pitting colleague against colleague in terms of who demonstrates the most ‘productiveness’. This creates competitive, consumerist subjectivities, driven by what Valerie Hey (2004) calls a ‘desiring economy’, which creates ‘more infantile and regressive modes – we want more – more, more, more - to be “world class” to be “simply the best”’ (p. 34). And because not everyone can (or actually wants to be) ‘the best’, these are fruitful conditions for the cultivation of anxiety and guilt (there are too many accounts to do justice to, but see Amsler & Motta, 2019; Casey & Fletcher, 2017; Shahjahan, 2020). Avoiding such surveillance is almost impossible; for instance, if an academic does apply for a promotion, they are forced to be complicit in using these ranking technologies to demonstrate to promotion committees that they are ‘better’ than (or at least as good as) peers working at the next level. Creating fear of risk is a key condition for institutions to exert power through surveillance, both external and internal (Foucault, 1985), which inevitably shifts our attention away from others and onto our entrepreneurial self/survival, looking to endure what Archer (2008, p. 400) calls ‘the new managerialist demand for success to be constantly made and remade’. Chatelier and Rudolph (2018) capture how this insidious narrowing of the gaze operates from policy to practice, with ‘policy discourse [promoting] selfresponsibilisation as an expression of the enterprising self—technologised by accountability and audit measures within the market-based logics of

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neoliberalism— has shifted the focus of teachers’ care away from the student and onto the teachers’ own need for professional recognition and advancement’ (p. 12). The literature suggests that there are three issues that create caringrelated challenges for people working in higher education. First is that of gender, particularly for those who identify as women and trans people who are structurally disadvantaged by the masculine shape, systems, and expectations of academia. Secondly, the challenge of insecurity— evidenced by mass casualisation of university work (which also has patterns of gendered disadvantage)—has created a sub-class of ‘disposables’ (to use Zygmunt Bauman’s term): precarious staff whose expertise, talents, and potential are squandered. Thirdly, competing timescapes and values related to the ‘strategic’ use of time in higher education have direct implications for the practice of care, which is deeply dependent on the availability of and willingness to use time for the purposes of identifying, assisting, and supporting colleagues and students. Gendered Inequities of Working in Higher Education Gender—understood as a spectrum of choices, subjectivities, and positions rather than a biological dichotomy—creates significant challenges for people working in higher education. Scholars have argued that the culture of academia promotes a (masculine) disposition to expect women and others to do the caring (Lynch, 2010; Sumison, 2000; Wood et al., 2020). Gendered notions circulate throughout education, evident in the idea that school education is a nurturing, feminised sector, whereas higher education is a jobs-focused, self-directed masculine sector (Dowie-Chin & Schroeder, 2022). This masculine energy is seen to emanate from the senior executive team; in Australia, 73% of the vice chancellors of public universities are men and 86% more men hold the senior academic positions of Associate Professor and Professor (Devlin, 2021), which has significant implications for leadership, policy development and the valuing of caring practices. At a broader level, masculine approaches, if seen as synonymous with an un- or undercaring, have significant implications for education, particularly in terms of who is doing the caring, how much (if at all) it is valued, and what role models are available to disrupt such gendered views of care (and vulnerability). As Lynch et al. (2007) succinctly argue,

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Those who have named and known the world academically are disproportionately people (mostly men) whose paradigmatic and domain assumptions are formed in relatively care-free contexts. The domain assumptions of research production, distribution and exchange have been care-free assumptions. (p. 3)

Consequently, as Grummell et al. (2009) surmise, women experience harm at hands of two greedy institutions: the academy and the family/ home, resulting in ‘a “care” ceiling derived from women’s caring work in the home, built from the strong moral imperative on women to be primary carers, an imperative that does not apply equally to men’ (p. 204). As Moreau (2016) argues, the hegemonic masculinity that is prevalent in (senior) management suggests that a care-free subjectivity is both valued and encouraged in universities, perpetuating what she calls ‘the association of the “bachelor boy” with higher education’ (p. 913). These issues strongly align with the economic and competitive imperative that higher education’s investment in neoliberal ideology brings, as discussed earlier in this chapter. In their account of ‘care-less managers’ in Irish higher education, Grummell et al. (2009) foreground how perceptions of care as (gendered) disposition can cause (and be used to cause) significant limitations to women’s opportunities for management. These authors argue that this results from a tacit perception and enactment of a caring disposition that was more evident in their female participants’ discussions of their work; while the women spoke at length about care/impact of care responsibilities on their work, male respondents rarely mentioned care and none of them discussed playing a role in their childcare situations. This is corroborated by Guarino and Borden’s (2017) study of gendered patterns of academics’ service, whose findings provide strong evidence that, on average, women faculty perform more service than male faculty in academia, and that the service differential is driven particularly by participation in internal rather than external service. These authors succinctly argue that their findings strongly suggest that women faculty are shouldering a disproportionately large part of the burden of ‘taking care of the academic family’ (p. 690). This invisible work—while essential for student retention and engagement—has significant impacts on carers’ professional opportunities, taking time away from research and other activities that are valued and rewarded within the neoliberal institution.

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With the widespread commitment of universities to gender charters such as Athena Swan,1 universities have several gender-sensitive policies in response to the endemic disparities between men and other genders. One such policy relates to flexible work, and in particular, the option to go part-time for people (often mothers) returning to work after parenting leave (we could discuss the more prevalent take up of paternity leave as a sign that gendered beliefs about parenting are shifting but alas, no space!). However, despite the option of flexible working, Bailey et al. (2017) study suggests that it is not taken up for three main reasons: people are either unaware of the policy, are under ‘subtle pressure’ to not go part-time or are explicitly discouraged from doing so. The latter reasons are related to the idea that a period of part-time work somewhat erodes career advancement, but also that people with high career aspirations actively self-select out of part-time work. The assumption that women must choose between care responsibilities—both external and internal to their employment in higher education—and career opportunities and aspirations therefore endures despite the existence of part-time and flexible work options. Racialised Inequities of Studying and Working in Higher Education Institutional racism—in all its forms and manifestations—is another key factor that shapes experiences of care (or lack of) in higher education. While diversity is a key zeitgeist for universities, it often exists at the level of rhetoric, rather than a deeper engagement with or resistance to the colonised logics of white privilege, western imperialism, epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988), and English-speaking hegemony. This, Bhopal and Henderson (2021) remind us, is experienced in overt and covert ways: overt in terms of racist behaviours; and covert at the level of not being involved in decision-making, through cultural insensitivity, and what Blell et al. (2023) refer to as ‘cultures of institutional silence and silencing’ (p. 354). In higher education, Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and First Nations students and workers are underrepresented (Bhopal, 2016, 2017; Bunda et al., 2012; Reay, 2018; Pilkington, 1 The Athena Swan accreditation program provides a framework for institutions to benchmark their practices and implement organisational change to work toward gender equity, diversity, and inclusion within higher education. https://sciencegenderequity.org. au/sage-accreditation-and-awards/sage-pathway-to-athena-swan/.

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2018; Stein, 2020); BME and First Nations workers occupy lower positions and experience more impediments to advancement (Bhopal & Henderson, 2021; Pilkington, 2018); and—according to Tronto (1993, 2010, 2013)—undertake a disproportionately high amount of care work. The ways that race plays out in higher education need to be understood as deeply situated and connected to national histories, politics, and dishonesty. In countries like Australia that suffer the legacy violence of colonialism, racism can (and often does) start with overt discrimination against First Nations peoples and extends to migrants. In Australia, where sovereignty was never ceded to the colonists, understandings of diversity (unbelievably) include First Nations communities, inadvertently highlighting white dominance (Reay, 2018) and the frequently tokenistic engagement with cultural and linguistic diversity. In the USA, in contrast, conversations about racial diversity are more amplified—although like First Nations populations in Australia (Amnesty International, 2022), black Americans are much more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans (Nellis, 2021), and demographic statistics show black Americans are paid almost 30% less than white Americans (Ghosh, 2021). For colonising countries like the UK, the logics of colonialism are often untaught and hidden, creating a form of national gaslighting that damages in different ways. Indeed, when the British government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities reported in 2021 that the UK was no longer considered ‘institutionally racist’, Amanda Parker (2021) called it a ‘masterclass in gaslighting’ (para. 3). There are many problematic logics knotted into this thorny issue.2 Underpinning the violence of colonialism and the legacies of slavery, indenture, forced migration, and gross subordination is white privilege (Mirza, 2018). This results in myriad forms of discrimination in the predominantly white academy, recorded in accounts of racial microaggressions and outright racism such as Remi Joseph-Salisbury’s reflection (in Johnson & Joseph-Salisbury, 2018)—as a BME academic—of being asked ‘are you supposed to be in [the staff photocopying room]?’ by a cleaner.

2 We write this as two white women who can only speak to our observations. In full

recognition of the importance of representation, we do not speak to these issues with personal insight, instead seeking to learn from colleagues, students, and scholars who discuss these matters in light of first-hand, lived experience. While fully acknowledging the importance of representation, we also feel that to be silent on these matters would be a further erasure of the issues that Bhopal and other scholars raise.

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Indeed, as Kalwant Bhopal (2016, 2017, 2020) has argued repeatedly across her career, white privilege causes and perpetuates enduring racialised systemic violence against BME staff members, all disguised by pretences of meritocracy and procedural fairness. This, Bhopal argues, is further perpetuated by white scholars (particularly sociologists) who try to avoid discussing white privilege when describing intersectional disadvantage, thus creating a ‘discourse of denial’ (2020, p. 807). In higher education, white privilege persists because the racial frame employed by universities is a ‘colour blind race frame’: A colour blind race frame is based on a perspective that ignores the role that race plays in perpetuating inequalities in society, despite evidence which suggests that this is the case in all areas of life. (Bhopal, 2017, p. 2295)

The result of this race ignorance is that even when affirmative action campaigns are created, such as the Athena SWAN award, BME colleagues remain disadvantaged (Bhopal, 2017). In their comparative analysis of the Athena SWAN award (ASA) and the then-new Race Equality Charter (REC) in the UK higher education context, Bhopal and Henderson (2021) report that race was subordinated to gender in universities’ responses. While university staff report these as useful and important frameworks for engaging in equality work, universities were also fatigued by the reporting requirements of the AWA (as the charter introduced earlier), and therefore sought ‘economising strategies’ for the REC, including combining gender and race. This, Bhopal and Henderson argue, is a ‘backwards step’, especially given ‘the particular discomfort of discussions of race and racism’ (p. 167). They argue that actually, given the endemic and intersecting racial inequalities that the REC captures, universities should invest more rather than fewer resources to completing it meaningfully. These critical issues of institutionalised racism create particular power dynamics in higher education in which universities may ‘articulat[e]ing progressive ideals of care without making concrete systemic changes, while glossing over the unequal fallout resulting from managerial decisions’ (Blell et al., 2023, p. 358). For students too, the impact of institutional racism may be evident in experiences of marginalisation and misrecognition (Fraser, 1995) of their care needs, external responsibilities, and educational histories and repertoires (Baker et al., 2022).

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Classed Inequities of Studying and Working in Higher Education Socioeconomic background, or social class, is a further site of inequity for workers and students in the academy. Higher education remains a site of reproduction of advantage (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990), despite decades of efforts to widen participation and diversify the staff body. For ‘working-class’ staff in higher education, particularly academics, the tensions between the elite structures and systems of higher education, and their own background and ‘working-class habitus’ (Crew, 2020) are often at odds, creating a sense of disconnection, and fuelling ‘imposter syndrome’ (Rickett & Morris, 2021; as can be the case for the gendered and racialised inequities we have outlined previously). This results in constellations of challenge, such as lower levels of familiarity with the academy, uneven access to economic, social and cultural capital, and reduced mobility (Crew, 2020), aligning with similar issues that caregiving academics experience (Henderson & Moreau, 2020). These challenges are amplified for academics on insecure contracts (see the next section). These challenges are pronounced when other classifications of challenge are included (not just race and gender; we could include disability, sexuality, migration pathway, and language spoken to name but a few). In Rickett and Morris’ (2021) study, the experience of working-class women academics can be characterised as exclusionary, or ‘an overarching story of (un)belonging’ and unwelcome (pp. 97–98) because of the way class and gender intersect, with the authors using the metaphor of ‘mopping the tears’ to signify the uneven levels of emotional labour performed by this group under the guise of student support. Linguistic Exclusion The scholarly literature also documents the way that language—as a key form of social practice—shapes participation and in/exclusion in higher education. Students and staff whose languages, dialects, and literate practices fall outside the dominant linguistic landscape of the academy report a range of discriminatory experiences, from a lack of institutional awareness and valuing of plurilingual repertoires and diverse approaches to text, to the hegemonic dominance of English—as the global language—in the dissemination of research. Issues of socioeconomic status and ethnicity sit at the heart of this monolingual mindset in which linguistic practices

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that differ from the language privileged in the academy are either quietly overlooked or explicitly rejected. The differential valuing of diverse linguistic repertoires in higher education is closely linked to socioeconomic and cultural capital in broader society (Crew, 2020). Acknowledging that students and staff are positioned differently in terms of the language that is privileged in teaching, research, and the structures of the university, is therefore essential to equitable participation in higher education. Explicit, tailored, and strengths-based approaches to supporting linguistic engagement with the language of the university while also reinforcing the value of diverse linguistic repertoires is identified by staff and students as a key manifestation of care that is essential to access and engagement (Ryan & Viete, 2009). This form of care is also discussed as requiring time and expertise, and often provided by staff in addition to recognised workload (Burke, 2022). While essential to engagement and participation, this care is routinely identified in the literature as being undervalued or overlooked by the institution.

Casualisation Another key adversity for workers in higher education is what Shahjahan (2020) calls the ‘precarity norm’, created through the new public management human resource practice of reducing personnel costs by cutting ongoing positions and creating a raft of fixed-term or zero-hour contracts to fill the labour gaps. Although this ‘addiction to cheap labour’ (Ryan et al., 2017, p. 59) is not unique to higher education, the scale is immense. In Australia, it is estimated that 70% of the (pre-COVID) workforce were on casual contracts (Harris et al., 2020), and a similar percentage of contract academic staff is reported in Canada (Foster & Birdsell Bauer, 2018); in the UK, the University and College Union (UCU, 2020) report that 67% of researchers, and nearly half of teaching staff are on fixed-term or hourly-paid contracts. The prevalence of mass reliance on insecurely employed staff evokes the metaphor of universities as (at risk of becoming) ‘sweatshops’ (Jones, 2020) because of the precarious conditions it creates: irregular income, inability to plan, institutional invisibility, anxiety, and mental/physical illhealth to name but a few. In the huge culls of staff following COVID, most of the jobs lost have been those of casual colleagues, who have no access to redundancy payments or deployment opportunities, unlike their

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ongoing colleagues (Littleton & Stanford, 2021). And while campaigns for more job security in Australia had relative success in pushing changes to the Fair Work Act to mandate employers to convert casual workers to ongoing roles, less than 1% of casual applications for conversion were successful (Hannam, 2021) because of the challenge of demonstrating one of the criteria: a ‘regular pattern of work’. This lamentable decision (to put it lightly) has happened in the context of ‘systematic’ wage theft, with over half of Australian universities guilty of underpaying their casual staff and forced to repay them (Hare, 2021). The creation of a sub-staff of contingent workers is especially common in the teaching-only category, with 80% of undergraduate teaching undertaken by casual tutors (Moore et al., 2021). These teaching staff are systemically made invisible in the academy; in the main, casual staff are excluded from professional development opportunities, lack training and institutional preparation for shifts to online teaching, lack space to work, and have few opportunities for collegial engagement (Dodo-Balu, 2022). Furthermore, Read and Leathwood (2020) note how the impermanence of casual staff leads to feelings of shame and illegitimacy. The digitalisation of higher education has led to what Collins et al. (2022) call the ‘uberisation’ of academic work: ‘a “nomadic” population of distributed and untethered educational workers’ (p. 212), jostling for work in a ‘higher education gig economy’ (p. 2). And while casual work suits some people (Richardson et al., 2019), if it mostly reduces the expertise, knowledge, and talents of a highly educated group into a gig economy with little hope for ongoing work, this constitutes a shameful waste of potential and resources. All of this means that a huge number of people work with limited rights: no access to sick or holiday leave, no or limited professional development opportunities. As Barcan (2018) notes, its unfairness lies primarily in the curtailing of an academic future through excluding aspiring academics from the space they co-created through their own engagement in knowledge production as doctoral candidates: [F]or those who have not managed to find a secure place within the machine, the university does not provide the temporal and material architectures that might enable this chance at a ‘forever job’, such as paid research time, study leave, or the ability to apply for internal research funding. (p. 115)

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It is the epitome of ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2011)—when the thing you hope will improve your life and opportunities actually creates more obstacles. Higher education is marketed along these lines—as a guaranteed pathway to ‘the good life’—but the case of casual academics dismisses this idea (Bone, 2020). This is especially true for students and academics in developing contexts, who view higher education as a social mobility pathway (Shirazi, 2020). As will be explored throughout this book, this precarity results in far-reaching and ongoing impacts regarding employees’ capacity to care for self and for others. A further issue created by the proliferation of casual workers is the devolution of staff management, as tenured staff are required to manage casual staff such as sessional tutors and research assistants, often without necessary training. While certainly not true for all, this dereliction of institutional duty onto already-overworked staff creates the conditions for both tacit and active negligence, discrimination, and exploitation (O’Keefe & Courtois, 2019). Aside from the complexities of people management, ongoing staff who manage casual staff are caught in a complicated ethical tangle. Firstly, through employing casual colleagues to assist with teaching and/or research, their own interests and outcomes are prioritised, particularly with research assistance when the output could be a form of career currency, such as a grant application or a publication. There is no imperative to include the casual colleague on the grant or as a co-author (although it is arguably good ethical practice—an idea we discuss more in Chapter 8), with paid-for-labour seen as the signing over of intellectual property. More morally problematic is the collusion in precarity into which ongoing staff are co-opted. The exploitation, including the rampant wage theft described above, is made possible, if not fuelled, by a perception that speaking up can lead to being stigmatised and no further work offered. Casual colleagues may feel they are at mercy of the ‘benevolence’ of full-time staff (convenors, researchers) and avoid complaining about unfair work conditions or are anxious about saying no, even if they are temporarily overloaded. And while it would be grossly unfair to characterise ongoing staff as disinterested in the plight (and it truly is) of our casual colleagues, its persistence speaks to the ineffectiveness of the action taken so far. Indeed, Ryan et al. (2017) go as far as to use the term ‘compliant lemmings’ (p. 56), arguing that many ongoing staff are complicit ‘in terms of knowing, but not addressing, the many problems associated with casual academic employment, not least of all its potential significance

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in relation to their own careers’ (p. 69). The ‘precarity norm’ can only continue if it goes unchallenged by the many ongoing staff who benefit, inadvertently, in the competitive field, whereby casuals are the ‘have nots’. Although tasked with much of the pastoral care undertaken in universities, there is a critical dearth of attention to the experiences of nonteaching staff who work in areas that have direct contact with students, such as admissions, student support services, counselling, equity and inclusion, academic literacy and learning, and careers guidance. These staff are often employed on professional (as opposed to academic) contracts and are also exposed to the insecure conditions of casual or fixed-term contracts. In a recent review of Australian higher education employment patterns, Croucher and Woelert (2022) found that over a 20-year period (1997–2017), the numbers of professional staff increased significantly, but these were predominantly in middle management positions. Over the same period there was an enormous loss of ‘support staff’, from 17,094 to 7,787 roles reported by universities. Although Croucher and Woelert suggest that this decline could be due to automation of administrative tasks or different ways of classifying staff roles, there is also a strong argument that the reduction in support staff roles is part of the ‘corporate transformation of academic and non-academic work processes’ (p. 172). Irrespective of the rationale, the cost of reduction in support staff means that other staff do the work, such as caring for/ with students and colleagues, or the work does not get done. Without adequate supports (and what counts as adequate is ill-defined), responsibility for care gets passed to individuals to find ways to meet their needs. As such, university structures dominantly require students to selfdiagnose issues and find appropriate supports, thereby disadvantaging those who are first in family or otherwise less familiar with the structures and processes of higher education.

Timescapes of Higher Education As noted in Chapter 2, time is a significant factor in facilitating or hindering care. Ruth Barcan (2018) captures the fundamental importance of time, particularly in the context of care, writing ‘the biggest sacrifice is time itself, a gift on which the higher education sector is structurally reliant’ (p. 112). However, the higher education literature is replete with accounts of what Leslie Perlow (1999) coined ‘time famine’: ‘a feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it’ (p. 57). The

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feel of the university has shifted, away from the leisurely pursuit of niche knowledge—connoting ideas of universities as ivory towers, with (male, privileged) professors having time to sit, think, teach small groups, and write lengthy tomes—to a much more fast-paced, hectic (and uncomfortable) present reality (Alhadeff-Jones, 2017; Clegg, 2010; Ylijoki, 2014). While there are commonalities across the sector, we must also be mindful that context plays a significant role; as Telling’s (2019) work reminds us, different institutions create different experiences of time, with institutional priorities informing (dictating in some cases) how time is used and valued (for instance, including whether teaching occurs in semesters, trimesters, or both). As scholars have described, neoliberal higher education and academic capitalism have colonised the timescape and there are plenty of temporal analyses of higher education in the literature. The timescapes of higher education—characterised by the same efficiency logics (fast) as the capitalist market: accounts of accelerating, frenzied tempo—are prevalent in the literature (Clegg, 2010; Vostal, 2013). However, as Gibbs (2015) notes, this acceleration fragments engagement, ‘leaving academics privileged not for scholastic but for entrepreneurial work, shaped not by considerations of social justice but by revenue’ (p. 54). Indeed, time is an essential aspect of academic capitalism, as it: ‘requires both the reification of time and an internalization of the importance of managing time in a demonstrably efficient manner’ (Walker, 2009, p. 484). This ‘gaming’ of time is based on the unitary dominance of clock timeframe (or ‘scheduled time’, according to Ylijoki, 2014), with higher education ‘thoroughly structured by clock time rhythms, organizing and ordering activities, among other things, into classes, terms, funding periods and assessment cycles’ (Ylijoki, 2014, p. 144), which society is socialised into accepting as ‘given’ through schooling (Alhadeff-Jones, 2017). Higher education timescapes, while not unitary, are guided by similar rationales and imperatives to industrial temporality. As Gibbs (2015) notes, when time is treated as a homogenous object, it becomes hegemonic, and ‘an individual’s egoistical temporality of the other and self is synchronised with that of the powerful’ (p. 52). In her analysis, Ylijoki (2014) draws on Adam’s (2003) ‘four C’ heuristic—creation, commodification, control, and colonisation of time—to characterise higher education’s timescape. Creation explains the scheduling of clock time, making time into a manageable entity, based on assumptions of linear, scheduled, and sequential timeframes and smooth transitions. This is

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ideologically and technologically exacerbated by the coupling of neoliberal imperatives and new technologies creating of ‘network time’: an intensely compressed tempo that creates the non-stop, 24/7 temporality that supports and justifies workaholism in the pursuit of efficiency dividends. Relatedly, the commodification of time in higher education relies on shared beliefs about time being a scarce resource, which feeds into beliefs about academic work (see above), with ‘busy time’ (administration, teaching, marking) seen as less valuable than the ‘leisurely time’ associated with research (Spurling, 2015). The perceived scarcity of time coupled with the productivity/‘profit’ ethos creates power differentials, with those with less administration (particularly for those who can buy out busy work with competitive research funding) given competitive advantage (in terms of research outputs being a marker of an academic’s worth). For control, Ylijoki describes how higher education has valorised the idea of human imposition of control over time to avoid ‘wasted time’ resulting in non-productivity. Academics are notorious for what could be described as workaholism (Jonepier & van de Sande, 2021; see earlier for arguments about the fetishisation of overwork); as a result, a particular feature of control in higher education is the self-surveillance and internal regulation of time, particularly for academics. This translates into what Walker (2009) describes as a moral imperative not to waste time: With greater tools for productivity come greater expectations. In the academy we must constantly justify our use of time to ourselves and others. Furthermore, how we use time is tied to merit. We are seen as deserving, and accordingly will be rewarded, if we can manage our time well. (p. 499)

Finally, the colonisation of time primarily reflects the hegemonic imposition of western/industrial clock time, based on assumptions of linearity and smooth transitions that are underpinned by an assumed ‘ideal’ student or staff member. Cultural and Linguistic Marginalisation (CALM), and the time needed to acclimatise (learning a language, learning new cultural practices and expectations, including those related to time, navigating a new terrain—both physical and digital) are not considered in higher education timescapes. This temporal colonisation of academia with industrial/capitalist time thus creates significantly different (and disadvantageous) implications for CALM students and staff, whose temporalities, tempos, and rhythms are ill-reflected, if not outright

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ignored, by the hegemonic linear and accelerated time of higher education. In her exploration of CALM students’ experiences in Australian doctoral education, Catherine Manathunga (2019) notes that assimilationist pedagogies operate through ‘a denial of time (and place and non-[w]estern knowledge systems)’ (p. 1231), with supervisors in her study claiming (ironically) that they didn’t have time to consider their students’ diverse histories, needs, and futures—thus trapping them in present time. Moreover, the colonisation of time in higher education also captures the dominant orientation towards the ‘present-future’ (Adam & Groves, 2007; Clegg, 2010), which creates self-interested subjectivities, and colonises students and staff’s relationships with the future. As Shahjahan (2015) notes, time in academia is meant to be ‘productive time’: ‘constructed as a continual efficient progress from the past into the future’ (p. 492). This has two colonising effects: the prevalent focus on the present-future limits longer term planning, and the idea of an empty future (mis)sells the idea that the future is open to accommodating an individual’s aspirations, Scheduled future involves a careful assessment of employment prospects, well-defined target setting and planning on how to reach goals and targets… risks and doubts inherent in the future are bracketed, and instead it is believed that, by working hard and avoiding time wasting, it is possible to control the future and achieve one’s goal. (p. 156)

This focus on the present-future creates a short-termist approach to the future, which feels endemic in the sociopolitical domain. The dominance of the industrial-capitalist (time-is-money) timeframe creates what Barbara Adam (2003) describes as problematic disassociations with context, with short-termist view of ‘the future is discounted’ (p. 111) driving estrangement from community, environment, and continuity. In the higher education context, Telling (2019) discusses how one university’s decision to give a new Liberal Arts degree only a two-year term because of worries about student numbers, meant that staff ‘were trapped in a perpetual present: institutional memory was extremely short, compounded by a high turnover of professional support and academic staff, and any memory there was did not seem able to inform future planning’ (p. 135). This kind of short-termist, economically-driven decision-making is also responsible

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for large-scale ‘temporal discontinuity’ (Shahjahan, 2020) via the casualisation of university staff, which—as discussed above—creates significant affective violence for those whose futures are curtailed to the immediatepresent, making longer term planning almost impossible, and passes the time costs of work directly to the staff member. As discussed in Chapter 2, this view of an ‘empty future’ is not conducive to care/ing because it ignores the social and interconnected timescapes of individuals. To sell the idea that we can be whatever we want to be (if we work hard enough and use our time wisely enough), the idea that we might need to slow down, pause, restart for caring (either giving or receiving) must be hidden. Moreover, for academic staff, precarity and insecurity (even for colleagues with ongoing employment) fuel an obsession with future, which Shahjahan (2020) argues, …feeds academics’ present anxiety and decisions (i.e., doing more service; being a good citizen), and thus we become ‘Being for the other’. Unfortunately, these future expectations are all linked to pleasing the ‘Other’ (colleagues, institutions, students, and so on). Imagined futures thus temporally constrain one from knowing and being otherwise in the present. (p. 794)

Another key element of higher education’s timescape is its bureaucratic sluggishness, a legacy of the older version of academia that prioritised slow and thoughtful engagement with ideas over the fast production of entrepreneurialism and commodifiable knowledge. This creates what Guzmán-Valenzuela and Di Napoli (2015) call bifurcated time: cocontemporaneous entrepreneurial and bureaucratic time, each bringing competing rhythms and tempos: ‘quickness and sluggishness, fast time and slow time’ (p. 155). These conflicting timescapes are a key contributor to the uncaring feel of higher education. Being able to navigate the competing and concurrent tempos is described in the literature as antithetical to the work of the academy, particularly for those with caring duties. It creates feelings of anxiety (Miller, 2019), guilt (Vostal, 2013), shame (Shahjahan, 2020), and gendered/caring marginalisation (Amsler & Motta, 2019). Shahjahan (2020) argues this temporal violence creates a bespoke form of emotional labour (‘ethical shame’) for people engaged in higher education who are concerned for others’ needs and are worried about letting people (and oneself) down. Paradoxically, this (debilitating) shame creates ideal conditions for people to strive despite

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the challenges and fuels the culture of overwork that is prevalent in academia. As we already know, this plays out in deeply uneven and inequitable ways that ignore the others in people’s lives. Little consideration, if any, is given to the other people in students’ and staff members’ lives who require care.

The Impacts of COVID on the Capacity to Care in Higher Education Higher education is not immune to the nefarious impacts of COVID, outlined in the Introduction chapter. Universities across the world have taken a hard financial hit because of COVID, with the impacts of travel bans immediately and painfully hurting their bottom line with a crash in the international student ‘market’. COVID, in many ways, was just an accelerator for the pain that the sector was already experiencing. The post-GFC funding slump was accompanied by an aggressive commitment to human capital models of funding, with governments across the world seeking to push more of the cost onto the individual who is seen to benefit from ‘investing in themselves’. Consequently, public spending on higher education was already in decline (Marginson, 2018; Singh, 2014—with Sweden a notable exception). This is likely to further diminish in the coming economic crisis, as was the case after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 (OECD, 2020). The diminishment of public funding forced universities to replace that revenue with the high fees they can demand from international students, whose pursual of social mobility and competitive advantage leaves them caught up and complicit in the deeply uneven global higher education/ employment market. International student revenue has been used to both fund operational costs and to fund the investment in infrastructure (new buildings, glossy refits, ‘rock star’ academics)3 to allow universities to compete in the global recruitment market. However, international enrolments were already in a slump in the US (Di Maria, 2020), and variable border politics and policies limited student mobility; notably in Australia where the number of international arrivals was severely capped from March 2020 to November 2021.

3 An idea coined by Allan Bloom (1990) and critiqued most recently by John Smyth (2017).

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At a sector level, this is at best a zero-sum game with a rolling list of winners and losers that is to the detriment of higher education and at worst an example of ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2011). The low levels of government support for universities (or total and deliberate absence of government support in Australia) to survive the post-COVID downturn illustrates the marginal value placed on academia by politicians, despite most being beneficiaries of it themselves. At an institutional level, this has long created havoc, fuelling the intensive competition for and recruitment of international students, followed by endemic levels of under-support for students (Blackmore, 2020; Nguyen & Balakrishnan, 2020) and laments about them being used as ‘cash cows’ (Bolton, 2020), which had already pushed universities to respond to concerns about overreliance on international student revenue (Niesche, 2020). The impacts of COVID appear to have (ironically and no doubt satisfyingly for those institutions at the bottom of the ladder) reversed the hierarchical and hyper-competitive elements of the system, whereby the most elite institutions who previously had the greatest financial reserves, in no small part due to international student revenue, have felt the financial crash of post-COVID most keenly. Other impacts rippled through higher education systems, including limited mobility, the loss of international student revenue, financial pressures, widespread job losses, and a shift to mass online teaching and learning. These changes to higher education have exposed and deepened existing inequities across the system (Blackmore, 2020), particularly for ‘vulnerable’ cohorts, including international students, refugee students, and students with disabilities (Mupenzi et al., 2020; Nguyen & Balakrishnan, 2020; Baker et al., 2022). Jill Blackmore (2020) argues that COVID has ‘made evident the vulnerability of Australian higher education’ (p. 1134), an argument that can be readily applied to many other national systems. The pressure heaped on the institution has had enormous costs, as Blackmore (2020) blasted: …the carelessness of universities towards their employees has been magnified by university management responses to COVID-19… The processes of responding to the pandemic to address student needs, maintain and reconfigure research, and move online have relied on academics and professional staff to work above and beyond their requirements. (p. 1334)

What COVID illuminated most clearly, perhaps, is not the precarity and the inherent selfishness of neo-managerial approaches in higher

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education; these arguments were already well-rehearsed before the impacts of the pandemic hit home, endemic as they are (Connell, 2019; Smyth, 2017). Rather, COVID has exposed higher education’s inherent carelessness (Blackmore, 2020), which has had consequences for all involved: the sector at a macro level, individual institutions at the meso level, and students and staff at the individual level. Let’s look at the case of international students in Australia; far from being ‘cash cows’, international students have been exposed as hyper-vulnerable, with many ending up destitute when jobs dried up (Tran & Tan, 2020), exposed to high levels of racism (Farbenblum & Berg, 2020), living with significant precarity (Morris et al., 2020), and mental health challenges (Soong & Proctor, 2020). Government responses to the plight of international students have been underwhelming, if not actively hostile in the case of Australia with Prime Minister Scott Morrison telling international students, ‘It’s time to go home’—seemingly unaware or uncaring of their actual inability to do so (Ross, 2020b). Similarly, while universities offered hardship funds to ‘at risk’ students, they were generally slow to respond as they waited (futilely) for government support to kick in. COVID has ultimately exposed what many of us working in higher education knew, observed, felt, and intuited: higher education institutions do not care enough, if at all, about the humans at the heart of its enterprise: students, staff, and wider community members. For people with caring responsibilities, the immobility and school closures that resulted from multiple lockdowns meant that our daily care load massively increased through having to manage remote learning, mental health crises (our children, our students, our own), our own teaching/research/administrative work (and the list goes on). While this is not exclusive to women, it is certainly increased the academic gender divide (Duncanson et al., 2020), and a particular concern for single parents, which Sally was while writing this book (Shulte & Pabst, 2021). For people working in higher education, the disgraceful lack of support for the sector from federal governments has resulted in massive job losses; in Australia alone, it is estimated that 40,000 people have lost their jobs, most of which were casually and precariously employed in the first place (Littleton & Stanford, 2021). These pressures led to ‘the great resignation’ (Cook, 2021), with employees re-evaluating their life-work balance and the marginalisation of care becoming increasingly visible.

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Summary In this chapter we have explored the current shape of the higher education sector, and the conditions that can inhibit care. In particular, we have considered challenges related to the rapid growth of higher education systems, the political drivers that have led to/fuelled hyper competition and marketisation, the chaotic and conflicting timescapes that impact work in higher education, and the legacy impacts of COVID on the sector. Underlying these considerations, is the key question of whether higher education is a public good or private commodity. We concluded by considering what these debates in the higher education literature might suggest about institutional capacity to care. Universities have myriad competing interests and agendas that create unstable conditions for care/ing to flourish. While higher education institutions care about the four pillars knowledge, truth, critical thinking, and culture articulated by Bengsten and Barnett (2020; see Chapter 3), they also (understandably) care about self-preservation as they are increasingly pushed to diversify their funding sources because of diminishing public investment. This push towards financial self-sufficiency has led to/been fuelled by the great embrace of neoliberal ideas and strategies, which has damaged institutional and individual capacity to care within the system. Our reading of the literature is that care is not fully absent from higher education, but it is on the periphery—pushed to the margins by a more central concern with efficiency, competition, and survival. We turn to these challenges in Part II.

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PART II

Where Does Care Fit in Higher Education?

Engagement with care necessarily requires us to engage with the very purpose of higher education itself. If higher education is indeed a public good, how do enactments of care (or un/dercare) reflect this purpose? In this next part of the book, we explore these, and other questions related in care, drawing on empirical data we have gathered from four projects exploring the experiences of students and staff engaged in higher education in Australia, South Africa, and the UK. We start in Chapter 5 by asking a central question: Are universities caring institutions? There, we make the argument that while universities engage in activities that meet some definitions of care (as involved in repairing, maintaining, and continuing our worlds), they cannot be considered ‘caring’ as per Joan Tronto’s (2010) seven signs that institutions are not caring well (Chapter 5). Following Bosanquet’s (2017) eloquent description, the prevalent state of ‘undercare’ in universities—as complex, stratified, and deeply uneven organisations—has significant implications for students and educators alike, but not in even or necessarily predictable ways. When the diverse needs of an expanded student and staff body are not met, or where accommodations are not made to create inclusive teaching and learning conditions, the locus for institutional care-related deficiencies is exposed. These can play out in terms of inadequate supports, mental and emotional ill-health issues, and infringements of rights; these in turn impact on issues such as academic underperformance and attrition for students, and poor working conditions and high staff turnover for staff. The centrality of care in higher education is, therefore, underexplored, and largely unvalued by

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educational institutions; it constitutes invisible work, duty and responsibility, and emotional labour (Chapter 6). Conversely, it is also found to be a source of deep fulfilment, as well as radical in the sense that it works against the status quo of prevalent undercare and inaction (Chapter 7).

References Bosanquet, A. (2017). Undercare in the academy. The Slow Academic [Online]: https://theslowacademic.com/?s=undercare Tronto, J. (2010). Creating caring institutions: Politics, plurality, and purpose. Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/174 96535.2010.484259

CHAPTER 5

Are Universities Caring Institutions?

Introduction This chapter addresses a question that, on the surface, for people who work in universities at least, appears to be simple to answer: it depends on what we mean by ‘the university’. Staff, particularly those in student facing positions, are assumed to express their care and concern for student engagement and success, as a core element of practice. Indeed, care is usually constructed and communicated about as a micro-level, interpersonal phenomenon, which may explain the relative paucity of research that probes what care means at the institutional level. A counter question might be whether it is feasible or even desirable to think of organisations as caring—rather than the structures and systems that frame, govern, and ‘do business’, or the individuals who work for an organisation. Indeed, as Keeling (2014) notes, the relationship between an institution and the people it ‘serves’ (students, in the case of a university) is not equal, particularly when the institution is viewed as a ‘thing’ rather than a collective of people: That relationship, if acknowledged at all, is usually defined through rules, traditions, and customs, not by mutual understanding, responsiveness, or empathy. Institutions leave to individual members of the staff or faculty any responsibility for understanding, responsiveness, or empathy in their relationships with students. Institutions may cluster or aggregate those individuals in certain ways, assigning to those clusters responsibility for © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7_5

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“students”; we are accustomed to knowing those clusters as student life or student affairs. But with rare exceptions, any actual relationship of understanding, responsiveness, and empathy occurs between individuals—a student with another person. (p. 142)

The warrant for asking the question ‘Are universities caring institutions?’ is multi-layered, and essentially concerned with how we can maximise what Keeling (2014) describes as ‘the great strengths of the collections of persons that we call colleges and universities… [to] act responsively and empathically’ (p. 142). We might question why schools are considered sites of care but not universities. If universities are involved in what Tronto and Fischer describe as maintaining, repairing, and continuing the world (the professions, knowledge, worldviews, students’ futures, and people’s lives), how do they do this in caring ways (or if not, why not)? As institutions that are clearly involved in civic engagement, the critique of power, and notions of citizenry, what role do/can universities play in supporting Tronto’s (2013) idea of caring democracy? While universities have a regulatory policyscape to govern interactions with the institution, and regularly gather information on ‘engagement’ via instruments such as student (and to a lesser extent, staff) satisfaction surveys, there is little sense that these forms of data collection are driven by a direct concern with their duty of, to and for care. As Joan Tronto argues, ‘satisfying consumers may not be the same thing as providing care adequately’ (p. 159), particularly in markets where people are assumed to be rational, autonomous, capable of decision-making, and availed of information. Moreover, as outlined in Chapter 2, if care is considered to be ‘extra’ when outside of the family, what does that mean for caring practices in organisations like universities? In her 1984 book, Nel Noddings notes that ‘schools, as institutions, cannot care directly’ but they can ‘be deliberately designed to support caring and caring individuals’ (p. 182). Further, moral education, Noddings argues, is ‘a community-wide enterprise and not a task exclusively reserved for home, church, or school’ (1984, p. 171). Etieyibo (2017), writing of African schooling, makes the same point, arguing that ubuntu (humanness) as part of caring moral education is the business of everyone in society. The same is arguably true of universities; indeed, if COVID has shown us anything, it’s that we are desperate for care and connection, and recognition from institutions (including governments) that we have varying caring requirements. Indeed, Vásquez Vedera

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(2019) wrote about this imperative even before the pandemic magnified this need: Students and workers need to know that we who make up the institutions care about their well-being in all its collective and individual dimensions. Universities are called upon to build organizational cultures that are tolerant, open, and diverse. (p. 90)

Emma, a PhD student, told us she did not believe universities are caring institutions: Emma: I believe that universities at this stage of their existence are more concerned with metric, finances and status than the care they afford their students and staff. I furthermore feel as if delivering care on a mass scale is very difficult and institutions are unwilling to pay the money necessary for true care to be delivered. Care at universities relies on the unpaid caring labour of the staff who deliver above and beyond to support students and other staff.

This assessment of higher education suggests that students are aware of the prevalent un/dercare within universities. At the heart of the question of who cares (and for whom/about what/with others) in higher education is a complicated web of factors including personal disposition, political activism, social justice imperative, educational aim and action, disciplinary identity, and contracted role. The potential for universities to be caring institutions also depends on the degree to which issues of care are visible, debated, and acknowledged as everyone’s ‘core business’. As Tronto suggests: Thus, one important criterion for investigating institutions includes: how does the institution come to understand its needs? How does it negotiate needs within itself? Which needs are taken as legitimate? How are responsibilities within the organization allocated? Who actually gives the care? How are the reception and effectiveness of care work evaluated? (p. 168)

In this chapter, we seek to contribute to the urgent task of bringing care in higher education out of the periphery by exploring the facilitators and the constraints on universities as caring institutions, using Tronto’s (2010) seven signs of institutional carelessness. Tronto’s (2010) model is based on the premise that good care in institutional settings depends

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on attention to three main elements: shared assumptions regarding the purpose of care, recognition of the inherent power relations at play in issues of care, and the need for bespoke, localised, and individualised provision of care. Tronto’s model identifies seven signs of uncaring institutions noting that ‘when care is situated according to any of these seven assumptions, it is likely to be bad care because it lacks in adequate accounts of purpose, power, and plurality’ (p. 163) We structure our discussion in this chapter according to the seven signs: 1. Misfortune necessitates/causes care, 2. Needs are taken for granted by the institution, 3. Care is seen as a commodity, not a process, 4. Care-receivers are excluded from making decisions because of perceptions of vulnerability or incapacity to judge, 5. Care is reduced to caregiving, 6. Care givers see organisational requirements as barriers rather than facilitators, and 7. Care work is distributed along class, gender, and ethnicity lines. We suggest that this framework provides a useful heuristic to evaluate care practices and potentials in higher education. To the best of our knowledge, this model has not yet been applied to universities.

Care as a Response to Misfortune The practice of care as a response to misfortune—rather than as an underlying and pre-existing institutional condition—obfuscates the fact that everyone needs care. Proactive, planned care requires awareness of the ongoing development of peoples’ needs and a will to respond. When care is mostly reactive, it can only ever partially meet needs. Universities have long divested this assessment of ‘due care’ to neoliberal technologies, such as the ubiquitous student satisfaction survey. As Clegg and Rowland (2010) argue, these technologies ‘operationalise the measurement of the care the student-consumer has received, and staff performance is scrutinised through annual performance review’ (p. 724). The will to respond is predicated on being pushed to respond; universities act when scores are low or when feedback is negative, with less attention to actions that shore up or expand existing care practices when student responses are positive.

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This emphasis on reactive care that is often ill-defined in ways that protect the institution rather than on caring for/with/about was a key theme for participants. For Eleanor, a postdoctoral researcher, reactive care is a deliberate strategy to minimise requests of their resources: Eleanor: Yeah. So, I think most of the time the universities do it good in terms of show. Say, “Okay. We’re doing it.” But they also know not to be proactive, because if they are proactive, they will find out that they’ll get a lot more people than they can handle. Because you probably have five staff to handle that.

This observation was also mirrored by other participants. For example, Gloria, a postdoctoral researcher who had studied or worked at five universities, observed: Gloria: In terms of care in higher education, I mean it’s so difficult to define what that means but I think a lot of it is about looking after and caring for staff members and students and thinking about their needs also beyond academic needs. So, thinking about them as whole people, not just as academic people there to learn something. And I think for staff members it’s a similar thing, so understanding that there’s a broader context that they are working in. But it’s so difficult to say, I think, because the institutions I’ve been in, I mean it’s so easy to experience them as quite uncaring.

When asked to elaborate, Gloria gave examples of ‘a general lack of interest in career development or any kind of scaffolding of any relationships with permanent staff or making sure that postdocs are not being exploited around teaching or supervision’. The case of COVID also clearly highlights the idea that universities frequently offer reactionary care that fails to account for what Gloria described as ‘whole people’. While the challenges faced by students (particularly for alreadydisadvantaged cohorts, such as students from refugee backgrounds) and staff (particularly caregivers) were already described in the scholarly literature (see Chapter 4), they were not well-identified as institutional priorities prior to the move to emergency remote delivery during COVID lockdowns. Students and staff alike suffered with a lack of suitable space, inadequate technology and equipment, and balancing work/study with caring duties, which inevitably impacted on wellbeing and mental health.

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Further, that it took a pandemic for universities (and the broader community) to notice that international students were not rich ‘cash cows’ but individuals with vulnerabilities who needed care and support is also telling. While universities responded to the impacts of the pandemic, they did so slowly and in instrumental ways (focusing on financial support), with little awareness or consideration of other challenges (such as teaching and learning needs), and with a short-term view. This did not go unnoticed by students; Emma, a PhD student, observed of how staff were treated during COVID, leading to this assertion: Emma: Universities should be public purpose employers, as well as public purpose institutions. But more care is taken of the physical and IT infrastructure. You get lip service to staff through world class equity and diversity programs, and at the same time unis treat their staff like crap, really. As a HDR student you can see this, and it makes you never want to be an academic. I’ve already decided that the pay and conditions in academia are unacceptable, and I’m going to take my PhD and go back into my previous sector, where I can earn far more and be treated with far more care.

Emma’s summary that universities ‘treat their staff like crap’, even— or especially—during the crisis of the pandemic, suggests the perception that even when misfortune happens, higher education institutions are slow to respond, and their caring is not always recognised as adequate or timely. This is despite a significant increase in the visibility of discourses around wellbeing in university rhetoric. This was true for Eleanor and Tim, who articulated their understandings of the purpose of care in terms of wellbeing, but rather than rhetoric, they described this as an expansive concept that aligns with supporting students and staff to be and become through attentiveness and responsiveness, which involves taking time to support others’ rhythms. For Tim (a full-time academic with responsibility for Teaching and Learning), this was particularly valued in his School: Tim: To me, care is I guess more about what the active, that the proactive efforts on behalf of someone or a group in the institution to promote wellbeing.

However, Tim also expressed concern about the reactive nature of the care offered in his School, describing a growing awareness that ‘crisis support’ is inadequate:

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Tim: For what it’s worth, when I’ve been part of these conversations, I used the word “wellbeing” around about students and staff. But to me, that doesn’t capture what the care, which is the active portion of it. So where does the wellbeing come from? …. The care is what happens from the outside that may or may not be effective, right? So, you’re my colleague, I can give you care, but if I’m giving you care in the wrong way, that may not achieve your wellbeing. I tend to prefer to think of it the other way around. How can I support your wellbeing? That may be because you need me to care, maybe you’ll need me to leave you the fuck alone.

Thinking actively about ‘wellbeing’ beyond rhetoric and tokenism suggests that Tim is an individual with a more holistic and complex understanding of wellbeing, but what of the institution? Despite COVID offering a clear opportunity for universities to shift away from the logics and practices of the ‘old normal’, there is still little evidence of a plan across the sector for how to adapt proactive care practices. While growing visibility of institutional policy regarding protocols for supporting staff and students with external carer responsibilities has been evident over recent years, policies related to care responsibilities internal to the institution do not presently exist in publicly available documents. In reality, well-intentioned wellbeing-focused supports can inadvertently create additional burdens on staff who may be already overloaded but feel pressure to undertake university-run workshops or training programs. Of course, this does not mean that universities are uniformly uncaring; rather, universities are reacting to (perceived) needs of students and staff. However, as we go on to describe in this chapter, the caring that is on offer under the guise of wellbeing is often reactive, generic, commodified, and with responsibility forced—as usual—onto the individual. We come back to these costs in Chapter 6.

Universities Take It for Granted That They Know What Students and Staff Need The conceptualisation of care as a response to misfortune rather than an ongoing, underlying component of institutional processes, may also be linked to a lack of knowledge about the lived conditions and material needs of the people who comprise the university. The tendency for those leading the institution to frame issues of care from the perspective of their

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own needs and experiences, or those of an imagined ‘typical’ student or colleague, means that universities can take for granted that they know what staff and students need. Such assumptions about what people need and how they want their needs to be met can be harmful and denote a casual ambivalence (or even dismissal) of the agentic capacity for people to feed into the caring priorities and responses of an institution as a collective of people with complex needs, responsibilities, and desires. When caring needs are prefigured and fixed, it prompts questions of who gets to decide, and whose interests are being served (and whose are not). Care for Those Who Care (Student-Carers) Recent increased attention to the complexity and diversity of students’ carer responsibilities has also called into question the generic image of ‘the student’ that arguably still dominates twenty-first-century university policy. Research that documents students’ navigation of complex and oftentimes conflicting socio-cultural terrain, values, and pressures when seeking to fulfil responsibilities to community and family while also engaging in higher education suggests that only cursory understanding of these tensions exists from an institutional point of view (Lewis, 2021; Shwayli et al., 2018; Stone & O’Shea, 2019). With widening participation comes the need to also diversify and enrich institutional understandings of care and how students’ carer commitments can shape the modes and temporal realities in which they can engage in learning. A small but significant body of work explores the ‘othering’ that student carers (SCs) experience, often in comparison to institutions’ dominant characterisation of (‘traditional’) students as carefree, young, and careless (Gagnon, 2018; Moreau, 2016). In Murtagh’s (2019) UK study of pre-service teachers studying in a program designed to accommodate ‘non-traditional’ students, the othering was reported as happening across five domains: three at university (institutional othering, program othering, peer othering) and two in their personal lives (family othering, friendship othering). To mitigate the impacts of this complex othering, Murtagh argues that universities need to do more to develop family-friendly courses and policies. In addition to feeling like an outsider, SCs face many challenges with regard to engaging in their studies, which can be loosely classified as related to time, balance, and care, all of which are underpinned by a common finding that universities are ‘care-blind’ (Moreau, 2016) and

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considered inflexible and unresponsive (Alsop et al., 2008; Bowl, 2001; Brooks, 2012). The time pressures on carers result in a particular burden; as the student-parents in Alsop et al. (2008) study reported, there is a ‘second shift’ to do at home after spending a period of time studying. Similarly, Moreau and Kerner (2015) describe how the seemingly ‘bottomless’ work of balancing study with domestic duties and care at home results in scarce ‘me time’ (p. 220), increasing the likelihood of exhaustion or burnout (and consequently the probability of attritting from their studies). For many SCs, the absence of flexible childcare arrangements or childcare options on campus is a significant hurdle (Bowl, 2001; Moreau & Kerner, 2015)—as it is also for academic parents (Acker & Armenti, 2004). Advance communication about schedules and course expectations and commitments is fundamental to arranging alternative care (Alsop et al., 2008; Moreau & Kerner, 2015). While online study options make (expectations of) the temporal load somewhat easier to manage (Henry, 2020) because SCs can study at home or in their own time, the downside is often a disconnection with other students and educators, leading some online students to feel isolated (Stone & O’Shea, 2019). As discussed already, the gendered dimensions, roles, and assumptions that underpin care mean that these challenges are particularly salient for mothers. As O’Shea (2015) argues, gender roles are significant for how returning to education is experienced, with mothers more likely to express feelings of guilt about not doing their best for their children/families, their studies, and (domestic and/or paid) work. These gendered challenges also extend to learning outside of the lecture theatre. In their study of students’ engagement with extra-curricular activities, Stevenson and Clegg (2012) note how few women participants indicated that they would draw future employers’ attention to their caring duties. Instead, they appeared to view their caring as a disadvantage, which—if so—‘robs them of the opportunity of elaborating a narrative in which caring can be valorised as a way of demonstrating considerable social value and worth’ (p. 51). In terms of anticipating and understanding these and other care needs of staff and students, as Tronto (2010) writes, ‘any agency or institution that presumes that needs are fixed is likely to be mistaken and to inflict harm in trying to meet such needs’ (p. 164). Our participants provided multiple examples of instances where they perceived their care needs were overlooked or misunderstood by the institution. Sara, a professional staff

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member in a management role, articulated a sense of slipperiness when it comes to finding out what care needs people have: Sara: I think that [universities] do a very good job of promoting themselves as being places that do care. I think that it is fundamental to what they’re delivering in terms of teaching and learning… I think they are very quick and ready to promote themselves as places that care about their employees. But in fact, they often have really quite punitive and restrictive approaches to ensuring that their employees are cared for.

By way of illustrating the constraints on employee care at her institution, Sara described the challenges she experienced when attempting to access carer’s leave during COVID lockdown. While many employees experienced significant, additional carer responsibilities during this time, the system for requesting leave only permitted repeat bookings of short periods, forcing employees to repeatedly engage with the administrative processes. These kinds of structural impediments can significantly detract from the efficacy of care provisions for employees. The sense of not being listened to, evidenced by arbitrary—if not punitive—decisions that limit agentic potential and capacity to care/be cared for was also illustrated by Tim, a Professor of Law, who gave the example of being forced to move into an open-space office, which was so deeply unpopular that it was reported in the local newspaper: Tim: But from the senior executive, the message was constantly, “Oh if you have open space offices, you collaborate more and so you work better.”... Anyway, but it was that, but even that that decision was made, what I mean by the disconnect between understanding how actual academics work and need to work. So, you have the student side, you have the thinking side, you have all of the things that are welldocumented, but that academics do that most needs space for. Some people like open-space, open-plan, but anyway that [showed an] absolute complete disregard for what staff might need or want. So, in terms of your question about care, I mean, that to me is a quite stark example of saying, we honestly don’t care… As I was told, when they talked to staff before they made the decision, most staff said, do what you want with the new building. We can be flexible but one thing we ask is, don’t take away our offices. If we have to choose one thing, it’s that right. It’s kind of that in terms of the knife into the gut…

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Tim’s recounting of being forced to reduce his capacity to care because of time–space-relationship constraints (i.e., the impossibility of caregiving with student consultations because of a lack of private space; difficult caring-for-knowledge because the thinking time is filled with ‘busy’ work and the open-plan space is too noisy and disruptive) is illustrative of a sense that staff caregiving practices and needs are not well understood or respected by management. In this example, Tim has captured how neoliberal decision-making depends on assumptions about what other people do/how they work, with little regard to how these decisions impact on staff and students’ capacity to engage in care (as receivers and givers). This can be experienced as extremely demoralising (‘a knife to the gut’) and can damage the relational integrity between the institution and its people. Care from Those Who Care (Staff Carers) There is growing attention to the need to better appreciate the diversity and complexity of staff carer responsibilities external to the institution (see Lewis, 2021). Themes within this literature on university staff carers (StCs) are particularly related to gendered barriers to participation. Lynch (2010) describes this as the doxas of academy, based on the assumption that people are ‘care-free’ and mobile with time and space to think and write, travel, and present. Such assumptions lead to inequity and highlight the lack of gender parity in higher education; as Henderson and Moreau (2020) succinctly note, ‘Where there is a mobility imperative, there is also mobility inequality’ (p. 72). Of course, the burden of combining care and academic work is not exclusively a female concern, but there is a strong line that points to the increased burden placed on women. For instance, although most of the female participants in Acker and Armenti’s (2004) study reported non-traditional family/home circumstances (i.e., they didn’t follow traditional gender roles at home), the authors note that ‘most of the women had some concerns related to having or caring for children and these needed to be understood within university structures that institutionalized career paths that did not take much account of family dilemmas’ (p. 9). Similar themes are discussed in Amsler and Motta’s (2019) dialogic account of parenting in academia. They note how the neoliberal shape of higher education evokes the ‘madness of splitting’ between different rhythms, spaces, and modalities, which are particularly acute for single

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parents. More often than not, being a parent and working as an academic requires unhealthy levels of self-sacrifice which ‘negate the needs of selfcare and care for others’; as such, these authors argue this ‘can expose the invisible and unmentionable conditions that make ideal-type forms of neoliberal academic labour possible’ (p. 93). Like Barnett (2011), Amsler and Motta (2019) remind us that viewing higher education through an emotional/affective lens helps to challenge the reductive efficiencies of neoliberalism. However, recognising these sharply conflicting subjectivities and rationalities is one thing but speaking out against them comes with risks: ‘Embracing the otherness and marginality of the messiness that motherhood brings to the marketised university takes courage, for it involves emotional risk and exposure to uncertainty’ (Amsler & Motta, 2019, p. 93). Ultimately, the inflexibility and ‘care-blindness’ (Moreau, 2016) of institutions is a cultural pillar of the academy. Lynch’s (2010) analysis of the conditions of care in the academy points to how senior levels of higher education have a ‘care ceiling’, where people without visible external care duties are implicitly expected to have ‘total time for the organisation’. This provides models for newcomers who are being inculcated into the academy (such as postgraduate students). Lynch (2010) writes that ‘[w]omen and men [and others] who cannot work unpaid hours are likely to be severely disadvantaged within the academy’ (p. 58). The clear message from the literature is the need to critique the idea that ‘to be a successful academic is to be unencumbered by caring’ (Lynch, 2010, p. 63).

Universities Commodify and Outsource Care The commodification of care, rather than it being valued as an integral part of the work of the institution, is fuelled by the confected notion of scarcity. As Tronto (2010) writes, this connects with the neoliberal imperative to reduce reliance on the governing body (whether the state or an institution) and push responsibility onto the individual. This commodification of care is hegemonic, and veiled by commonsensical notions of the panacea of the market to meet our needs:

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If we think of care as a scarce thing then we are likely to imagine that care is best distributed by the market mechanism. If we think of care as scarce, then we are likely to think of care as a zero-sum provision. (Tronto, 2010, p. 164)

Universities, again like many other institutions mired in the neoliberal project, have long placed a price on care, and sought to outsource it where possible. Connell (2019) describes outsourcing as endemic in higher education, which is made more problematic when contractors do not count as university employees, thus rendering the task of understanding staff and student care needs even more challenging: Outsourcing is a really important, and little discussed, change in universities. It undermines operations workers’ situational knowledge. The outsourced workers are not at the university long-term and have no role in its decision-making. Outsourcing undermines the grassroots coordination of the labour process, since the remaining university staff cannot easily get to know the outsourced workers, either… it weakens the knowledge resources on which a university operates. (pp. 62–63)

The imperative for commodification and outsourcing was understood by our participants as being economically driven. For Tim, this translated into unconscionable cuts when it comes to being able to care, particularly when it came to making redundancies following the financial turmoil resulting from COVID. Katie (a full-time Education lecturer) also referenced the erosion metaphor when talking about how economics drive decision-making, often flying in the face of what practitioners and researchers say about care. Katie outlined how austerity measures had been a long feature with regard to failures in making resources, including people, available, leading to unethical decisions. In this next extract, Katie has just been talking about how hard she and her colleague had been working to protect their casual colleagues who taught in the program she co-convened: Katie: Oh, [our efforts are] undermined consistently. Mostly because economic pressures, like last year. We had fought really hard from the start to maintain seminar sizes capped at 20 students. The units were never offered online because as I said, we kind of had a very explicit pedagogical focus in involving that face to face nurturing of relationships and building that kind of... Because a lot of what we do with our student cohorts, especially in the first semester, is building their confidence so

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that they think that university is for them. And so having that consistency is really important on every level. Last year our classes doubled in our faculty, so seminars are now 40 as standard… Year upon year, what the faculty does is basically over enrol and kind of subsidise what become kind of CSP1 places, so that we kind of take in and effectively double the amount of students. Sally: How can uni management not be complicit in this? It’s obviously clear that you can’t not support your students if you want to have quality teaching and learning outcomes and processes and practices? Katie: Well yeah. But as I said, they’re complicit in it because it’s that we all know that we’re going to do it anyway. That’s the way that the system has been eroded.

The idea that ‘the system’ is responsible for undercaring is undoubtedly a response to the increased corporatisation of higher education. In a recent article, Beck (2020) reflects on the examples used to make this argument: the competitive ‘salesforce’ chasing lucrative international student enrolments, the zealous commitment to chasing competitive grant funding (frequently not matched by commensurate attention once the grant has been awarded), by the enormous salaries commanded by Vice Chancellors and senior leaders. All of these examples were used by the Australian government to justify excluding universities from COVID funding support, with the then Prime Minister arguing for their exemption from JobKeeper funding on the basis that they are ‘are very large organisations with billion-dollar reserves and they’ve got multimillion-dollar CEOs’.2 According to Eleanor, this idea of university-ascorporation/student-as-customer had corrupted what care felt like for her. When asked if she felt cared for by her employer, Eleanor responded: Eleanor: By the current university? As much as they can possibly, considering the fact that universities are still businesses. That would be my answer.

1 CSP refers to the Commonwealth Supported Places that the Australian government make available to domestic students (albeit not guaranteed) that subsidise the cost of higher education study. 2 The Australian government did offer JobKeeper to other “multi-million-dollar businesses”, and in some notable cases allowed those business to keep it, even after they recorded record profits.

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This view of the structures that underpins university operations, allowing them to function as businesses but pushing them to outsource parts of their (caring) work, are also among the chief barriers to the enactment of care. This is a key motif throughout the student and staff experiences described in our data. Although this view is accompanied by recognition of the complexities of trying to change such a system within existing economic contexts and the ‘user pays’ model of higher education, it evidently creates uncaring conditions. Care from ‘The Precariat’ While ‘academic institutions can be conceptualised as service providers, where teaching staff are expected to perform emotional labour in order to achieve the dual outcomes of customer (student) satisfaction and profit for management’ (Koster, 2011, p. 67), the economic contexts within which higher education operates also impact care practices. For instance, as a clear manifestation of the economic constraints on contemporary university operations, many of our participants were employed on shortterm, sessional contracts, often for successive years. These participants reflected on how their capacity to care has been shaped by the ongoing precarity of their employment. For instance, at the time of being interviewed (mid-December), Xander (a casual academic), still did not know if he would have work after the university Christmas close-down period. He reflected on how this exemplified a general pattern of lack of care: Xander: [The possibilities of care] are being eroded because of the conditions of higher ed at the moment…there’s no space and opportunity for care at the moment because everyone’s worried about budgets, or worried about 2021, or worried about student load, that kind of thing.

Likewise, Tim, employed as a full-time academic, reflected on the very real power issues at play in determining whether and how precariously employed colleagues undertake care practices: Tim: …there are people who were very precarious... they feel they can’t say no because one too many nos and then they’re out forever…we’ve all been in those precarious jobs where you felt like, “Okay, like I really need to step up and do everything all the time.”

Given the lack of recognition afforded to care practices in higher education, and the related time and emotional expenditure that diminish

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capacity to invest in more institutionally-valued endeavours such as research outputs, the fact that the most precariously employed staff feel unable to regulate their care practices for fear of punitive responses is highly problematic. This results in a system of institutional practice that locates the responsibility for care with the least secure and established members of the university. This system of precarity is largely invisible to students, with Eve, an Academic Learning Advisor, observing that change to this situation will likely depend in part on greater transparency around working conditions: Eve: For a student, I think it would be understanding that often you’re being taught by people who are not your permanent staff members and being told that and being able to understand that. I’ve done a fair bit of undergrad teaching as a person on a one-year contract, and the students have no idea that you’re not coming back next year.

A further example of the commodification and outsourcing of care can be seen in the provision of mental health support for staff members. While most universities have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to offer counselling staff (remembering that burnout is an ever-present danger in higher education; see Chapter 6), these are rarely, if ever, run by the institution; more commonly, this service is outsourced to an external company with a cap on the number of sessions that a staff member can access. In a similar response to the outsourcing of care, participants in Christie’s (2016) research regarding career guidance officers in higher education reported that expansion of student and staff support services via online platforms was generally perceived to be a positive development especially in terms of accessibility, however ‘there was regret expressed with regard to the shrinkage of the face-to-face guidance offer as it was felt that the personal connection and support that could be given through individual guidance could have a significant impact for the individuals that experienced it’ (p. 79). Outsourcing is subject to the same tendering processes as procuring other services, meaning that when a contract is due to expire a new company could secure the contract if they offer a better (read cheaper) service, which is likely to result in new counselling staff. When this happens, it forces staff to move away from the trusting relationships that are likely to have been developed with their previous counsellor. This lack of interest in such relationships—arguably the cornerstone of effective

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mental health support—is a stark reminder of how neoliberal imperatives override the importance of connection and relationships. Tim: The VC gave a speech just before Christmas maybe it was? That involved some of the dire cuts and different things, whatever. And somebody asked a question about staff wellbeing, and he said, “Oh, well, it’s okay. We have that, with the EAP, the counselling.” … But essentially he said staff wellbeing isn’t the problem because we have this EAP and so people can call.

Some staff have therefore expressed concern that, while uptake of institutional support services is clearly a key element of care in higher education, wellbeing needs to be understood beyond an individual imperative to access to counselling. Rather, genuine engagement with care for the whole person necessitates a range of supports that speak to the precarity and uncertainty of many roles within higher education, particularly during times of diminished funding and job cuts.

Universities Adopt a Paternalistic Approach to Determining Care Needs While universities have processes in place for students to disclose their learning needs or to request accommodation of their needs in the teaching and learning space, this is often a highly regulated and bureaucratised process (for example, requesting so-called ‘special consideration’ of circumstances when applying for an extension to an assignment deadline). However, these processes are determined based on a student providing ‘sufficient evidence’ of their disadvantage, placing the burden of providing proof on the student in a way that belies a lack of trust in students to self-advocate without falsifying their account. The idea that the institution knows best and can make decisions on behalf of others, indexes highly problematic notions of dependency. This also raises the issue of a perceived divide between those who actually do the work of caring versus those who make decisions about care. Gina, a Professor of Education, described this in her discussion of care work in higher education: I think you can care for something, or you can care about something, but those are two different things to begin with. I think that in terms of the

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way in which care has come into the public domain, we see more and more of it outsourced so that the decisions that are made about what care looks like are often made outside of the practices and the people that actually do the practice. That includes teachers and nurses and age care facilities and things like that. So, there’s a real kind of divide sometimes between those people that are actually doing the work and the people that are making the decisions about how that work is valued and what’s valued within that work.

As noted previously, the discussion of care in the scholarly literature is almost entirely restricted to cases of students and teachers, with minimal engagement that addresses care in other roles (such as professional staff, managers, and university executives). Such scholarly attention speaks powerfully to assumptions about who is ‘present’ to care in higher education, as well as beliefs regarding the roles and responsibilities that necessarily involve the practice of care. Of course, there is a strong argument that teaching is a fundamentally caring profession, similar to other ‘citizen carer’ vocations such as nursing and social work (Chatelier & Rudolph, 2018; Lynch et al., 2007), with care and the possibility of burnout frequently treated as an integral and inevitable component of ‘the job’ (Bodenheimer & Shuster, 2020). However, contrary to the prevalent focus on teaching as the locus of caring action in higher education, we suggest that care extends beyond the lecture theatre or seminar room to include work that is undertaken around the edges of the educator-student dyad. The myriad roles that support pedagogic interaction, such as student advisors, program convenors, academic learning advisors, counsellors, careers consultants, equity practitioners, library practitioners, disability support advisors, educational designers, and others, all involve particular carerelated practices that sit alongside, support, and oftentimes overlap, ‘pedagogic action’ (Walker & Gleaves, 2016). We therefore argue that everyone involved in higher education, including students, Vice Chancellors, professional staff, academics, and community members, are involved in maintaining, repairing, and improving the contexts within which they work. This care labour is not, however, distributed evenly, and is not all focused on classroom teaching and learning, although there is arguably always a connection, given the context of an educational institution. The current lack of attention to the care work undertaken within the various roles that sit outside the narrowly defined formal teaching domain may speak to the lack of knowledge regarding the varied remits of roles

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that fall outside teaching, research, and management, and differences in how care is understood and enacted in these spaces. Participants expressed concern regarding the absence of attention to these contexts and related staff needs: Gloria: One of the things that I see a lot is how terribly admin staff or people in service positions in the institution are treated, and there’s kind of this blind spot that universities are just staff and students, and of course that’s not true. There are all sorts of people in between, from postdocs to admin people, to cleaning staff. I think recognizing that it’s a far more complicated institution, which is doing a lot more than just teaching, and research would be good.

Consequently, there is little published on the care work undertaken by these colleagues, constituting a significant deficiency in what we know about ‘pedagogic action’ (Walker & Gleaves, 2016) in higher education. We return to discussions of paternalism as a ‘care pass’ (Tronto, 2013) in Chapter 6.

Universities Disproportionately Focus on Caregiving By only attending to one aspect of care (caregiving) and ignoring the needs of care-receivers, the care offered by an institution is impoverished. Oftentimes, this is due to using inadequate language to describe care, in ways that restrict our view of what counts as institutional care. While the discourse of wellness/wellbeing—as an example of institutional ‘caregiving’— has circulated more prominently in universities in recent years, what care-receiving looks like is unclearly articulated and tends to focus on self-care, for example, ‘Self-care is an essential part of an effective and successful studying routine’ and ‘Self-care is not reward for a job well done, but a necessary part of study success’. In addition to a lack of clarity regarding what it means to receive care, traditional and legalistic notions of care may skew the current focus in institutional practice towards caregiving with a lack of engagement with the needs and concerns of care-receiving. The term ‘duty of care’ has its origins in the legalities of Common Law, in which one party is said to have a ‘legal or moral obligation/responsibility to protect the safety and wellbeing of others. This includes taking reasonable measures to not

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cause foreseeable harm to another person or their property’ (Bui, 2022). This definition functions on the premise that the responsible party will do all in its power to prevent any harm that it could reasonably anticipate. As can be seen in the participant reflections included in this chapter, this legalistic understanding of ‘checks and balances’ in terms of institutional obligations can create the impression of tokenistic engagement with care for staff, and oftentimes, students. For example, the provision of counselling services but with little attention to other aspects that impact staff health and wellbeing such as workload or security of employment, can be seen as paying ‘lip service’ to the practice of caregiving, with the main goal being to avoid litigation rather than meaningfully engage with the needs of care-receivers. University websites often include articulation of a public commitment to wellbeing, with examples organised around mind (for example, ‘mindful eating mediation’), body (‘get on track’ walking challenge), places (green spaces), and culture (‘wellbeing champions’). However, scratching the surface of wellbeing initiatives often illustrates a mandate for universities to provide this ‘care’; many of the examples are mandated by law (for example, smoke free campuses), or are outsourced to external companies (such as EAP). Moreover, the responsibility is shared, if not passed wholesale, to the individual: to access, to engage, to invest in these practices of care. For example, many of these initiatives carry both a financial and a time cost for the individual staff member, neither of which are necessarily feasible. The challenge lies in institutional assumptions of needs and responses, in structural and systemic inflexibility, and in the absence of reference to care3 in annual reports or strategic plans. Katie: There’s a lot of rhetoric from management about the importance, caring about and respecting the work that we do. But the experience of the past year is that, that that’s how it feels I suppose from a worker’s perspective. Doubling class sizes, not much genuine consultation being increasingly in management decisions that affect not only the quality of my work, but the student experience and the relationship between those things. And that’s increasingly kind of rationalised, in terms that are not dissimilar from any other kind of corporate sector, I would suggest. And again, this always comes back to the economic imperatives and the strictures under which we are increasingly all operating. 3 Or synonyms to suggest care.

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As Miles, a Professor of Education, observed: Miles: The university has an obsession with consultation, but that consultation is, shall we say, a tick box exercise very often. We’ll have a forum, and it’s your opportunity to speak. The problem is that they consult on everything. So, I might get invited to all sorts of consultation meetings about, I don’t know, anything from waste management and garden design to teaching and learning. What happens then, of course, is you become desensitized because you think, “Well, I’m not interested in half of this, so I shan’t bother to go.” Then when you do go to something and you find there’s 100 people there, you don’t really have a voice. But of course, as far as the management are concerned the more people who are involved, the more people who have been consulted, the more caring they are. But what it means is that actually they listen to fewer and fewer people because nobody has the voice, if you like, and nobody can make the comment that needs to be made.

Tronto (1993) notes that, ‘in large bureaucracies, this type of “take care of” [without following through to make certain that care… is actually occurring) with no concern about outcome or end result, seems pervasive’ (p. 134). This can often lead to ‘performative’ instantiations of care. For instance, in Dowie-Chin and Schroeder’s (2022) exploration of how personal and biographic subjectivities impact individual conceptions and practices of caring teaching, they discuss the notion of ‘neoliberal care’. This conceptualisation foregrounds the importance of calculated care, which is less about caring, and more about a performance of care to win over students. The conceptualisation of neoliberal care is exemplified through the case of Chuck, who viewed his role as getting students to pass by (literally) using his manifesto for success (a 6-page document he required students to follow). This view of care (pass or not pass) is deeply connected to a neoliberal ideology: driven by metrics and individualisation/self-management: ‘Care, to Chuck, must be enacted and performed in the same way he experienced and enacted care – through visible displays that could be quantified or observed’ (p. 9). DowieChin and Schroeder argue that developing deeper understandings of care through such nuanced conceptualisations is ‘essential not only to understanding the ideologies that guide higher education but to understanding how college students perceive and learn from instructors who may enact different forms of care’ (2022, p. 860).

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University Requirements Create Perceived Barriers Rather Than Facilitators to Caring Perceptions of whether care is facilitated or hindered by institutional requirements are key to examining institutional care. This includes examination of the environment, infrastructure, and resources that make care (im)possible. As previously mentioned, in most institutions, the people who undertake the care work (‘frontline’ workers) are more likely to be in precarious positions of employment and have less access to resources than managers. This uneven allocation of time, material resources, status, and security is likely to impact on the perception of capacity to care. As Tronto (2010) notes, When care givers find themselves saying that they care despite the pressures and requirements of the organization, the institution has a diminished capacity to provide good care. (p. 165)

Universities are a clear example of the uneven allocation of resources. Katie reflected on this, noting how the notion of evenly distributed care is idealistic, and while it may be true for some individuals, it is not true of the institution as a whole: Katie: Are they caring institutions? I think the people who work in them would like to think that they are, that we care about our students and about our research communities and the communities that we serve more generally. I think on an individual kind of basis that’s true or that’s hoped for, that’s kind of the ideal. But I guess personally after this last year, I don’t know that I feel that. I know I care a great deal about my students and about what I do...

Similarly, Eleanor described a sense of community as being aspirational, but difficult to achieve without institutional commitment. Eleanor: So, I can’t really say though, there are people who, they are working towards the same goal, that you can form a community with and support each other. Because each of us have different goals. We’re all far flung, different places. And what we value, different.

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Likewise, Eve reflected that dialogue with community and, critically, trust is eroded by the insecurity and performance pressures that staff in higher education face: Eve: I do think that that is expressing care for community, and region, and place, but from a staff perspective, I’m less convinced. Discovering that professional staff can be just as casualised as academic staff, and that there’s not always significant trust placed in individuals despite the fact that students have had to adjust to remote learning…

Eve’s comment about trust is particularly interesting; as Tronto (2013) notes, to be able to care with—invoking notions of solidarity and support—requires relationships that are built on foundations of trust. Eve’s quote here, which is representative of how many discussed their relationship with their institution, suggests that connection is undermined by a critical lack of trust: the idea that everyone is precariously employed erodes the conditions for good faith, reciprocal belief. As Hochschild argues, gender (and race) creates a ‘status shield’: ‘it follows that persons in low-status categories—women, people of colour, children—lack a status shield against poorer treatment of their feelings. This simple fact has the power to utterly transform the content of a job’ (p. 174). Given that the least secure members of the university staff are required to take on most of the care-work without the benefit of access to resources, institutional structures can be significant constraints to care. Other barriers to care exist in the ways that the care is organised, communicated, and accessed. As we have described elsewhere, many students prefer to access support through networks, often eschewing online booking mechanisms (Baker et al., 2018). A sense of caution or disdain for impersonal, online services also applies to staff, as Eleanor describes: Eleanor: [talking about childcare for students and staff] …But offering a service is not enough, especially if it’s on a website in a kind of hidden place. Especially when it’s a mental healthcare service or emotional wellbeing service. Those who are offering those services know that those who need them rarely go for them in the first place, because depression will send you into your room. So, unless you’re proactive, you’re not really helping those people. And if you say, “Okay, we offer these services, but only 50 people came to us,” well, what did you do to get more people?

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The provision of effective care for staff through institutionally provided support services can therefore be hampered by economic imperatives intended to ‘keep things going’ by reducing expenditure. While these actions are not motivated by malicious intentions—in taking responsibility for ‘keeping the wheels turning’, senior managers must make hard decisions—but often the implications of these choices for caring are under-considered, perhaps because those making the decisions are not currently engaging in these kinds of caring supports.

Universities Unevenly Distribute Care Work Along Class, Gender, and Ethnicity Lines The uneven distribution of care is a key motif in the literature, which is perhaps unsurprising given the feminist scholarly roots of this work (see Chapter 2). In particular, Joan Tronto’s scholarship on the role of care in democratic society has exposed the ways that privileged people4 are able to use their resources (status, wealth, role) to invoke ‘privileged irresponsibility’ and pass their caregiving duties to others—either through kinship or community networks or through payment. This plays out in inequitable ways, creating what Arlie Hochschild (2012) calls ‘care chains’, which allow rich, ‘global northerners’ to manipulate their advantage and pass responsibility for their care responsibilities onto poorer people from the ‘global south’, who often have care duties that are passed to kin or community. These chains both illustrate and perpetuate global inequalities; as Tronto notes, this passing of care to women, people of colour, First Nations people, and people from low socioeconomic backgrounds highlights ‘the fact that care is still disproportionately the work of the less well-off and more marginal groups in society reflects care’s secondary status in society’ (p. 165). In Australia, many public universities had undertaken professional reviews as part of a cost-efficiency agenda, even before the financial effects of COVID unfolded. Inevitably in such events, lower-paid, less senior roles see the most profound cuts. Following the most recent COVID-induced cuts in Australia, support roles in student services, equity, counselling—the ‘care foot-soldiers’ described by Grummell et al.

4 Predominantly identified by intersecting identity markers such as white, western, English-speaking, middle/upper class, well-educated, well-networked men.

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(2009)—were heavily cut at several universities, along with middle managers in professional roles (Croucher & Woelert, 2022). Most of the roles made redundant were occupied by women (Littleton, 2021). Issues of gender are deeply tangled with the uneven distribution of care; indeed, as we noted in Chapter 2, the idea and use of the word care interpellates a feminine or even maternal sentiment. The gendered allocation of care has received significant scholarly attention (albeit arguably not matched by action from universities). This is, as Wood et al. (2020) argue, a consequence of the prevalent white/Anglo (read: colonial), masculine/patriarchal structures that are a legacy from elitist forms of higher education; they write: …this erosion of care as an extension and intensification of already uncaring institutions and spaces, as they also navigate the everyday gendered violence of the masculinist culture venerated by academic institutions and the racialized violence of the normalization of whiteness in the academy. (p. 430)

Kathleen Lynch’s work on gender, care, and higher education management has offered significant insights into the ways that these aspects intersect to create barriers, or the ‘care ceiling’. This ceiling—sharing similarities with, or perhaps a part of, the metaphor of the ‘glass ceiling’— is created and sustained by the societal undervaluing and invisibilising of care. Lynch recounts how senior management positions are considered ‘care-free zones’, representing the ‘pinnacle of masculinized citizenship’ (p. 57). Women, even those in management (although they remain significantly underrepresented in leadership positions in higher education; Sharafizad, 2021), are the care ‘foot soldiers’ of universities (see Lynch et al., 2007). As Sumison (2000) articulates, In a university environment, where caring is not traditionally valued or rewarded, basing one’s professional practice on an ethic of caring can perpetuate the collective disadvantage experienced by women and continue to preclude them from positions of influence and power. (p. 172)

Likewise, Vásquez Vedera (2019) discusses how: ‘The link between caring responsibilities and women’s work also means that care elements of professional teaching practices are often unrecognized and under-valued’ (p. 86). Research shows that women are less likely to be promoted in

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higher education partly because of patriarchal networks and partly because women are: disproportionately encouraged to do the ‘domestic’ work of the organization, and/or the care work (e.g., running courses, teaching, thesis supervision, doing pastoral care), neither of which count much for individual career advancement even though they are valuable to the students and the reputation of the university. (p. 55)

Delia, a full-time academic, shares her observations of this gendered care work in the context of PhD supervision: Delia: …I’ve got other colleagues that I know don’t do the work of building relationships on the whole, they’re males. They strategically and selectively select their students…. I’ve got colleagues that say they won’t supervise a student for whom English is not their first language because they don’t want to be doing their editing work. And so, they often pick male students, they often pick older male students who then therefore, they just focus on their project. And … they get it done in two or two and a half years because that’s all they’re doing. So, I think there are multiple levels at which this complexity impacts workload if we want to measure it in that way.

While these are one person’s observations, several such accounts of gendered approaches to care/relational work circulate in the scholarly literature. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 2, Noddings’ (1984) early view of moral/caring education was built on a parenting model, particularly the relationship between mother and child. Sandra Acker also noted this maternal dynamic in her 1995 article, writing of the motherly connotations of care in teaching having deep roots, particularly in primary teaching which is designed to mimic ‘mother-like intense attachments and dedication… in their kitchen-like classrooms’ (p. 23). Acker’s reading of the literature leads her to argue that similar to ‘good mothers’, ‘good teachers’ ‘find their work is never done’ (p. 24); however, this mothering discourse disguises the fact that classrooms are workplaces, which creates the conditions for caring to be felt as a burden: Teachers’ caring activities, then, have from one perspective been seen as derived from their teacher identities; from another, as part of ’women’s ways’; and from a third, as a consequence of the social expectations that

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women’s caring work should blur the distinction between labour and love. (p. 24)

Although such gendered/feminine associations between care and motherhood are highly problematic, as outlined in Chapter 2, and the primary education context poorly relates to the adult education context, there remain strong associations between women and caring work in higher education. If women are held to be teacher-carers by virtue of their gender, aligning with a warped idea of what care as a personal disposition means, this lets others off the hook regarding sharing the caring labour and working to reduce such stereotypes. Moreover, caring is devalued through lazy and hurtful associations with ‘women’s work’ (McLeod, 2017; Warin & Gannerud, 2014), and actively contributes to ideas about teaching being subordinated to research, with care elements of teaching— such as getting to know students, establishing needs, negotiating learning goals, making learning relevant to individuals—concealed or ignored, particularly in post-compulsory contexts (Restler, 2019; Vásquez Vedera, 2019). This notion of gendered dispositions was discussed by Xander. He reflected on the career advancement of a female colleague and the perception that circulated in his community about how she was able to progress so fast: Xander: …she moved quite quickly through her position from lecturer, to senior lecturer, to associate professor, and there was always comment there that she, which is more interesting, now I think about it, that she moved all those roles because she didn’t care for other women, so she took on the role of the male academic, that real kind of hard-line, not caring about other people, not mentoring or fostering relationships with other academics, that then allowed her to move up a lot quicker.

Xander’s reflection is a telling indictment of gendered associations about dispositions—rather than a commentary on how the structures of higher education create a ‘care ceiling’, to use Lynch’s (2010) evocative term. We discuss these gendered perceptions and dispositions further in Chapter 6. It is pertinent to consider the distinct types of care operating in higher education. For Mariskind (2014), these are gendered; as noted in Chapter 4, the cognitive dimensions of care (caring about, pedagogical (or academic) care, instrumental care) are largely viewed as masculine,

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while the embodied, affective dimensions of care (caring for, pastoral care, relational care, and support) are viewed as feminine. While this splitting of care into dichotomous domains (masculine-feminine, pedagogicalpastoral, instrumental-relational) can be unhelpfully reductive, potentially legitimising the uneven distribution of caring labour in the academy; as a conceptual distinction it is helpful in terms of analysing who is doing what (or not), and why. For instance, Tett et al. (2017) note that not all academics view their role as including pastoral support, with a common finding being that many students do not consider themselves to be a top priority for their teachers, describing themselves as ‘just a number’, and being acutely are aware of pressures on academics’ time, resulting in hesitation to ask for help. Tett et al.’s data suggest that being able to navigate university systems to find support is a shared challenge, especially for students who have transitioned from ‘non-traditional’ pathways (such as from further education courses). However, not all staff engage in supporting students with this task; a fact that universities largely prefer to conceal from students in their marketing or public descriptions of teaching and learning in their institutions. Gloria, a postdoctoral researcher, describes this as a ‘fantasy’ that universities promote; here she responds to a question about what it would take to create more caring structures in higher education: Gloria: I think recognising that it’s a far more complicated institution, which is doing a lot more than just teaching, and research would be good. So, I think being more honest about what’s actually happening, because I think ... there’s this fantasy about how the institution works, which is that senior academics are teaching first years. That’s not the reality, actually.

Gloria’s reflection on institutional honesty with students, which is important for managing expectations, highlights some of the misdirections that universities employ in their recruitment—that senior ‘rockstar academics’ will rarely teach, that universities are involved in a lot more than ‘just’ teaching and research. Maintaining the ‘fantasy’ pushes us to occupy positions where we may feel unprofessional if we tell the truth, and where silence forces us into complicity in an undercaring/misleading system.

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A Note on Language: Is Care the Right Word for Higher Education? The strong gendered connections with the term care are noted both in the literature and in the data that we draw on here. There is, therefore, a need to question whether a better word could be used to avoid the diminishment of responsibility-taking for care. Tim described how he disliked the word care because it is ‘too broad to be efficient or effective’, but he struggled to articulate a more palatable synonym. Katie described care more explicitly as ‘pastoral care’ to help mark out a clearer space. ‘Kindness’ (as per Clegg & Rowland’s, 2010 article) was discussed, but there was little appetite for swapping it, with Tim arguing that it doesn’t have the same strategic potency. Similarly, Gloria felt that while ‘care’ wasn’t perfect, with the right prefix it could capture the main issues: Gloria: I think [care is the right word for what we were discussing]. It’s so hard to think about it in a space where there’s so often the absence of it. And I suppose you don’t want to define it, to frame the whole project in terms of a negative thing. The un-care of the institution, which is kind of what we’re saying so much.

Miles described having similar conversations about whether care was the ‘right word’ with his colleagues because of what he perceives as the ‘loaded’ nature of care: Miles: And obviously if I talk about care in the school of nursing they get it, because it’s part of their being. If I go into the school of engineering, they frown at me and think what am I talking about? Am I talking about professional ethics? The language doesn’t necessarily travel across the campus, and again, when you use the word care, the gender issues come out and the caring profession stuff comes out… I think we’ll probably argue about within the department for some time before we come to any sort of conclusion about what works, and I think we have to try these words out in various corners of the university and see what the response is.

While it’s not perfect, care seems to be the best word for now.

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Summary This chapter has explored different views and values relating to care in the higher education context, using the lens of Joan Tronto’s seven signs of institutional carelessness. The political, societal, and economic undervaluing of care, as described brilliantly by Tronto (1993, 2010, 2013), constraints and compromises what care can/should be, as well as reducing what counts as care to caregiving (thus ignoring caring about, for, receiving, and with). While these conditions were certainly not created by neoliberalism, they are exacerbated by its prevailing ideologies, assumptions, and structures. Tronto’s seven signs of institutional carelessness do not operate in isolation; their impacts are compounded by their overlapping and compounding nature. None of these signs can be addressed individually. Universities, like any other large and complex institution, have a complex mesh of decision-makers and resource-allocation practices. In addition to being reasonably reactive, there are limited (if any) conversations about care (giving, receiving; caring about, for, with), and where they do exist there are limited or ad-hoc opportunities for consultation with people about their needs/preferences for support. The trend towards centralising support (as part of efficiency and cost-limiting imperatives) inevitably results in the homogenisation of caring responses from the institution. This does not prevent individuals from providing more bespoke care, but this is not always an identified area of their work (see Chapter 6). There is also a risk that institutionally prescribed care could be unhelpful or damaging if the needs of the individual are not considered. Another significant challenge that inhibits the interest in and capacity of universities to engage in caring behaviour is the tacit nature of many caring activities. As institutions with a deep commitment to the competitive logics of the market, ideas about what ‘counts’ have increasingly turned to what can actually be counted. This leaves the tacit practices of care—that are inherently uncountable—invisible and un(der)valued, while still taking (some) students’ and staff members’ time and energy. Care in higher education can best be understood as peripheral, plural, and layered, operating at different levels, through different systems, in different roles and between different parts of the academy. We suggest that the best answer to the question of ‘who cares?’ in higher education is everyone—just not evenly, and not always well.

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CHAPTER 6

Why Care?

Introduction If, as we argue in Chapter 5, universities are undercaring institutions, and the conditions for caring in higher education are challenging, if not openly hostile, why do people care? There are, of course, many possible answers—not least the idea that some people are ‘caring’—as both a virtue and a disposition to help others. As Virginia Held (2005) reminds us, a caring person ‘will not only have the intention to care and the disposition to care effectively but will participate in caring relations’ (p. 51). Some reasons for caring are linked to the passion that people have for their fields, and the seduction of the ‘desiring economy’ that Valerie Hey (2004) describes (see Chapter 4). In this chapter, we try to unpack some of the other reasons for why people continue to care in higher education, despite it rarely being a valued or visible part of their roles. We then discuss reasons why people ‘stop’ caring (as much).

Care as ‘Vocational Responsibility’ Working in the Caring Professions People-facing jobs in the public services like education, health, and social work are often referred to as the ‘caring professions’. Terms used to describe attraction to such professions include a ‘calling’, a ‘vocation’, a ‘mission’ (Hansen, 1995), as opposed to a job or occupation. These © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7_6

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professions involve clear and purposeful responsibility towards others, so how are people taught to care? Education and professional training are an obvious starting point; some professions—such as nursing and social work—have an explicit focus on care (for patients, ‘clients’), while other professions like teaching care are more implicitly covered in core curricula. In addition, many of the so-called caring professions have a professional practice component, which assumes that role modelling/mentoring takes place. In the context of teaching, vocational care is often captured under the notion of pedagogic care. From a UK perspective, Walker-Gleaves’ (2010) study of pedagogic care in higher education offers a list of characteristics of caring teachers, such as ‘listens to students’, ‘shows empathy’, ‘supports students’, ‘is active in the processes of learning in class’, ‘gives appropriate and encouraging feedback and praise’, ‘has high expectations in standards of work and behaviour’ and ‘shows an active concern in students’ personal lives’ (p. 26). Walker-Gleaves argues that caring is a choice; caring teaching is explicitly purposeful and a driver for pedagogic action: …becoming teachers and academics who choose to care shape and practice their academic work and teaching as relationship, where the ones who are ‘cared for’ and ‘cared about’ are not only at the centres of the lifeworlds of these academics but are the recipients of all that they do in their efforts to make a difference in their students’ lives. (p. 160)

This notion of teachers having the agency to choose to care again connects with assumptions that teachers are aware of this as being (a) a viable course of action, (b) a desirable course of action, (c) a part of the human condition that they can unproblematically draw upon. These assumptions are erroneous, however. Being a caring teacher, or a teacher who can demonstrate care, depends on the teacher valuing care as an essential part of their role. In the case of school and adult education, where teachers have to meet rigorous benchmarks for qualifications and practice and have therefore chosen to become teachers, such assumptions may be easier to justify. However, in higher education, where researchers become teachers without explicit training, these assumptions are harder to make. This was noted by Emma (a PhD student): Emma: In my experience the people who work for the university are often passionate about the role of public education and research in increasing

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social mobility and cohesion, which is a form of caring, and there are dedicated professional staff units that facilitate caring interactions with particular groups of students to keep them engaged in education and promote these goals. But student facing teaching staff, who have the most interaction with the broad group of students, are often working 50+ hour weeks; they’d be lucky to get time for lunch, and it’s too much to expect emotional labour from people whose jobs rely on fulfilling impossible research and teaching metrics. What’s missing is care for the teaching staff, honestly.

What Emma highlights here is a casual disregard for the multidirectionality of care, with a sense that universities ignore that care is both given and received. In focusing on students’ needs in the teaching and learning relationship, we run the risk of exhausting the educator. Similar arguments can be made about other care professions (Cummings et al., 2021) where a ‘service’ (care) is given to an ‘end-user’ (care-receiver), resulting in compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burn-out (which we discuss later in this chapter). While rarely included in discussions of caring professions, many nonteaching roles in higher education require engagement in the processes, policies, and practices that constitute university caring ‘business’: teaching and learning, research, advocacy, and community engagement (Cordaro, 2020). In fact, it could perhaps be argued that everyone working in higher education is involved in the caring profession of teaching, albeit in differing degrees of proximity to students. However, the complex and diffuse needs, agendas, and responsibilities of people working in universities cannot be condensed into a one-size-fits-all description. Moreover, the ‘giving of self’—which is arguably a key component of any caring profession—involves an inherent desire to displace one’s own needs to help others. In the case of higher education teachers, this may include the displacement of one’s research time to teach. As bell hooks (1994, p. 21) wrote in her essay on engaged pedagogy: When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers can grow and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks. Professors who expect students to share confessional narratives but who are themselves unwilling

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to share are exercising power in a manner that could be coercive. In my classrooms, I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way that I would not share.

This willingness to be vulnerable, to ‘confess’, and to share parts of the self, is not what we are trained to do, if indeed a higher education teacher has actually received any explicit ‘training’ for teaching. Although Walker and Gleaves (2016) argue that the fundamental nature of caring is inscribed in ‘professional standards’ for university teaching, we argue that there is actually a stark absence of consensus and shared understandings with regard to what the professional standards for university teaching look like, and even less awareness of what caring higher education teaching looks like. Discretionary Effort: The Individual Imperative to Care The literature on Organisational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB; see Chapter 2) tells us that there are opportunities and drawbacks for individuals who undertake ‘discretionary effort’ to offer support, including care. In the competitive higher education context, research shows how institutional pressures and OCB can lead to unintended negative effects, such as unethical behaviour, competition, and work pressure, all of which can encourage burnout (Bauwens et al., 2019). While OCB is known to impact positively on institutions, they are not always positive for individuals; negative consequences of ‘going above and beyond’ or ‘going the extra mile’ include ‘job creep’, which prolongs discretionary work but contributes to job stress, leading to what Bolino et al. (2013) call ‘citizenship fatigue’. Despite these risks, people still engage with OCB. In recent work (Baker et al., 2021), Sally and colleagues discuss this discretionary effort in terms of ‘invisible care’, illustrated with this example from ‘Helen’, a Psychology lecturer working in an Australian university: Well, we’re not paid for any of these additional sessions. I would say the only reason I agreed to help them ... I did it purely because (a), I am CALD myself and (b) because I obviously have a very close affinity for international students. (p. 11)

Writing about this in the context of supporting refugee students in universities (Baker et al., 2018), Sally and colleagues have described

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staff like Helen, who offer brokerage to students—working to mediate between students and the institution—as a form of ‘warm’ support, compared with the ‘hot’ (informal, grapevine: familial, friend, community) and ‘cold’ (formal: institutional, publicly available) knowledge outlined by Ball and Vincent (1998) in their foundational work on educational choice. In our research, we discussed how ‘warm’ staff often do this work at personal expense—using time and resources that are not recognised by the institution. We wrote that universities need to work on ways of embedding and recognising the care work and emotional labour undertaken by ‘warm’ individuals: With universities nurturing the conditions in which trusted relationships between [refugee students] and staff can form, comes a responsibility for those institutions to acknowledge and value the work which providing such support entails. (Baker et al., 2018, pp. 25–26)

However, in a 2021 article, revisiting the issue of supporting refugee students, we claim that little had changed. Indeed, our data suggest that people who demonstrate care in the course of their work in higher education do so in ways that are ‘voluntarily exploitative’ (Walker-Gleaves, 2010), creating a high likelihood of emotional fatigue. One of our participants, Carina (a Student Welfare Officer) captured the challenge, asserting that working in the equity context ‘attracts people who work themselves to the bone on the smell of an oily rag, to the point where it gets to everyone’s detriment I think’ (p. 11). While we understood that Carina was being wry, we also expressed concern about the dilemma it presents: …we must be careful not to divest universities of their duty of care for all their students by engaging in the practice of filling cracks in the system by providing labour that goes above and beyond contracted/ paid duties; at the same time, we must find ways to support students and meet them where they are. (Baker et al., 2021, p. 11)

This dilemma clearly illustrates the enduring contest between universities as institutions and the people who work for and engage with higher education to offer responsive support. As we argue in Chapter 9, it requires collective action to work to use the arguments that the institution will respond to (primarily, economic) and the allies/levers that can

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be utilised to push for change. This also takes energy and time: resources that are in critical supply.

‘Compelled to Care’: Care as a Personal Disposition The notion of care as a personal disposition, or even ‘compulsion’ (Walker & Gleaves, 2016), suggests an inevitability for some towards valuing, demonstrating, modelling, and/or privileging the component parts of care (empathy, kindness, responsiveness, attentiveness, interest; see Walker-Gleaves, 2010; Askins & Blazek, 2017). The notion of disposition also suggests that others may not share this inclination and find it harder to practice care ‘naturally’. Tronto (1993, 2013) has written extensively about how a caring disposition is one of several elements of care, including practice and discourse. The idea of disposition suggests an emotional investment on the part of both the one-caring and the cared-for, like Noddings’ (1984) idea of a ‘caring attitude’ as ‘largely reactive and responsive…receptive’ (p. 19), necessitating a willingness to be engrossed and displace one’s motivations. However, Virginia Held (2005) argues against the idea that care is purely a disposition, arguing instead that care is also a virtue that is grounded in relations that are not always benign and positively oriented: For many years we are in relations, we gradually find and become aware of them, we do not “make” them. Many of these relations will be highly unsatisfactory, certainly not chosen by us, and we may have to struggle to unmake them. But often where they are unsatisfactory, we can try to modify, improve, and transform them. In all these cases we need moral evaluations of relations, not just dispositions. (p. 52)

This dynamic and multifaceted view of relationality helps, Held argues, to highlight the mutuality of our interdependencies; the difference for a ‘caring person’ is that they seek to cultivate these caring relations, ‘rather than on his or her [their] own dispositions, and on the practice of care’ (2005, p. 53). A challenge to this, however, is the risk of focusing on the relational at the expense of the self; there is an argument that caring people are prone to overcommitment, and manipulative/able, particularly in professional contexts where we may be ‘dangerously submerged

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in unchosen social relations’ (Held, 2005, p. 49). As Noddings (1984) reminds us, there is a danger with caring: There is always the fear that with so much pressure the one-caring may find herself facing the risk that she will cease to care”, and that “conflict and guilt are inescapable risks of caring. (p. 12)

Overall, the argument that some people are disposed to care is difficult to measure but equally difficult to dispute. There are evidently some people who will ‘go the extra mile’ when it comes to activities that constitute care (maintenance, repair, and continuation), such as offering time, guidance, support, and kindness in ways that are not formally recognised as part of ‘the role’. Walker-Gleaves (2019) describes this imperative to care as a risky ‘compulsion’, especially when the ‘limited evidence for caring’s potency is precisely where care intersects with hope and all pedagogies of possibility’ (p. 108). For Katie, a Lecturer in Education, care is a key part of the job of being a scholar: Katie: I think I said before how a lot of my work is sustained by my care for my students, my interest in them, the love of what I do, but I also think that’s kind of, I think most academics would say they have a great care for contributing to the society that they think we should be. That’s the job of scholars, to think about that, to imagine that things could be different or better.

Certainly, the idea of making a difference or having a meaningful impact on the world resonates for our understanding of our work and our roles; it also makes a notable theme in the literature on why people remain in higher education when it’s perceived by so many as a challenging (if not toxic, returning to Gill’s assessment of the corrosiveness of individualising discourses) workplace. Care can also make a person notorious; for Gina, a Professor of Education, word travels fast if you are thought to have a caring disposition: Gina: I think word gets out, as you know. But also, people start to recognise your type of personality, I suppose... I mean, colleagues come to me as well sometimes to ask what should I do? I’ve got a student doing this or that. That kind of thing... But mostly, they can’t believe I’m a professor. I’m certainly approachable… I’m just a bit of a softy, I think.

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Gina described herself as ‘in demand’ when it came to challenges caused by cultural and linguistic diversity, suggesting a critical lack of support options for staff and students that she was tacitly filling. Perceptions of having a caring disposition can also lead to unrealistic expectations; here Lisa, a Research Fellow, describes how people perceive the way she works with people who are displaced: Lisa: And I said, “Well, that comes back to this care thing” … And he said, “It’s a 24-hour job. When you work in this space, it’s not a 24-hour job. Your heart doesn’t stop at 5:00, and your heart doesn’t stop at the weekend. Your commitment to this space doesn’t come in and out”.

The notion of caring being a round-the-clock, non-stop commitment, even when the job is a vocation and a passion, has significant implications for the individual and is a likely cause of exhaustion and burn out. There is a strong thread in the literature on caring educators that speaks to the common traits of a caring higher education teacher that can arguably be taught (see Chapter 5); however, there is little that has explicitly examined caring dispositions of higher education staff. Where this does exist, it predominantly attends to educators (for example, WalkerGleaves, 2010) or to caring pedagogy (Barrow, 2015; Walker-Gleaves, 2019). Such dispositional elements of care tend to get captured in reports of how students perceive caring teachers; for instance, in Clegg and Rowland’s (2010) study of students’ sense-making in their undergraduate studies, students described a caring disposition as going beyond ‘due care’: The good teacher [is] one who is perceived as having particular personal qualities beyond simply exercising due care, appears to be the effective teacher by virtue of the personal not despite it. (p. 729)

Similarly, Quinlan (2016) argues perceiving teachers as listening and showing immediacy through behaviours helps students to generate a sense of closeness, and consequently they experience their learning ‘more positively, feel emotionally supported, and can express their own emotions more authentically’ (p. 104). Likewise, Moore and Kuol’s (2007) analysis of statements given by students for teaching awards suggests that ‘interest, humour, passion, love, joy, enjoyment, and exhilaration all featured as

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emotions that [nominees] linked to positive recollections of their teachers’ (p. 93). A notable exception to the curation of characterisations based on students’ perceptions can be found in Walker-Gleaves’ (2010) UK study of ‘caring’ academics, based on her observations of three academics. She identified a range of metaphors that she observed in her participants or were invoked in their talk: performer, motivator, agitator, provocateur, mother-figure, nurturer, wise owl, guide, facilitator, empowerer, and crusader. Walker-Gleaves’ analysis illuminates the contextual, individual, and dispositional factors that led to these characterisations, which are often overlapping and often in tension with the performative requirements of their jobs. For our student-participants, perceptions of caring dispositions were strongly informed by the nurturing, guidance, and facilitation metaphors. In their talk about studying in a STEM subject in an elite university context, students made multiple mentions of ‘approachability’, ‘helpfulness’, ‘human-ness’, ‘flexibility’, and ‘welcome’. As Jessie (a Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences undergraduate student) summarised: Jessie: But erm, tutors that care, just you know I think it’s around; I don’t know. I think it’s part of your makeup within, you show an enthusiasm for life or whatever you’re studying which breeds into your students and umm that you really encourage conversation outside the standard thing they are trying to teach you.

Jessie’s experience and observations about caring dispositions align with the accounts in the literature of who counts as a ‘caring teacher’, similarly foregrounding a sense that this is ‘natural’ or easier for some individuals, presumably set comparatively against other educators who are less ‘enthusiastic’ or encouraging (Lolich & Lynch, 2017; WalkerGleaves, 2010; Zembylas et al., 2014). However, as we discuss later, we must be careful to avoid pathologising ‘the caring teacher’ because it denies the contextual (structural, environmental, gendered, hormonal, personal, wellbeing-related) conditions that might make it difficult for people to ‘perform’ their care at particular times or with particular cohorts. As Tangalakis and colleagues (2022) noted in their analysis of university student survey data, women educators receive more negative comments in ways that are deeply gendered; these authors note how one (female) student criticised her lecturer, writing ‘It was distracting when

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her child would interrupt her’. We can only imagine how that particular lecturer felt when she received this feedback—it would be enough to invoke the kind of fury that can destroy a career. While the bias against women in student surveys has long been noted and critiqued, universities have done little to respond in equitable ways; perhaps if we understand these as part of the contextual conditions that educators (not exclusively lecturers) work within, we can understand how the dispositional, ‘natural’ conception of care perpetuates the deeply uneven (gendered, racialised, classed, embodied) experiences of working in higher education that would make people less trusting and more cautious about expressing a caring disposition. Emotional Components of a Caring Disposition As outlined in Chapter 2, emotions—both positive and negative—are an essential constituent of a caring disposition. Although the dominant focus in the higher education literature is on the affective dimensions of teaching and learning, all activities within the academy are imbued with emotions. As Askins and Blazek summarise, ‘emotion is central to care relations: emotion as producing and being produced through research situations, teaching and collegiate relations, in and across specific institutional structures and norms; as implicit in knowledge production, circulation and legitimisation’ (2017, p. 1089). Eve, an academic learning advisor, described how she perceived the emotional dimension of care, saying: Eve: …care relates to both personal and professional contexts, and it’s an emotion, and an ethos, and something that you should practice towards your colleagues, your friends, your family, your partner. It is used both professionally and personally, but it shouldn’t be limited to one domain or the other.

As Eve suggests, the idea of care as an emotion and ethos that is actively siloed—acceptable in the personal but not in the professional—is highly counterproductive. Despite the omnipresence of emotions in all aspects of social life, including (and perhaps particularly) higher education, the affective has been diminished, if not ignored, because of the primary focus on the cognitive. This can be explained in part by the remnants of the dominance of Cartesian thinking about the mind-self dichotomy, and in part by the masculine/patriarchal shape of higher education (see Chapter 4). This

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underplaying of the affective, which has been helped along by universities’ uptake of individualising, ‘self-help’ narratives, has significant implications for the visibility and valuing of care, for students, staff, and the institution. As discussed in Chapter 5, it also perpetuates problematic gendered assumptions and dynamics when it comes to care.

The Costs of Caring: Why People Stop Caring (as Much) While there are many reasons (dispositions, inclinations) to care, there are arguably many more for not caring. Nel Noddings (1984) wrote extensively about this as a negative aspect of relational care, noting that Caring is completed when the cared-for receives the caring, but without this receptivity, caring deteriorates to ‘cares and burdens’ (pp. 181–182). In the higher education context, the increased bureaucratisation, commodification, and intensification of the work (see Chapter 4) has diminished the conditions for care to flourish. This creates the ‘undercaring’ conditions that Agnes Bosanquet (2017) describes (see Chapter 5), which are complicated by the uneven distribution of caring across the institution: Miles: Well, I mean, I see lots of people across the institution who clearly care passionately about their work, and you can also see lots of people who care a lot about the students in their care by the way they talk about them in a respectful manner and they’re happy to listen to students, and they’re happy to make themselves available for students, and all those sorts of things. But I also see some people who feel that students just get in the way of the running of the institution. When the students aren’t there, things are just much smoother and more streamlined, really.

As we discussed in Chapter 2, Tronto’s (1993) work on the political economy of care offers insights into the whys and hows of people caring less than others. She argues that the subordination of care in the dominant economic/neoliberal lens applied to society in general creates three conditions conducive to an ‘irresponsibility machine’ (p. 61): . detached care leads to ‘otherness’, which is experienced as alienation; . paternalism disenfranchises both care-giver and care-receiver; and . ‘privileged irresponsibility’: eschewing caring responsibilities on the basis of ‘care passes’.

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These conditions align with what Noddings (1984) describes as ‘anti-caring’, or ‘shoddy practices and practices motivated by meanness’ (p. 197). The combination of individualism and institutional undercare therefore creates the conditions for not/undercaring, which we discuss here in terms of depletion of caring resources, compassion fatigue, and self-interest, which in turn create what we are calling ‘care vacuums’. In what follows, we draw on our data to examine the higher education irresponsibility machine through Tronto’s three conditions. Detached Care Resulting from the Caring Too Much: Compassion Fatigue and Burnout Caring (giving and receiving, about, for, and with) involves multidimensional costs, ‘encompassing financial, temporal, emotional, and identity elements’ (Alsop et al., 2008, p. 625). Depleting our caring resources (time, energy, investment) in the process of ‘meeting the other’ (Noddings, 1984) has consequences. The consequences of dis/ connections between our expectations and lived experiences of care can create profound but unacknowledged emotional responses, including disappointment, guilt, shame, and anger. The costs of care are therefore high and can manifest in ways that are disadvantageous to both caregiver and care-receiver. Firstly, there is what Figley (1995) has coined as ‘compassion fatigue’: contagious vicarious trauma that results from engaging (too closely) with others’ care needs. Figley notes that empathic people are often prone to ‘absorbing’ and ‘mirroring’ the feelings expressed by others, which overwhelms the self and increases the likelihood of experiencing compassion fatigue. As Figley (1995, p. 5) notes, we can be ‘emotionally drained [and] adversely affected by our efforts’ in caring deeply, particularly when we are close, or recognise ourselves in the other, leading to our own victimisation. This secondary trauma is not limited to caring for an individual; while networks are important for post-trauma recovery, we can also be collectively ‘traumatised by concern’ (ibid., p. 5), particularly when impacted by a simultaneous trauma (for example, the results of pandemic lockdown measures). The pressures of feeling overwhelmed by caring responsibilities lead to experiencing care as a burden, accompanied by feelings of bitterness and resentment, which is likely to result in withdrawal (Noddings, 1984; Sumison, 2000).

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Secondly, there is burnout—a form of chronic occupational stress that has three dimensions according to Maslach’s (1982) foundational work: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and a decreased sense of personal accomplishment. These two forms of stress share many symptoms, including dissatisfaction, disassociation, demotivation, exhaustion, and feeling out of control. While they are not the same types of stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout are intensified for people who engage in caregiving as part of their work. In the higher education context, the dominance of the cognitive has traditionally left the affective invisible and undervalued, meaning that questions of wellbeing have not always been considered the purview of universities. This is despite the prevalence of burnout; indeed, if we follow Arlie Hochschild’s categorisation of workers and emotional labour, burnout is more prevalent in workers who identify wholeheartedly with their job, which would arguably include many people who work in academia (Clouston, 2018). Moreover, market-oriented reforms to higher education that have increased stress, demoralisation, and dissonance between senior management and the academic workforce are stressors that have appeared to worsen over time. The impacts of neoliberal governance, including increasing ‘busy work’ and the reduction of resources, especially personnel, have contributed to what Lee et al., (2021, p. 66) describe as the ‘zombification of academic workforce’ because work pressures, including job creep, zap energy, leaving people with little momentum to resist. Although these implications of neoliberal ideology have long been lamented in the academic literature, universities have had little need to respond. However, since COVID started in 2020, there has been a proliferation of discussions about compassion fatigue and burnout amongst students and staff (for example, Jackson & Szombathelyi, 2022), particularly in the cases of healthcare and teaching professionals (for example, Lluch et al., 2022; Yang, 2021), but also with student-focused support staff (Preston et al., 2022). The pandemic affected staff by compounding routine, job-related stressors with their own caring responsibilities and traumas, and by calling on them to extend too far to meet similar needs of their students (Forrester, 2023). However, as Raimondi (2019) reminds us, these challenges pre-existed COVID; with the ever-increasing complexity of students’ needs, university staff are often ‘ill-prepared to deal with the effects on themselves of helping students’ (p. 53).

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The amplification of these issues is a welcome addition to conversations about working in higher education, with the nascent body of literature on compassion fatigue pointing clearly at the consequences of caring too deeply, without that care extending to the self (Cordaro, 2020) and creating the metaphorical risk of the ‘empty cup’. As Barrow (2015) reminds us, caring ‘involves a serious time and emotional commitment’ (p. 54). During the writing of this book, I (Sally) took ‘burn out’ leave three times because of how the combined effects of COVID lockdowns, single parenting, intensive teaching, inter/national advocacy took a toll. At times, I wore this busy-ness as a badge of honour, but it always resulted in the inevitable crying, depression, withdrawal, and resentment. This lasted for the entire duration of writing this book and only an extended period of leave, timed for when school and teaching returned, with a promise that a colleague would deputise for my admin responsibilities, and—critically—would have this recognised in their workload, helped me to rebalance and recharge. I (Rachel) am accustomed to maintaining an unsustainable level of care in my professional life, motivated by a range of factors, including recognition of my privilege, my hope to ‘give back’, and my concern regarding the human costs of the many care vacuums that I observe—and have experienced—in our world. While I recognise that burnout is counter to advocacy efforts and care of self and others, unsustainable care burdens are often comprised of many incremental increases in responsibility that accumulate amid the busyness of life and beyond our awareness, until they pose a critical threat to our wellbeing. Time and space to be honest and reflexive about our care needs, and to consider how best to balance these requirements with our aspirations to contribute positively to our workplaces and communities, are essential. Of course, amid the many competing demands across all aspects of our lives, time and space can be in very short supply. For Eleanor, being a postdoctoral researcher in Gender Studies, with limited security and high productivity pressures, is an exhausting role, particularly because she was away from home, and she felt isolated when we spoke: Eleanor: You should have some hope that there’s something changing. There’s something going to... You’re seeing your work is actually doing something positive. Or you have some support system. You actually have your family, or you have another relationship or something to balance out the work life in such a way that you’re not just giving and hoping,

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without anything filling you up. So, I think that’s pretty much where I am this year… It’s built up, and then you just crash. Sally: So, you’re crashing at the moment? You’re still feeling that way? Eleanor: Oh yeah. I’ve crashed already. I’m trying to actually see if I can get up.

The social justice orientation of her research, which we will describe as an outlet of care as political action in Chapter 7, left Eleanor feeling emptied (‘crashed’) and needing time and space to recharge. Of the various resources we need to be able to give and receive care, time is perhaps the most markedly scarce in higher education, especially when its scarcity is highlighted by the requests (demands) of others on our time. Giving care requires us to be able to suspend our own needs to meet another’s (Noddings, 1984). Simply put, if we feel pressured because we have other things that are also making demands on our time (deadlines, competing responsibilities, pressure from family or friends), or we have too many people asking for our time, it’s much more difficult to suspend our own needs. Experiencing ‘time famine’ (Perlow, 1999) necessitates difficult decisions about how to use time. For Kate, a Lecturer in Education, while recognising students’ needs and responding to them was a clear way of manifesting a sense of care in her role, she lamented how it was one of the first things, as well as ‘time to think’, that she cut from her schedule when she felt under pressure. The impacts of time poverty ripple; as Eleanor describes, having an overextended educator (supervisor in her case) complicates, if not hinders, the giving and receiving of care with students: Eleanor: … my supervisor is actually one of the best people I could actually say should be a supervisor... She’s driven. She’s not soft. She’s very driven, as most people at that level are. She’s very driven. She scares me. I’m not saying she’s nice. She’s not nice. She’s as good as a supervisor... Compared to other supervisors, she’s good. But doesn’t make her nice. She’s understanding enough if you come to her with a problem. She’s going to be understanding. But still, she can’t give you time. I don’t think she understands that she can’t give you time. Because she’s also borne of the system that doesn’t allow you to have time…

Such tacit messages from managers and supervisors can create toxic conditions that fuel overworking practices and production anxiety, which Eleanor described for her as a fear that she was ‘not living up to

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[her] capacity… You’re not producing. So, you feel like a failure’. Un/ dercaring role modelling was also noted by Amber, a Ph.D. student, who had reflected on the importance of the care offered by her own supervisors, and then compared this to other supervisory stances that emphasised detachment: Amber: And [a supervisor in the School] said, “So I always maintain my distance for my students… it has to be done that way.” And I remember I came out of that thinking, “I am so, so glad that she is not my supervisor.” I couldn’t have lasted at all. So, I think institutions shouldn’t foster that kind of attitude because if people from CALD backgrounds and especially other students too, I mean, not only people who come from those backgrounds, I think they would be really helpless and would be giving up in no time if that was the case.

Exacerbating the scarcity of time is the structural undercare which fails to protect people when they do actually take time off, despite time being a key preventative measure for avoiding burnout. Delia, an academic, lamented the idea that taking time off is ‘the quick solution to all of this’, because taking leave will not address the structural and systemic problems that lead to stress and burnout, or as she put it, ‘there’s no other support there to deal with what’s really at the heart and centre here’. Similarly, Eleanor perceived taking time off as a ‘luxury’, particularly when mental ill-health is a factor: Eleanor: The time off, it’s a sham… You can’t take time off when it concerns things of mental health. I could schedule a healing if I had a cracked bone, and then my bone needs three weeks to heal. But I think if you give me three weeks to heal my mind, unless something is being done in those three weeks that’ll actually change this, after three weeks I’m still going to be the same.

This sense of ‘something being done’ (or not) relates to the individual responsibility Eleanor has for her work; in essence, if she takes time off, her work will not get done and will create further pressures; hence it is easier to keep going and not take the time off. In conversation with Eleanor, Sally noted how taking leave was often accompanied by a sense of dis-ease because of the ‘work avalanche’ they would return to: Sally: So, I feel like there’s no point in taking any time. If I took time off and someone said, “Oh, I’ll do your teaching preparation,” or “I’ll

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do your marking,” or “I’ll do your supervision meetings,” or “I’ll do whatever”, then you’d feel like, okay, I can take some time. Otherwise, you’re just borrowing time from the future. Right?

This idea of ‘borrowing time’—having to work at double time when returning to manage time taken from work, is antithetical to the project of taking leave. Importantly, this is not a workplace policy; in fact, it is likely contradicting advice on wellbeing and leave; instead, this is often the result of understaffing and/or the internalisation of overworking practices and associated anxieties. Miles illustrated this ‘fetishization of overwork’ (Moran, 2020) with an example of an off-the-cuff comment from a visiting senior manager: Miles: Well, I’ll give you a little anecdote. We had a visit to the department by one of the senior management, one of the top three guys. And the suggestion was he was coming to listen to us and to talk to us, and see what we do, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, he’s a nice guy. I’ve got nothing against him. However, one of the first things he said to us was, “Well, I typically work for 75 hours a week.” At which point, of course, the younger members of staff go, “Oh, crikey, well, I don’t and I’m not going to, so that means I’m scuppered, does it?”

Miles went on to interpret the manager’s comment, foregrounding concern about how his colleagues responded to the messaging from the senior manager: Miles: His view was that he cares so much that he works all hours of the day and night. But the message received is that if you don’t work all hours of the day and night, clearly you don’t care as much as I do, and therefore it’s no wonder the students aren’t happy or this isn’t going well, because you’re only working 38 hours a week, and how can we possibly survive on that? … And a large proportion of our staff went away even more depressed than they were before, because they thought, “Well, I’m clearly not going to manage with a family at home and this that and the other, I can’t work those hours, I don’t want to work those hours, so I shall probably never be promoted”. The message and what’s received just don’t tally.

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This notion of care as ‘putting in the hours’ is obviously a partial view of care, one that ignores the daily care relations and responsibilities in which many colleagues are engaged. Eleanor describes this kind of behaviour as a ‘trauma response’: Sally: But we just keep working quicker and everything accelerates. And some of us make it look really easy, and then it just makes other people feel shit in comparison. There’s a lot of dishonesty in the system. We need more people to say, “I’m struggling.” Eleanor: A lot. People are not actually being honest with that. Sometimes we are praising people for their trauma responses. That person that’s a workaholic, that’s a trauma response. And we are looking at them like, “I wish I could be that.”

What Eleanor describes as workaholism is a prevalent concern in higher education (Gewin, 2021); a recent survey of Australian academics suggests that the average academic works 50.8 hours a week (Kenny & Fluck, 2021), well over the average contracted hours of 37 hours a week. The pressures of performing (or being seen as contributing) are even more marked for casual staff (Smithers et al., 2023), who often have to work in intense bursts in teaching periods, often in multiple universities with competing bureaucracy to deal with, then followed by periods of time marked with no work and no pay. The compulsion/need to overwork may be driven by different imperatives but results in un/undercaring practices towards self, and to others through role modelling: Katie: I see really timid, increasingly timid, increasingly sessionalised, increasingly atomised workers. They care a whole lot about what they do, and they work really hard propping up the system, but the system doesn’t care about them a great deal. And I just see that disparity becoming more and more entrenched. I don’t know.

It is also difficult to give care when a person themselves does not feel able, because they are burnt out, or surviving the cruelty of insecure work, or overcommitted. As Tim noted, ‘many staff people have their own challenges and when a student presents with a challenge or needs care… that’s harder to provide if the staff person themselves is on the edge’. This is particularly problematic in the context of self-care (or a lack thereof), and particularly for individuals who cannot, for many reasons, advocate for themselves:

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Tim: And I’ve seen that. We had a colleague a few years ago who just, he was in a really bad place. And I feel for that. But it meant that the students just triggered that. And he... At a particularly bad moment and had some particularly bad responses to students. And I had to say to him, “You’re one email away from affecting your entire career. You need to take leave, now. Not take the afternoon off and go for a walk. You need to take a week off, now. Not tomorrow... [but] he didn’t want to take the leave, because of “this will reflect poorly on me, and if I take this leave then there’ll be this mark on my record that I’ve had to take” …

Tim’s recounting of his attempts to support a colleague that he perceived to be in crisis provides insights into a number of issues that impact the enactment of care in higher education. Firstly, Tim’s empathy and sense of awareness for the wellbeing of those around him allowed him to notice his colleague’s state of distress. This sensitivity and regard for a colleague’s wellbeing and professional prospects are pre-conditions for being able to offer timely and considered guidance. The forms of care that Tim deemed proportionate to the circumstances—i.e., ‘not take the afternoon off and go for a walk’ but to make use of a consolidated period of leave, show the importance of individualised and situation-specific care. However, Tim’s description of his colleague’s hesitation to take leave due to concerns that this would be perceived negatively is indicative of a worrying perceived conflict between institutional rhetoric of valuing issues of mental and physical health and the attitudes encountered in the workplace. Paternalism As Tronto (2010) outlined, and we discussed in Chapter 5, paternalistic thinking is a key sign that the ‘irresponsibility machine’ is working to disenfranchise both givers and receivers of care from decision-making, which in turn leads to the compassion fatigue and burnout. A major contributor to disenfranchisement are the assumptions made (the institution management, reified in the policies, systems, and structures of the institution) about the care people need, and the resources people can access to engage in caring. This is, in some ways, a response to the conceptualisation of care as activities in the home domain, rather than work. While this does come back to semantics and language choice, paternalistic

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thinking about care sets up a gender divide that critically disadvantages women. Virginia Held (2005) argues that the rendering of the household as a ‘private’ sphere pushes the nourishing work of domestic care—parenting (mothering), housework, maintaining kin- and friendship circles—into a shadowy, opaque space, ‘rendering them vulnerable to domestic violence without outside interference, often leaving women economically dependent on men and subject to a highly inequitable division of labor in the family’ (p. 5). The experience of universities as undercaring is a shared theme in the data, and in our own lived and anecdotal experiences of studying and working in higher education. When we asked why our participants thought this might be the case, a common perception was that the blending of archaic academic/new public management governance structures, and the inherited hierarchical rigidity of the academy was to blame; as Sara, a professional staff member in a management role, describes, ‘universities are hot houses for poor management’: Sara: So many times, you see at university top heavy decisions being made by people who have no understanding of what the impact of what their decision is going to be and don’t have the expertise to make it.

Sara gave an example of her experiences of trying to access carers’ leave during a lock down during the pandemic which illustrates the kind of institutional paternalism that diminishes care. She described how despite carers’ leave being (nominally) available for staff, the systems were so rigid that it was impossible to take more than one day off at a time. Dealing with the inanity of the system, and the limited responses of colleagues in Human Resources exacerbated the stress that had led Sara to consider applying for the leave in the first place: Sara: And so, to make it difficult to access those things in difficult circumstances or in times of need, I think demonstrates a really uncaring positioning. And that’s a really minor thing, but it does affect a lot of people at the moment… And that’s what really annoyed me, made me actually very cross, is that the expectations remain the same and are particularly high and the demands are high and everybody’s struggling in this environment. And yet when you are trying to access something that you’re following the right procedures and you can’t do it. And so that tells me the subtext to that is actually the university does not wish for me or staff en masse to access carers’ leave and they would prefer that people run down their annual leave to reduce their overall

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operating costs. And that’s the preferred approach. Come out and say it.

A different kind of paternalism is the limiting of care to academic needs, rather than considering the situated complexity of people’s lives, and the intricate care responsibilities knitted through their personalprofessional-study lives. For example, Katie, a Lecturer of Education, described an ‘increasing disconnect between the management of universities and the workers’ in the context of course planning and relying on sessional colleagues. Katie recalled how senior managers (who she described as ‘baby boomer-era kind of academics who came through a very different system’) blithely discounted the financial needs of sessional colleagues; describing how ‘they don’t really need the money kind of thing was the underlying tone’ to the conversation. This incensed Katie: Katie: And I’m like, “Are you fucking kidding?” The sessionals I have, one has four kids, is the main source of income. These people are never going to get jobs. They finished their PhDs years ago, they rely on casual work consistently, year upon year.

Katie described the assumption of capacity and resources as a ‘disconnect between the world that used to be and the world that [management] now have to manage’, which creates endemic inequity, or ‘the exploitation of the system that increasingly relies of an exploited workforce’. Katie: I don’t think most people fully understand that or want to understand that. I understand why you wouldn’t want to think about that because it’s pretty shit. Sally: Because it’s uncomfortable. Yeah, it’s interesting. Katie: Yeah. And there are all sorts of reasons why in a practical sense you don’t. The higher up the food chain you go, as you well know, the less contact you have with sessional staff for instance. For instance, my Head of School wouldn’t know a sessional staff member basically.

Of course, such power dynamics are far from universal and there are plenty of examples of Heads of School who work closely with sessional staff members. However, Katie’s point about the continued adherence to an imagined academy in which staff and students have shared backgrounds, interests, resources, and responsibilities raises the importance of diversifying and democratising care in higher education. Creating

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opportunities for a greater range of voices and experiences to inform institutional understandings is central to this task (see Chapter 8). Privileged Irresponsibility: Care Passes Aplenty Performance has no room for caring. (Ball, 2003, p. 224)

The entrenched individualism, fuelled by competition and (perceived) scarcity of resources, creates the conditions within institutions for what Tronto (2013) describes as ‘care passes’, which allow some people ‘to bear the burdens (and joys) of care and allow others to escape them’ (pp. 32– 33). These passes thus permit people to outsource their responsibilities on the basis of protection, production, ‘taking-care-of-my-own’, bootstrap, and charity. Tronto (2013) argues that the first two of these (protection and production) are gendered, permitting men a higher volume of passes; for example, Tronto argues that only masculine ‘public’ protection, such as police or fire service work, counts societally as a pass, and not the feminised ‘private protection’ in the home. However, as Fisher (1990) reminds us, these passes, or the notion of ‘escape’, ‘exaggerates the extent to which any of us can escape from domestic, that is, caring work’ (p. 111) because when we do outsource our care—as many of us habitually do, whether it is paying for childcare or employing a cleaner—the caring always has to be done by someone else. For Miles, the uneven distribution of caring between his colleagues was directly a result of clashes between individual priorities and thinking about others: Miles: Well, I think like many institutions, we’ve got those colleagues who see themselves as teachers and we’ve got those colleagues who see themselves as researchers, and I think that’s a very stark distinction within some faculties. And those who see themselves as serious researchers really haven’t got the time for all this caring nonsense, as it were, which simply increases the burden on those who do apparently have the time and the interest to care. Sally: Is it the case that people do have the time? Is it recognised in their contracts? Miles: Oh, no, no, no. No, no. Absolutely not. And that’s part of the problem, of course, that caring, if you like, is largely seen as a spare time activity, something that you can do if you wanted to.

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The production care pass is particularly prevalent in the academy; as Warin and Gannerud (2014) argue, care is counter to the neoliberal priorities of the individual and independence from structures of state/ institution: We will never manage to recognise and reward reciprocal forms of care work whilst educational purposes continue to be aimed towards the private and independent individual following a set of goals that envision autonomy as the endpoint. (p. 196)

Likewise, Jill Blackmore (2020) writes of how the competitiveness of academia—exemplified by the challenges of securing ongoing work— creates the conditions for exploitative care. She offered a searing critique of universities’ capacity to respond caringly to the impacts of the pandemic: The dominant corporate rather than collegial logic has resulted in academic disenchantment … Academics, regardless of their employment status, gift considerable unpaid labour to keep their job and to sustain the sector because they are passionate about their research and teaching. While there is significant staff goodwill to try and save jobs, many feel that their passion for teaching, research and public service has been exploited for decades. (p. 1336)

All of these function as ‘privileged irresponsibility’ and are made more acute by individualistic ideologies. In the higher education context, the incremental and increasingly sharp adoption of neoliberal thinking (competition, market-reliant, individualistic) has arguably incentivised people to care more about themselves (their career, their KPIs, their outputs), with the cost being caring less about others, or not caring much at all. This, according to Miles, is mirrored by a lack of demonstrated care at the institutional level; he explained: Miles: I think the institution does an appalling job of caring for staff on the whole. And that can be seen by our staff turnover. I mean, we lose enormous numbers of members of staff every year.

The high turnover of staff that Miles describes is an ongoing challenge that higher education sectors across the world have long faced, albeit more acutely during and after COVID. In Australia, this was a net loss of 6.9% of the permanent workforce, and up to 20,000 casual colleagues

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(Norton, 2022). The reasons for the reduction in the workforce cannot be explained by COVID alone; in the UK, the University and College Union (2022) report that pay has dropped by over 25% since 2009, as well as the significant cuts in pensions that have led to weeks of strikes over the last 5 years. Looking at this through a care lens suggests that the loss of ‘enormous numbers’ is symptomatic of an un/dercaring sector, although Miles noted that many losses were from colleagues moving to other institutions: Miles: And of course, we always lose those people who we think, “Oh, no, he’s not going, is he? Oh no, we’re not losing her.” They’re real assets to the place, and that’s why they can get jobs elsewhere. Whereas the people who stay are those who are, again, very generalizing, but those who are selfish and are going up the tree here… They’re as happy as Larry, and the system supports that, so why shouldn’t they be happy? To some extent, I have great sympathy for that… if the system allows you to get up there and pay your mortgage without investing too much of your emotional self… then why shouldn’t they do that, in a way?

Miles’ characterisation of individuals involved in ‘playing the game’ as un/dercaring is underscored by his observation that ‘the system is designed for them to do that’. Tim made a similar remark regarding how his colleagues use their time, and how engaging in competitive, selfpromoting activities meant there was less time for collegial behaviours: Tim: … well, look, teaching awards are great. But most of them are self-nominated. So, every teaching award that you apply for, you’re necessarily taking yourself away from your students. Right?

At stake here, for academic staff or people who want to gain an academic position, is the system that measures individual ‘esteem’ and contributions (mostly research oriented—grants received, journal articles published, books written—or public celebrations of teaching through awards and citations) and penalises underproductivity (through a perceived or actual risk of losing one’s position or being switched to a teaching-focused1 role. Such forms of governance are represented in 1 Teaching-focused roles are often discussed in terms of a ‘demotion’ from the ‘goldstandard’ of the balanced role (40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service), or as marking the “end of an academic career” (Bennett et al., 2017); however, this kind of rhetoric is often borne of anxiety about a new mode of employment, grossly diminishes the

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the literature as ‘care neutral’ and responsible for allowing ‘a particular “care-less” form of competitive individualism to flourish’ (Tett et al. 2017, p. 57) in which there is a declining sense of responsibility for others (particularly students). The pressure to compete therefore forces academics into allocating precious resources to the activities that lead to individual security, as well as advancement, over the activities that are people-rich, time-intensive, invisible, tacit, and caring: Miles: I mean, most of the people making the high-level, most of the academic positions at the high level, are people who are or were good researchers rather than good teachers. And that’s because it’s much easier to be promoted if you’re good at research than if you’re good at teaching, simply because the metrics are simpler for the researchers. So, the research panels, if you’ve got your publications and your grant money, then it’s easier to get promoted. When you start talking about teaching quality and metrics for teaching, it’s much more grey and wishy-washy, and therefore people are much less likely to be promoted that way.

This privileging of particular (competitive) aspects of working in higher education, such as Miles’ example of research being valued more than teaching (also, see Chapter 4), was predominantly discussed by our participants in terms of promotion, with this individual goal a key use of resources (time, energy) at the expense of more collegial, caring activities: Tim: And so, is that, as an institution, what we want to be promoting? Glory for yourself at the expense of others? …but when that becomes institutionalised, when you look at, especially as a young academic, “Okay, what do I need to get promoted? I need teaching awards. Okay. So, I need to dedicate...” And sometimes they take a lot of time but then you’re funnelling time away.

This corruption of caring possibilities has problematic consequences for change if we consider solidarity and resistance to be forms of care (see Chapter 7). For example, Katie described the individualism and atomisation she observed from her experience as diminishing collective resistance among colleagues:

importance of teaching, and fails to fully represent the nuanced decisions that colleagues may make with regard to choosing a teaching-focused role.

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Sally: Is there a possibility to resist? Do you think? Katie: Well absolutely there’s a possibility, there’s always a possibility to resist. But I don’t see that happening. I see increasingly, for instance in my school, in my institution, increasing kind of atomisation if anything. The nature of academic is very competitive and people often kind of work in silos. The pandemic has just exacerbated that in many kinds of practical ways because people aren’t on campus, there’s no incidental discussion. The capacity in a practical sense to kind of collectivise has been really reduced. And perhaps more significantly, people as workers are more precarious than ever before after last year. And so, they’re frightened. Which makes people very reluctant. Like in our school, I reckon, which isn’t dissimilar to the statistics across all universities in the country, 70% of our teaching is done by precarious labour. If you’re precarious, you’re not collectivising. Our university is not very activist as a whole.

This busy-ness and diminishment of collective action is not restricted to those working in higher education; it is also observed in how students interact. Certainly, COVID impacted on the capacity to commune in person, and student networks also had to shift to online modes of communicating. However, as Sarah, an equity practitioner, noted, the mandate and opportunities to collectivise had substantially shifted, even before COVID: Sarah: And I feel like we’ve become quite safe. We’re very businesslike, and very nervous about making waves. Yeah. Even if you’re just looking back to speakers on campus and encouraging that dialogue with students. And I work with students, and I know that a lot of them are doing phenomenal things. But they don’t do it on campus anymore. They get involved in I guess local groups and whatnot. So, there’s not, I don’t know, that hotbed of discussion on campus anymore, not here as much.

This shift away from ‘traditional’ student modalities and subjectivities is in no small way connected to recent sharp increases in the cost of living; as Andrew Norton [@andrewjnorton] (2023, March 21) tweeted on the Australian context, over 70% of full-time university students are also engaged in paid work. Working while studying full-time, not to mention having caring or social responsibilities, leaves little time and space to engage in activities that do not align with instrumental goals, such as earning money or gaining course credit. Ironically, for students in the

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caring professions, this imperative is heightened by the requirements for them to undertake lengthy unpaid professional placements. Doing a nineweek unpaid gig is difficult for all students, but acutely so for students who don’t have familial support, who have bills to pay, and who have mouths to feed. For these students in particular, they have more of an institutionally created ‘taking-care-of-my-own’ care pass with their peers, but it is not so much a pass, as a transfer as they then engage in the caring their profession requires. The privileged irresponsibility that Tronto (1993, 2013) writes of is rife in higher education, with pass (individual, competitive, selfadvantaging) being the prevalent care pass of choice. The idea that the systems and structures of academia encourage the use of privileged irresponsibility, while consistently cutting student-facing/care-focused professional staff from the workforce (Croucher & Woelert, 2022), is an emblem of higher education as an un/dercaring institution.

Summary: Creating or Filling Care Vacuums We are firmly of the belief that no one enters higher education without the capacity to care. However, the endemic use of care passes while reducing the caring workforce creates ‘care vacuums’ in higher education. The paradox, as we have noted elsewhere (Baker et al., 2018), is that unless someone fills the vacuums, the system breaks down; however, if some continue to fill these vacuums, the imperative for the system to change is diminished, if not negated. This undercare in the system has been created by decades of ignorance of the care pressures that university staff (and students) have experienced. University staff and students, under deteriorating conditions, have found themselves filling gaps in care unfilled by current systems. This push to go above and beyond to fill the cracks in the system is not just a result of COVID, but rather the slow process of fracturing of the institution under the neoliberal regime and decades of incremental change in higher education. If care is not valued and rewarded—if it remains a peripheral rather than central concern—people will suffer and this drives some, but notably not all, of us to do more, often using resources (time, energy, patience) that are in short supply. The attrition of students, and more importantly staff, could arguably be avoided by limiting the number of ‘care passes’ available, and delegitimising those based on individual competition and production for the few, rather than the many. The high numbers of people

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who drop out of their studies (particularly evident regarding those who have intersecting markers of educational disadvantage), and the horrific numbers of staff who have left or lost their jobs—notably the most precariously employed among us—robs us of the transformative potential of education. The question of why some people appear to care more than others (and some appear to care little) was an interesting and catalytic issue for us in writing this book. The more we read and think about care in higher education, the more we are minded of Abel and Nelson’s (1990) warning of how the system wants us to ‘gradually assimilate to the bureaucratic mould and become emotionally detached from their work [offer a] mechanistic form of care’ (p. 16). Our experiences of working in higher education have been punctuated by observations similar to those expressed by colleagues presented above: some people appear able to care less, while others are compelled to care, responding to perceived care needs in ways that are often self-disadvantageous and lead to compassion fatigue and/or burnout. Our view is that this latter group feels compelled to fill the ‘care vacuum’ that is created by institutions that undercare, and that are structured to reward people who dedicate time and energy to individual self-interest and promotion, rather than collegial, collaborative, and caring activities. We do want to note that filling the care vacuum is not always done by staff members; in many cases, particularly when things are visible and unfair, students demonstrate their care through engaging in campus action, joining a student representative committee, or giving critical feedback. As Darder (2017, p. 86) reminds us, students ‘[do] not completely or readily acquiesce to authoritarian practices. Instead, many of them engage in the construction of their own cultural forms of resistance’. Solidarity between staff and students in seeking a more care-full/caring university should not be overlooked.

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Cordaro, M. (2020). Pouring from an empty cup: The case for compassion fatigue in higher education. Building Healthy Academic Communities Journal , 4(2). https://doi.org/10.18061/bhac.v4i2.7618 Croucher, G., & Woelert, P. (2022). Administrative transformation and managerial growth: A longitudinal analysis of changes in the non-academic workforce at Australian universities. Higher Education, 84, 159–175. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10734-021-00759-8 Cummings, C., Singer, J., Hisaka, R., & Benuto, L. (2021). Compassion satisfaction to combat work-related burnout, vicarious trauma, and secondary traumatic stress. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(9–10), NP5304-NP5319. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518799502 Darder, A. (2017). Reinventing Paulo Freire: A pedagogy of love. Routledge. Figley, C. (1995). Compassion fatigue as secondary traumatic stress disorder: An overview. In C. Figley (Ed.), Compassion fatigue: Coping with secondary traumatic stress disorder in those who treat the traumatised (pp. 1–21). Routledge. Fisher, B. (1990). Alice in human services. In E. Abel & M. Nelson (Eds.), Circles of care: Work and identity in women’s lives (pp. 108–131). State University of New York Press. Forrester, N. (2023). Fed up and burnt out: ‘Quiet quitting’ hits academia. Nature, 615(7953), 751–753. Gewin, V. (2021). Pandemic burnout is rampant in academia. Nature, 591(7850), 489–491. Hansen, D. (1995). The call to teach. Teachers College Press. Held, V. (2005). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford University Press. Hey, V. (2004). Perverse pleasures—Identity work and the paradoxes of greedy institutions. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3), 33–43. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. Jackson, K. M., & Szombathelyi, M. (2022). Student burnout in higher education: from lockdowns to classrooms. Educational Sciences, 12(12), 842. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12120842 Kenny, J., & Fluck, A. (2021). Emerging principles for the allocation of academic work in universities. Higher Education, 83, 1371–1388. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s10734-021-00747-y Lee, M., Coutts, R., Fielden, J., Hutchinson, M., Lakeman, R., Mathisen, B., Nasrawi, D., & Phillips, N. (2021). Occupational stress in university academics in Australia and New Zealand. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management., 44(1), 57–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2021.193 4246

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Lluch, C., Galiana, L., Domenech, P., & Sanso, N. (2022). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on burnout, compassion fatigue, and compassion satisfaction in healthcare personnel: A systematic review of the literature published during the first year of the pandemic. Healthcare, 10(2), 364. https://doi. org/10.3390/healthcare10020364 Lolich, L., & Lynch, K. (2017). Aligning the market and affective self: Care and student resistance to entrepreneurial subjectivities. Gender and Education, 29(1), 115–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1197379 Maslach, C. (1982). Burnout: The cost of caring. Prentice Hall. Moore, S., & Kuol, N. (2007). Matters of the heart: Exploring the emotional dimensions of educational experience in recollected accounts of excellent teaching. International Journal of Academic Development, 12(2), 87–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/13601440701604872 Moran, J. (2020, November 26). The glut of prizes is undermining the true value of research and teaching. Times Higher Education. https://www.timesh ighereducation.com/features/glut-prizes-undermining-true-value-researchand-teaching Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics & moral education. University of California Press. Norton, N. (2022, February 11). Universities had record job losses, but not as many as feared—And the worst may be over. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/universities-had-record-job-losses-butnot-as-many-as-feared-and-the-worst-may-be-over-176883 Perlow, L. (1999). The time famine: Toward a sociology of work time. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(1), 57–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 2667031 Preston, D., Bayley, R., & Escalante, C. (2022). Variation in second and heritage languages: Recent developments and future directions. In R. Bailey, D. Preston, & Li, X. (Eds.), Variation in second and heritage languages: Crosslinguistic perspectives (pp. 1–14). John Benjamins Publishing Company. Quinlan, K. (2016). How emotion matters in four key relationships in teaching and learning in higher education. College Teaching, 64(3), 101–111. https:// doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2015.1088818 Raimondi, T. (2019). Compassion fatigue in higher education: Lessons from other helping fields. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 51(3), 52–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.2019.1606609 Smithers, K., Spina, N., Harris, J., & Gurr, S. (2023). Working every weekend: The paradox of time for insecurely employed academics. Time & Society, 32(1), 101–122. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X221144136

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Sumison, J. (2000). Caring and empowerment: A teacher educator’s reflection on an ethical dilemma. Teaching in Higher Education, 5(2), 167–179. https:// doi.org/10.1080/135625100114821 Tangalakis, K., Hall, D., Kelly, K., & Kon-yu, N. (2022, March 8). Gender bias in student surveys on teaching increased with remote learning. What can unis do to ensure a fair go for female staff? The Conversation. https://theconver sation.com/gender-bias-in-student-surveys-on-teaching-increased-with-rem ote-learning-what-can-unis-do-to-ensure-a-fair-go-for-female-staff-178418 Tett, L., Cree, V., Mullins, E., & Christie, H. (2017). Narratives of care amongst undergraduate students. Pastoral Care in Education, 35(3), 166– 178. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2017.1363813 Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. Routledge. Tronto, J. (2010). Creating caring institutions: Politics, plurality, and purpose. Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/174 96535.2010.484259 Tronto, J. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York University Press. University and College Union (UCU). (2022). UK higher education: A workforce in crisis. https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/12532/HEReport24Ma rch22/pdf/HEReport24March22.pdf Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2016). Constructing the caring higher education teacher: A theoretical framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 65–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.11.013 Walker-Gleaves, C. (2010). Invisible threads of pedagogic care: A study of ‘caring’ academics and their work within a UK university. LAP-Verlag. Walker-Gleaves, C. (2019). Is caring pedagogy really so progressive? Exploring the conceptual and practical impediments to operationalizing care in higher education. In P. Gibbs & A. Peterson (Eds.), Higher education and hope (pp. 93–112). Palgrave Macmillan. Warin, J., & Gannerud, E. (2014). Gender, teaching and care: A comparative global conversation. Gender and Education, 26(3), 193–199. https://doi. org/10.1080/09540253.2014.928023 Yang, C. (2021). Online teaching self-efficacy, social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies, and compassion fatigue among educators during the COVID19 pandemic. School Psychology Review, 50(4), 505–518. https://doi.org/10. 1080/2372966X.2021.1903815 Zembylas, M., Bozalek, V., & Shefer, T. (2014). Tronto’s notion of privileged irresponsibility and the reconceptualisation of care: Implications for critical pedagogies of emotion in higher education. Gender and Education, 26(3), 200–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2014.901718

CHAPTER 7

Why Is Caring Considered Radical in Higher Education?

Introduction Sally: Do you think care is radical? Xander: At the moment, it probably is. Shouldn’t be, but it probably is a little bit in the moment.

Whenever we have told colleagues and students about writing this book, and that it is asking questions of whether universities are caring institutions, we have invariably been met with a scornful snort and a quick ‘no’ (sometimes even a ‘no *&^# way!’). The fact that the idea of universities being caring is quickly derided perhaps says something about the hegemony of ignoring care, fuelled by the idea that ‘we expect to be autonomous, and … dependency is treated as a great weakness’ (Tronto, 1993, p. 123). The idea of schools, particularly primary schools, as caring institutions is not similarly dismissed, so why do colleagues resolutely view universities as uncaring, and is this indeed the case for others working and studying in higher education? And yet, as we argue in Chapter 5, people continue to care despite also describing the higher education context as hostile. This, as we argue throughout the book, constitutes a radical shape of care that can offer an optimistic ‘new normal’ for higher education following the call for reform that COVID pushed upon the sector. As Wood et al. (2020) succinctly argue, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7_7

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[T]he relational and context-dependent approach of care ethics can work in tandem with radical theory in very transformative ways. Care ethics can help to ground abstract theories and the moral convictions of justice and anti-oppression in the here-and-now by offering context-dependent approaches to seeking out justice and transformation through day-to-day relations. (pp. 428–429)

The literature on educational care offers limited insights for the complex relationships in adult teaching and learning contexts. Walker and Gleaves’ (2016) work sets out four ideas that can help us to think about educational care in the specific context of higher education. These share a concern with Noddings’ work in terms of the relational lens and the compulsion to care, which are synonymous with motivation and engrossment. However, a point of distinction is offered in the final two categories of caring higher education teaching: caring as resistance and caring as less than. For teachers, caring as resistance is a way of describing resistance of market imperatives and choosing to care despite the system, not because the system demands it; thus demonstrating ‘an everyday moral resistance to the operationalization of policies that participants found to be allied to good business decisions rather than learning’ (Walker & Gleaves, 2016, p. 71). In Mariskind’s (2014) study of university teachers’ constructions of care in Aotearoa New Zealand, participants described various forms of care, with most enacted by individuals, such as getting to know students, building rapport, and bringing in knowledge of students’ home countries or contexts. Being a good teacher involves ‘active caregiving strategies’ which require time and effort (p. 311), such as speaking to students one-to-one, reaching out to students, and linking students with pastoral supports (proactive caregiving). Some teachers spoke of a shared-care model, signalled in the participants’ narratives through using ‘we’, such as a quote from one teacher who explains ‘…we try and keep an eye on people who seem to be a bit isolated, and intervene…’ (p. 312). However, Mariskind notes such accounts of collective caring are notable for their infrequency, and that this is indicative of an absence of any imperative or training to support university teachers to share the care: This individualisation of care marginalizes caring practices and does not acknowledge how the interests of students, teachers, and the university are interdependent. (p. 316)

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Sara Ahmed’s (2014a) work is also highly relevant to this consideration of caring as radical, especially her work on willfulness as (caring) resistance. Ahmed’s writing on the ‘sweaty concepts’, evoking the ‘labouring of bodies’ (p. 18) that construct willfulness, offers a way of understanding what might also be called ‘radical’. Being willful includes acts of persistence, stubbornness, disobedience, contrariness, ‘unwilling to preserve an idea of happiness’ that maintains the status quo (Ahmed, 2014a, p. 2). Being willful is costly to the individual, marking her out as subordinate and disinclined, and the classic ‘difficult woman’ trope circulates these kinds of acts of willfulness (Lewis, 2021). Yet, Ahmed’s work fights for willfulness to be understood in terms of its power—to persist, to persuade, to fight: Willfulness involves a persistence in the face of having been brought down, where simply to ‘keep going’ or to ‘keep coming up’ is to be stubborn and obstinate. (2014a, p. 374)

This does necessitate acts of conscientisation (Freire, 1970), or acts of disobedience (Ahmed, 2014a), and while being willful is not explicitly connected to care, we argue it connects with the narratives of care in higher education identified by Mariskind (2014), of ‘care-as-activism, care-as-advocacy, care-facilitation, communal care, and care for oneself’ (p. 317). In this chapter, we examine different facets of willful, ‘conscientising’, and radical care: care as political awareness, care as solidarity, care as speaking up, care as sharing, and self-care. Care as Political Awareness Care as political action emerged strongly in our data, particularly for Eve and Xander1 who were casually employed at the time of data collection. Eve, an academic learning advisor, outlined how a political orientation needs to underpin a view of care for our most precarious colleagues: Eve: I think that in the higher education environment in which many people are on short term, fixed term, casualised work, the articulation of care has to take a much more political expression be used in a political

1 Both Eve and Xander gained full-time, ongoing work after engaging in an interview for this research, but this is far from the norm.

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framework, and I think that its expression is to be aware of the other personal and professional situations in which your colleagues find themselves, and that you have to engage with one another in a way that both emphasises care, but is also hyper-aware of people’s differing situations.

As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, the capacity of casually employed colleagues on zero-hour or fixed-term contracts to care is seriously eroded by insecurity and precarity, not to mention the (well-founded) sense of being exploited and marginalised.2 This sense of precarity impacts on the capacity to speak up, as Eve describes: Eve: I mean, the story of the wage theft is fascinating to me because anyone who’s done marking, or tutoring, or sessional lecturing in the last 10 years, me included, reads the wage theft information and you’re like, “Oh, yeah. That definitely happened to me,” and so you ask yourself, well, why didn’t I stand up and try and do more about the wage theft circa 2011 to 2014 when I was experiencing it?

The self-silencing that Eve describes, perhaps through not being consciously aware at the time, or not feeling able or willing to complain, is at the heart of the challenges that casualisation creates. Participants also described a sense of toxic competitiveness that pits casual colleagues against securely employed colleagues in the race to attain the performance markers that are associated with acceptance as an academic: win grant funding, write high quality publications, and lead research projects. As Gloria, a post-doctoral researcher, observed, Gloria: Yeah, and I think… I mean, it’s also ridiculous that that stuff needs to continue. By the time you’ve got a job, if you’ve been hired within the last 10 or 15 years, everyone knows you’re excellent anyway, because everyone who’s applying for a job now is excellent. So, it’s a really odd thing that you have to keep proving it and proving it and proving it. I suppose that’s also part of the issue, is that I think the ballpark or the parameters of what you’re striving for keep changing. Whether that’s in response to new ways that the university has decided they’re going to measure your productivity or your output or whatever, or what’s accepted globally.

2 As has been exposed in recent years by the sector-wide wage theft scandal in Australia (see Chapter 2).

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Moreover, Gloria lamented the ‘shifting goal posts’ she perceived with regard to translating her doctorate into secure work: Gloria: I remember before my PhD I was told, “Get a PhD, then you’ll definitely get a permanent job.” Then by the time I’d finished it was, “Oh you need to have a book to get a permanent job.” Now it’s like, “You must have a second book contract to get a permanent job.” The parameters keep changing without any sense of actually, life is going on.

Gloria evokes McKay and Monk’s (2017) description of these shifting sands, which they argue can result in ‘forcing some ECAs to detach from their work as a method of self-preservation’ (p. 1261). However, Gloria and other casually employed participants were fighting against these injustices by speaking out, although the energy for this kind of activism was taxed by the need to be hyper-flexible and available at short notice to maintain a wage and their ‘currency’ in the hostile job market: Eve: That even though they’ve given all sorts of last-minute indications of the contract and have gone against their own four weeks’ notice, whatever, there’s a degree of inflexibility in terms of how I might start that contract and where that would be. That just gives the impression of if you’re out of sight, you might not be working kind of feeling.

Similarly, Xander, who was waiting for a new fixed-term contract to start in the following January when we met just before Christmas, described similar anxiety: Xander: Well, there’s no care there at all. These are people who are saying, “Your contract is extended.” Verbal, not putting anything in writing, which I find interesting in itself, but also, these are people who have ongoing contracts and who will quite easily take leave over the summer and then not on precarious contracts or probably ever have been on precarious contracts either. So, yeah. I don’t think there’s any care there at all. I would think that people would say that there is care there, but when you can’t apply for leave, when you’re worried about applying for leave up until the end of your contract, and then them saying, “Oh, well, we don’t need you until a certain date so we’re not going to contract you.” Not fair, you know?

The absence of attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness (using Tronto’s ethic of care) described in Xander’s experience is

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further complicated by a perceived lack of solidarity, or a sense of more securely employed colleagues not acting to disrupt the hegemonic status quo. Eve also discussed this when asked how her wait for her new contract made her feel: Sally: Does [waiting] make you want to jump up and down and tell everyone about what you’re doing so that you are in sight? Eve: It makes me unsure of who you can feel is in solidarity with you. You don’t know how to interpret your colleagues and their intention. It takes a while to be able to make yourself literate, I suppose, in the new professional environment.

Here, the challenge of articulating one’s own care needs within a system that undervalues, obscures, and in many cases, directly overlooks care is evident. As Eve’s experiences suggest, this situation can be further complicated by a lack of certainty about who can be trusted to confide in, particularly given that standing against precarious employment conditions – care as advocacy – and other forms of speaking to power are often seen as risky practices, even for employees in comparatively secure positions. Care as (Radical) Solidarity Kindness is not a bonus. It is our core, our humanity, our revolutionary weapon. —Burton and Turbine (2019)

What is increasingly clear, particularly after the initial impacts of COVID on the higher education sector, is that where care is enacted, it is often by individuals who are already disposed to caring or demonstrating organisational citizenship behaviours. As Ahmed (2014a) writes, being willful with a purpose is assisted by collective action: It is the willingness of a community that allows for an act to acquire the status of willful for others, to be available for recall as political memory, such that a name can be charged with hope. (p. 143)

Indeed, Mariskind’s 2014 study highlights how among the university teachers in her study, most of the care was enacted by individuals, which

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can have counterintuitive consequences, in terms of perpetuating siloes between people and ignoring the interconnections and interdependence between students, teachers, and the institution. She writes that this is indicative of a lack of prioritisation of care by universities, resulting in individual, ad-hoc responses to needs: For the most part, narratives of care were about particular circumstances rather than ongoing relations that act to maintain the well-being of self, others, and the educational environment. (p. 316)

The possibility of the collective is erased by these systems and structures. A central thesis in this book is the idea that collective action and radical solidarity is what is needed—the ‘revolutionary weapon’ as per Burton and Turbine (2019)—to craft universities into more caring institutions. Rosalind Gill (2016) offers an example of a colleague who was told ‘if it’s too hot, get out of the kitchen’ when she complained about the amount of work she was expected to do. Gill’s analysis was that despite the heat of the kitchen for many, if not all, in academia: ‘this has not resulted in collective action to turn down the heat’ (p. 46), where ‘acts of kindness, generosity and solidarity often seem to continue only in spite of, rather than because of, the governance of universities’ (pp. 46–47). There is, therefore, an urgent need to develop care circles and networks of solidarity to illuminate why universities should become more caring institutions and highlight the centrality of care to the future of higher education (see Chapter 8). This kind of willfulness goes beyond a reductive idea of ‘being difficult’ to what Ahmed (2014a) describes as an absence of ‘willingness to bear’ (p. 138), particularly when it comes to vicious injustices such as the ongoing precarity and exploitation of colleagues, and a (willful) disregard for health and wellbeing. The idea of caring being part of a more radical or passionate disposition is captured in some of Walker-Gleaves’ (2010) metaphors for ‘caring’ academics, particularly agitator, provocateur, empowerer, and crusader. The idea that caring is a form of resistance was evident in each of her three participants’ perspectives, as they ‘sought to justify their positions as academics who cared through specific means of resistance’ (p. 135). For all the participants, the resistance was directed against a perceived uncaring institution, or the conditions that eroded their possibilities to care for students in their role. Similarly, Askins and Blazek (2017) argue that the imperative

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to care is a siren of resistance to the (uncaring) status quo of contemporary academia and the operational logics of higher education and solidarity with other caring colleagues. Katie (a lecturer on a permanent contract) offered an example of how she engaged in caring political action by wrapping support around the casual members of her teaching team. While she cannot dismantle the system that creates the need for casualisation (see Chapter 3), Katie can make sure that her casual colleagues are well-supported and know that their permanent colleagues ‘have their backs’: Katie: Let’s just say we run with a very dedicated team of long term, exploited sessional staff… I’m very, very conscious of the high rates and growing rates of casualisation of academics. And our course is kind of emblematic in so many ways of the direction that universities are going in and the pressures to cost cut. We’ve worked really hard to build this consistent teaching team, who not only know the content, but know our student cohort. And so, all of these staff kind of work across all of the units, because we want them to know all of the students and build relationships with them. That’s been a very, very intentional objective. And we think we really achieved that quite well.

Sara Ahmed describes willfulness as, in part, a ‘political art’ (2014a, 135), borne out of struggle. This, she insists, might result in willfulness being ‘thought of as being crafty’ (p. 135). What Katie describes here is a crafty, collective effort to advocate for and protect—as much as possible—their colleagues, likely their friends after working together for some time, as well as thinking care-fully about the importance of students’ relationships with staff for their engagement. As we will discuss in Chapter 8, this kind of solidarity exemplifies Tronto’s (2013) ‘caring with’ ethic, but— critically—is in opposition to the institution. This raises the question of whether universities (as institutions) can engage in (facilitate, support, enable) care as political action, and if so how. Engagement in coordinated collectives, such as unions, is another example of caring as solidarity. Katie: And I do really want to make the point. I should say Sally, I’m heavily involved in the union. I’m very, very conscious of the high rates and growing rates of casualisation of academics. And our course is kind of emblematic in so many ways of the direction that universities are going in and the pressures to cost cut. We’ve worked really hard to

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build this consistent teaching team, who not only know the content, but know our student cohort. And so all of these staff kind of work across all of the units because we want them to know all of the students and build relationships with them. That’s been a very, very intentional objective. And we think we really achieved that quite well.

Resistance is ripe with risk, so demonstrating care has significant implications, not least in terms of the emotional and embodied consequences of (not) caring/being cared for. According to Stephen Ball (2016), this risk is two-fold: the first risk relates to the perils of uncertainty and unsettledness; the second risk means exposing ourselves to ridicule and marginalization (p. 1141). Being seen as subversive or non-compliant has significant implications for an individual, and to collectives but to a lesser degree, which is why union membership can be a compelling prospect for those who need to take a stand but do not want to be individually exposed. Such risks include exposure to critique and ‘hidden injuries’ (Gill, 2016) and the threat of losing a job. Eve described how she perceived the risks of resistance (such as not meeting a new mandate for the expected number of publications for her level): Sally: What would’ve been the risk, do you think, if you’ve, for example, had taken up the fight for yourself with management? What would’ve been the risks to you? Eve: Not having my contract renewed, getting a very, very bad name with management. I think because it’s a smaller university, management does know more individuals than they would at larger institutions, so I think you can definitely be branded very quickly.

The (perceived) costs of resistance are a serious deterrent to caring in this way. As Darder (2017) reminds us, caring educators have to make tough decisions: They must make decisions about what they are willing to risk, what battles they will take on, and how far they are willing to stretch the boundaries of what is considered legitimate teaching practice within their schools. How far a teacher can stretch is a very personal issue and no one has the right to make such a decision for another. Ultimately, each person must take responsibility for his or her own decision—a critical process that must sustain a teacher when the consequences of such a decision must be faced. Each of us must attempt to clarify for ourselves what we are willing to do. How far are we willing to go? (p. 123)

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Of the many challenges that Darder captures, the most problematic is the idea that we have sufficient foresight to be able to care-fully make decisions about how far we will go. Acts of resistance—resisting the status quo, advocating, being involved in collectivist action, speaking up about issues that impact ourselves/others—are essentially acts of care as solidarity, particularly when we use our resources (networks, reputational capital, good will) to ‘go against the grain’. From a teaching perspective Walker and Gleaves (2016) found this in their study with UK academics; examples of such care-as-resistance were evident in their participants’ questioning of academic processes or advocating for students in formal spaces. Walker and Gleaves (2016) describe these acts as demonstrations of ‘an everyday moral resistance to the operationalization of policies that participants found to be allied to good business decisions rather than learning’ (p. 71). However, there are serious costs from caring as solidarity, especially when an advocacy cause is of personal relevance or a long-term commitment. Lisa, a Research Fellow who advocates for people seeking asylum, described the costs at both the personal level, and for students: Lisa: So, it’s time-consuming emotionally, it’s time-consuming physically, but I think if you come into this space you’ve got to be committed, genuinely committed. Otherwise, it’s a dangerous place to be, not for you as an individual, but for the student. They’re not there to be played with and they’re not there as a commodity. They’re not there to promote my position in the university. They’re not there to give me further publications or to get a promotion or to be famous. They should never be utilised as that, ever, and I think that in some places they are.

The potential for caring as solidarity to become tangled up in career advancement or the economic and reputational imperatives of the institution (showcasing university commitment to wellbeing and inclusion; see Baker et al. [2021] for an illustration of this in the case of people seeking asylum), even inadvertently, is therefore an important consideration. Two of our participants offered examples of enacting care-full solidarity. Firstly, Tim described how he brokered his relative power (as an English speaker and ‘knower’ in the realm of Anglophone, high-stakes publishing) to assist a colleague: Tim: … there’s a way of using our own position to be able to bring students and others up in ways that they might not. So, I met someone

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who was here from Indonesia, who is doing some interesting stuff. And I said, “Oh, I think your stuff is really interesting. We should kind of cowrite.” And it became clear in that process that they, at their university in Indonesia, they cannot be promoted without a Scopus-ranked journal thing. So, I said, “Okay, let’s co-write something. And let’s put it in a Scopus-ranked journal” … I’ve gotten to the point in my career where I take seriously the obligation to help others. I mean, I think this article’s interesting, but I’m working with these colleagues in Indonesia who face significant systemic barriers in the global academia, and I recognise that what… that my parts were, and I said, “what if this was you?”

Tim’s recognition of his relative privilege and his support through coauthorship is an example of sponsorship, using his insider (Anglophone) knowledge and his linguistic capital— as well as experience, reputation, and editorial experience with Scopus-ranked publications—to open a valuable, career-defining opportunity to a colleague. This is also a form of epistemic justice, in the sense that Tim’s colleague’s knowledge can circulate more widely and challenge the hegemonic occupation of powerful knowledge spaces by western, Anglophone colleagues. Another example of redressive action, or care as value and educational aim, is offered by Miles (Professor of Education), who spoke of mentoring junior colleagues to both develop their careers through writing mentorship (journal articles, grant applications) and to help them ‘move towards a more educational stance’. However, as Miles wryly notes, this work is not valued by the institution: Miles: And, of course, the irony is that I get absolutely no recognition of the time I spend doing that. So yeah, I enjoy doing that, I enjoy working with colleagues, I enjoy supporting them and I enjoy when somebody gets their first article out and they’re really chuffed, even if it’s only, in REF3 terms, not very good. But they’re really nice about it, and I’m delighted for them, and I spend a lot of time on that. And probably, if the senior managers knew how much time I spent with colleagues doing that sort of thing, they’d say, “Why are you wasting your time on that?” Because it’s not REF-able. It’s not high status. It’s not high stakes. And you think, “Well, a lot of stuff isn’t high stakes,”

3 The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK national assessment of academic impact and output of higher education research. In Australia, this is known as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA).

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but senior managers don’t listen to colleagues, so it’s up to people like me to do that…. Sally: But no one is asking you to do this, right? It’s off your own volition? Miles: Yeah. Well, it’s not in my contract, and if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t get told off by anybody. But if I want to work alongside people in the department and I want to work with people who I like and trust and respect, I feel like that’s the sort of thing I should do.

This sense of attentiveness and responsibility as a senior colleague offers a clear example of Tronto’s (2013) ethics of care in terms of Miles’ competence and responsiveness. However, what is most evident in Miles’ example is the ethos of ‘caring with’: trust and solidarity. Miles understands the needs of the early-career academics that he works with, he knows what is needed in an undercaring university. His suspension of his own individual performance to care with colleagues, giving time, guidance, support, knowing that he will face his own REF-related pressures, suggests a benevolent but also collaborative, and therefore co-productive, form of care that resists the individualising, competitive forces that are prevalent in the contemporary academy. However, other participants offered counter examples of care as solidarity. For example, Xander (then a casual educator) described being stymied in how much he could support a colleague because of his precarious employment: Xander: So, today I got a phone call from a colleague who got an email to have a meeting with our deputy director and HR because of his ‘insubordination’. Now, he asked me to be the support person in the room for that, and I said no, and I felt really bad about saying no, but that would have put me under a spotlight where our deputy director who there are already tensions that are existing there. So, for me, and I guess that’s what I mean about a lack of institutional care. I would have loved to have been able to support that person within that institutional framework, but I just couldn’t do that for myself because I’m in such a precarious position…. I felt bad about it because as much as I know that this person is a problematic person, they are a human and I feel a need to care for that human, and I feel the need to support that person because I do see them in the corridor every day, but I just couldn’t put myself in that position.

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Xander’s experience illustrates how the potential to ‘care with’ colleagues can depend on the carer’s sense of security. Even with awareness of others’ needs and willingness to offer the required support, an absence of trust that the enactment of care will not have negative repercussions for the giver is a strong disincentive. Care as Sharing and Being Vulnerable While there is growing recognition of the importance of acknowledging the emotional dimensions of care in higher education (and not only teaching and learning), there are significant but tacit barriers to accounting for this. As Barnett (2011) writes, addressing emotion requires us to ‘go against the grain of the modern university’ (p. 677). One significant challenge relates to the energy and time required to emotionally engage. For instance, while Bondi (2008, p. 260) emphasises the significance of empathy for caring, as a key condition for good communication and enabling ‘effective feedback about the match between needs and the care available, which may be sufficient to enhance the quality of care received’, she also recognises the difficulty of sustaining empathy, given the significant energy needed to continually displace one’s needs to meet another’s, meaning that ‘empathic failures are likely to be recurrent’ (p. 260). Noddings also recognises this challenge, which she attributes to the reciprocity needed for engrossment; if we sense our caring intentions are not being acknowledged, this can lead to resentment, bitterness, and withdrawal from the cared-for. This opening of us to the possibility of being hurt can critically disrupt and curtail caring; as Noddings (1984) articulates ‘my vulnerability is potentially increased when we care, for we can be hurt through the other as well as through myself’ (p. 33). If the experience of being hurt continues over time, this can lead to a protective hardening of the self and the roots of a dismissal of the need for caring. Being willing to be vulnerable is a core condition of what Brantmeier (2013) coined ‘pedagogy of vulnerability’, which is resonant with similar work on ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ (Behari-Leak et al., 2021; Zembylas, 2015, 2017). Both these conceptualisations are ways of encouraging people (students, staff) to unpick their assumptions and biases, of moving people outside of their ‘comfort zones’ so that ‘dominant beliefs, social

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habits and normative practices that sustain social inequities’ can be challenged (Zembylas, 2015, p. 163). While there are contested ethical implications of such approaches, the overarching intention—to gently disrupt in an effort to transform and emancipate—is an important component of shifting the cultural norms of higher education. Indeed, Behari-Leak and colleagues (2021) propose the careful use of pedagogy of vulnerability can aid decolonising work in the sector; writing from the South African context, they argue that ‘[‘open-hearted] vulnerability can be used as a productive tool and decolonial catalyst to invigorate teaching and learning engagements in local and global university contexts’ (p. 561). Engaging in reflexive, vulnerable, and discomforting practices is hard emotional work. It requires the ongoing development of self-knowledge and a willingness to accept we are not always right or in the right; we are all complicit in tangled knots of privilege that create the ‘haves and have nots’ that sustain our deeply uneven societies, especially as contributors to higher education. However, doing this takes practice and, ideally, requires role modelling and mentorship. Pamela Barnett (2011) reminds us that this is deeply situated and subject to change, as, …people must become aware of their own distrust, fears and needs in ways that lead them to change themselves [meaning that] [t]hey might decide to protect themselves or to deliberately trust others not to take advantage of their vulnerability. (p. 675)

According to Ian Kinchin and colleagues (2016), to move beyond an individual focus on vulnerability we need to consider the notion of ‘pedagogic frailty’ to capture institutional responsibility, examining how ‘the quality and degree of interaction with and between key elements of the professional environment’ (p. 2) creates a set of risk factors that promote ‘safe’ teaching practices. Kinchin and colleagues argue that pedagogic frailty occurs when regulatory discourses are unclear and tacit; when connections between teaching and the discipline are weak; when there are unresolved tensions between the pulls of research and teaching; and where educators feel distant from the locus of control (2016, p. 4). While these authors have demonstrated considerable disciplinary variation, the consequence of this frailty is an unwillingness to be vulnerable, creative, risk taking, and engage in dynamic and progressive teaching. As teachers who identify with bell hooks’ (1994) sense of being an engaged educator, being vulnerable is never fully comfortable for us (Sally

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and Rachel, at least). We do not always feel like we want to be exposed, to be open to scrutiny (and possible criticism). And yet, we also know that in the hyper-relational teaching space, sharing and a willingness to be vulnerable (to not know ‘the answer’, to seek critical feedback for improvement, to open ourselves to another to offer and receive care) can be incredibly affirming and nurturing. It can also be empowering for students, as Mangione and Norton (2023) contend, [Being vulnerable] reinforces the values of higher education that go beyond the metrics and the employability market and seeks to engage students in deep transformative learning processes for a future that is uncertain and unknowable. (p. 384)

However, being vulnerable feels spikier and less desirable in the public domain, particularly in the solidarity/caring with space. Writing this book, being a ‘public intellectual’, speaking truth to power, critiquing government/institutions, saying no to unreasonable tasks are examples of exposing parts of the ‘job’ that leave a feeling of nakedness, requiring more energy and self-belief than we often have spare to fight the inevitable anxiety that comes with it. Women academics are more susceptible to imposter syndrome and harsh self-critique/criticism, making the willing engagement with vulnerability a huge risk. For Sally, this manifests sometimes as rumination, poor sleep, waking with cortisol pumping in my gut, a defensive tetchiness. We can see a future where, to protect ourselves from these visceral, embodied responses to being vulnerable, we may be self-protective and choosier about what/who we care for, about, with. Unsurprisingly, the emotional part of a caring disposition is viewed as being deeply skewed by gendered assumptions and hierarchies. Indeed, discussions of emotional work and the managed heart, to use Hochschild’s (2012) term, invoke an immediate connection with gender. Being able to manage the public display/hiding of one’s feelings, as part of the exchange value of selling feelings for a wage, is rarely taught. The lack of attention to the affective dimensions of working in higher education means that having a caring disposition is assumed and tacit, rather than expected and visible/valued. This plays out in particularly acute ways for women, with women complicitly involved in perpetuating the hegemony of these tacit assumptions through a fear of discussing emotions. As Koster (2011) describes, the gendered and emotional dimensions of teaching in higher education mean that this labour is less likely to be

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discussed because of the perception that it is related to ‘women’s feelings’ and therefore less desirable and worthy than men’s rationality. She writes, There is a certain irony here in that the literature on emotional labour supports the view that women do more of it because we are women, but because we are women, we are reluctant to discuss it as ‘work’ in case it makes us appear too emotional. (p. 71)

However, this is made difficult by the dominance of the masculine/ cognitive lens through which higher education is (re)made; as scholars have warned, when care is seen as a distraction from the cognitive, it leads to concerns about the collapse of care into therapeutisation (Ecclestone & Hays, 2008; Walker-Gleaves, 2010). Moreover, the importance of the affective cannot and should not be easily dismissed as either a trivial concern or a slide into paternalistic ascription of vulnerability. As Lynch et al. (2007) brilliantly capture, The indifference to the affective domains of life, and to the reasonableness of emotions, has meant that the emotional work involved in the reproduction of humanity, particularly the love, care and solidarity work that people undertake, has been hidden behind a veil of ignorance. (p. 2)

Recognising the emotions at play, and the emotional work that is undertaken (or delegated), for staff and students is key to developing better mechanisms to recognise and value the activities and dispositions that open the possibilities for universities to be caring institutions. In contrast, scholars have also noted the power of positive emotions in the capacity to resist; as Askins (2009) writes, ‘For me, the role of emotion is central to activism, and we would argue that most accounts of activism touch upon “sense”, “feeling”, that inexplicable desire to “do something” in some way’ (p. 7). Harnessing this ‘inexplicable desire to do something’ is a key driver for collective caring responses and underpins the practice and notion of solidarity. As Haynes and MacleodJohnstone (2017) compellingly write, it is in the sharing—of (dangerous) knowledges, (troubling) emotions, of ‘vivid testimonies’ of experience, provoking excited recognition that their participants knew more than they knew they knew —that create the conditions for caring solidarity. Similarly, Gannon et al. (2019) write about the prominence of the joy that

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comes from connecting with others, arguing that ‘[various] glimpses of joy…provoke affective attunement within the everyday, sensitizing us to other fragments of joy and providing strategies to strengthen that resistance’ (p. 48). For Freire (2005), this joy is a core part of what it means to be an educator (when students and teachers are seen to teach and learn alongside each other), The teaching task is above all a professional task that requires constant intellectual rigor and the stimulation of epistemological curiosity, of the capacity to love, of creativity, of scientific competence and the rejection of scientific reductionism. The teaching task also requires the capacity to fight for freedom, without which the teaching task becomes meaningless. (p. 6)

Such joy is arguably the fuel that powers the collective, or what Mariskind (2014) terms ‘caring-as-activism’. Such thinking pushes against traditional/limiting views of care as contained within a dyad and pushes a broader and more expansive understanding of caring relationships. Indeed, it involves a conscious attempt to organise around the constraints of imposed structures and standards; as Walker-Gleaves (2019) contends, as academics/university teachers, we need to think about how to break the silence around care without it becoming something measured and standardised. These ideas will be considered in more detail in Part 3. Care as Speaking Up The act of speaking out, truth-telling (Foucault’s notion of parrhesia) or just ‘being honest’ is a repeated theme in both the literature on advocacy-as-care (Mariskind, 2014; Walker-Gleaves, 2019), and in the critical education literature (Darder, 2017; Freire, 1970; Freund, 2009). Foucault’s (1983/2001) work on parrhesia describes this vocalisation in terms of frankness, truth, danger, criticism, and—interestingly—duty. These components drive us to speak up, even when we may expose ourselves to risks as a result. The notion of ‘speaking truth to power’ is a key aspect of Freire’s notion of conscientisation, which Freund (2009) describes as ‘a form of truth-telling [that allows] inconsequential beliefs to be confronted and to bring about a questioning of the games of truth that we as teachers use and which often surround our practice’ (p. 534). Other forms of honesty can take the form of radical candour (Scott, 2019), the practice of being clear and assertive as well as caring and kind in

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(professional) communication. However, being honest carries significant risks: Sara: And so, I think by doing that, you place yourself in a vulnerable position sometimes by questioning or raising the question of this hasn’t happened, or where is this up to? It doesn’t matter, you can do it really politely. But in the end, people resent it if they don’t want to do it. And then they personalise the problem. So, the problem is you not the actual piece that you’re trying to drive or their lack of action in relation to it. And they’ll find all kinds of ways to dismantle the person that’s delivering that message.

The risks run deep with the kind of incivility (or smart bullying through insidious acts of micro-aggression) that Sara describes as ‘on the rise’ in higher education (Bosetti & Heffernan, 2021). However, being honest and speaking up can also be experienced as an act of care-full solidarity. For example, Gloria, a post-doctoral researcher, described an example of this caring candour with a colleague: Gloria: I was talking to a student in the department who was doing a Masters and I was like, “Oh, what are your plans?” They were like, “Oh I’m going to do a PhD and then get an academic job.” I was like, “Oh cool, great, do a PhD, definitely, fun time, do it,” but it’s hard to get jobs and it’s worth knowing that going in.

However, Gloria’s sense that her honesty was an act of care (and which is a conversation that we also have with prospective Ph.D. students)— and something that she would like to have been told herself before embarking on a doctorate program—was not recognised by her colleagues: Gloria: I remember being told off by one of the senior academics, “don’t be so negative with the students”, and I was like “it’s not being negative, it’s being realistic”. I think that’s part of the issue is senior academics are also so reliant on getting PhD students in to do parts of their research and I don’t know, for the money and whatever, that they are… also they got their jobs 30 years ago, so they’d have no idea about the market, and so they kind of hand out advice don’t be negative… Well, I’m how many years on the job market now? It’s not negative, it’s reality.

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This sense of being authentic to help others avoid similar disappointments was also reflected in Xander’s approach to teaching. As a first-in-family student from ‘a very working-class background’, Xander actively engages with how his own experience made him feel to design his teaching to prevent his students from having to struggle like he did: Xander: I didn’t do very well at school, I was just lucky that when I got into uni, I found something I loved and was able to move through that, but I remember those first weeks… like sociology has the same language, it has the same theory… if you don’t get the right person who shows you the practical applications of theory, it can seem pie in the sky kind of thing, and so I guess that’s at the forefront of my mind when I am teaching … this is a whole new world to them…

Issues of power also circulate around the question of who can ‘afford’ to speak up. Eve discussed this capacity in terms of her observations of colleagues who had ‘the runs on the board’ that offered protective armour against the exposure and risk of engaging in what Foucault termed parrhesia: Eve: I don’t think we can [speak up]. We don’t have the professional esteem, or the amount of publications, or the respect. We haven’t been poached to this university position kind of thing. I’m led to believe that he was basically invited to take part of this creation of a research centre to improve the university’s research output and prestige. He’s been poached and so he knows that he’s in a position of power, so to speak. Anyone that’s just even the slightest bit down the ladder doesn’t have that ability to fight for themselves or others in the same way.

In contrast, while silence may be interpreted as complicity, it is perhaps more likely to be the result of a fear of being exposed to scrutiny; Miles describes his inclination to speak up (as a late career professor) because he can protect his more junior colleague from the negative ramifications of speaking out: Miles: …we have lots of colleagues who are shy, I guess, and they don’t want to make those comments that might seem to be critical of management in a public forum, because they’re worried that, “Actually, I’m just going to be labelled as a troublemaker and then that’s me, I’m side-lined and that’s it.”

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Sally: I mean, I feel that I’ve suffered professionally because of being a little too vocal. Miles: Caring too much. Yeah. I think the management wants us to care, but not in such a way that it upsets the apple cart. They want to change but within limits, and limits that they decide arbitrarily to maintain their comfort zones, I guess.

This necessitates what we could call surreptitious care, and it has to be stealthy because the conditions are not there for what we might hope to be ordinary activity of messaging. Self-Care Self-care may be a contested discourse and practice, but it is abundantly promoted; indeed, self-care has become a zeitgeist on social media in recent years (#selfcare). University websites often have a ‘self-care’ page or tab, linking users to services or bland advice (what Schulz et al. (2022) laconically describe as ‘running a bubble bath and eating chocolate pralines’). Self-care is promoted to students as an ‘essential survival kit’ and ‘the secret to study success’; to staff it is described as ‘habits’ and ‘strategies’, with universities offering apps and hubs to help direct people to services (often outsourced to private providers; see Chapter 4). When we asked our participants how they self-care, we got examples such as sewing (Gloria), watching Korean dramas and playing music (Eleanor), gardening and Pilates (Sally). Eve’s response suggested intentional policing of boundaries to keep things ‘more manageable’: Eve: … I’ve insisted in trying to keep a 9:00 to 5:00-ish work schedule, so not embracing the culture of overwork, and certainly not boasting about overwork…

Eve noted, ruefully, that she hadn’t always been able to maintain this, but in the main she was more protective of a firm distinction between work and her own time. For Miles, a Professor of Education, the challenges of working in higher education were highly relational and had to be understood in the context of his previous career as a teacher in public secondary schools. He laughed when I asked him what he did for self-care: Miles: Well, ultimately my life is not too bad. If I consider the stresses I’m under now compared with the stresses I had when I taught in secondary schools, then life is easy now, to be honest with you. … So, I remember

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when I moved from being a secondary school teacher to higher ed to start with, I felt like, “Oh, this is just bliss.”

While no one can question the motivations behind self-care, the unevenness of the distribution of resources and opportunities for it remains an endemic challenge, and a core reason for the partial and concealed nature of care in modern society (Tronto, 1993, 2013). As Kisner notes in their 2017 article, ‘conspicuous displays of self-care’ on social media have created ‘#selfcare clickholes’, which barely conceal rampant individualism (look for the #spon hashtag to signal the monetisation of self-care), leading to accusations of self-care being co-opted for ‘excusable’ selfishness. This public promotion of self-care is a modern twist on the ‘cultivation of the self’ that Foucault (1983/2001) discussed, seemingly also ‘concern[ing] only the social groups, very limited in number, that were the bearers of culture and for whose members a techn¯e tou biou could have a meaning and a reality’ (p. 45). A focus on practising self-care, therefore, is not necessarily benign. Self-care requires investment of time and energy and is radical in higher education because by attending to the self, one is not attending to the productivity or pastoral care that the institution needs of its workers (despite what it might outwardly say about promoting self-care). Audre Lorde famously described self-care as ‘self-preservation’ and as ‘an act of political warfare’ in her powerful essay written on learning she had incurable cancer. In her fierce reflection on this quote, Sara Ahmed (2014b) notes how Lorde’s description of self-care for survival transcends her corporeal circumstances; rather, the prioritising of self-care is political because of what it says about valuing ourselves, particularly for those who live in the margins created by deliberately uneven societies and their structures. As Ahmed (2014b) writes, ‘Some have to look after themselves because their [sic] are not looked after: their being is not cared for, supported, protected’ (para 9). Such inequalities are becoming more pronounced in times of post-COVID inflation and catastrophic climate change, with housing and food becoming increasingly unaffordable or inaccessible, and a global recession looming. In these times, prioritising self-care can easily be dismissed or pushed to the side as other caring responsibilities take priority. Consequently, Ahmed’s critique of calls for more self-care is as relevant as it was when she wrote her 2014 blog post because the dominant discourse around self-care perpetuates (dominant:

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neoliberal, white) feminist assumptions that societal ‘ceilings (and walls) can disappear through individual persistence’ (para 16). Self-care can also get tangled up with the porous shared spaces of collaboration. Seeking to draw protective boundaries around self and investment of resources (energy, time, ideas) can create tensions, especially if by prioritising our own needs it means we are less available for others. These tensions can have unforeseen consequences, particularly where one person’s attempt to reclaim healthier boundaries regarding time, emotional exertion, and personal investment leaves a care vacuum due to others’ inability or unwillingness to ‘fill the gap’. In the case of individuals who are characterised as having a caring disposition and are known as taking on (whether voluntarily or by demand) larger care burdens, attempts to recalibrate and focus more on self-care can be seen as uncollegial or even selfish. Accordingly, each time a member of the university focuses on self-care it inevitably casts into sharper relief the overarching undercare that characterises institutional structures and operations. Therefore, what is really at the heart of this issue is endemic overwork and fatigue, a continued call to ‘do more with less’, and the concentration of unrealistic care burdens on some individuals (usually the most precarious and/or marginalised) while others retain greater capacity and freedom to practice self-care. Academics are notoriously bad at taking care of themselves, and despite a proliferation in attention (scholarly, institutional) to ‘wellbeing’ (although not necessarily a focus on care), there is commensurate evidence that people working in higher education are overworked, stressed, and ill. The results of a survey of Australian and British academics in Fetherston et al. (2021) speak to concerningly low levels of psychological wellbeing, much lower than those of their respective general populations. Other results speak to ‘emotional spill-over’, ‘where both personal and work-related thoughts intruded on their alternate domains, and to the extent where they were both negative predictors for wellbeing’ (p. 2784), and increased likelihood of physical ill-health. As we outlined in Chapter 3, there are many reasons for these negative experiences of working in higher education, but Dowland (2020) captures what we see as the most relatable reason, writing: …we make ourselves ill, we exhaust ourselves, as we take on more work, thinking that busyness is the measure of who we are… we might come to

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find it easier to care for others because we don’t care for ourselves. (para 14)

In the capitalist world that we live with, we are rarely called to value selfcare until it is too late, and we become a burden on the health system. In higher education, the busyness/productivity imperative that Dowland writes of (also see Chapter 3) erases the self in ways that are evidently destructive. This caused O’Dwyer et al. (2018) to brilliantly ask ‘where, we wonder, is the metric for self-care?’ (p. 243). These authors note that while the ‘put your own oxygen mask on first’ adage may well be cliched, its message holds truth: ‘engaging in self-care is not only worthy for us as individuals, but rather, enables us to return to our work with students and colleagues with renewed energy and enthusiasm’ (p. 244). In the time between setting out to write this book and its completion, several books and blogs on academic self-care and wellbeing have been published (Alexander & Kelch, 2021; Dowland, 2020; Lemon, 2022). Often these are critical, autoethnographic accounts of how colleagues have survived the pressures of working in the undercaring university (Kelly Preece’s chapter in her 2022 edited book is a particularly good example). COVID has clearly also been significant; Alexander and Kelch (2021) describe how the pressures of the pandemic have limited our capacity to self-care: During the first pandemic of our lifetimes, work has seemed constant. Many of us have been toiling from home with no clear definition of the boundaries of work’s place and time. Sometimes our spouses, our kids and our dogs have been additional obstacles to our workload. For many faculty members today, remembering to include exercise, healthy eating, adequate rest, and other recommended self-care practices has seemed to be only a pipe dream. (para 2)

Given the challenges that COVID has brought to higher education, discussing the need to/for care—including the interpretation of what the needs are and how to meet those needs—and the capacity to care has perhaps never been more pressing. The economic and political vulnerabilities of universities that were exposed by COVID—such as the decimation of the casual workforce, (mis)assumptions about students’ resources and resilience, reliance on international markets—have resulted in a critical diminishment of resources, curtailing the possibilities for care in

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the myriad ways it can be interpreted in the higher education context. However, scholars like bell hooks (1994) would argue this has long been the case with higher education, built as it was on the foundations of (white, western) imperialism with attendant biases embedded: If we examine critically the traditional role of the university in the pursuit of truth and the sharing of knowledge and information, it is painfully clear that biases that uphold and maintain white supremacy, imperialism, sexism, and racism have distorted education so that it is no longer about the practice of freedom. The call for a recognition of cultural diversity, a rethinking of ways of knowing, a deconstruction of old epistemologies, and the concomitant demand that there be a transformation in our classrooms, in how we teach and what we teach, has been a necessary revolution—one that seeks to restore life to a corrupt and dying academy. (p. 29)

hooks’ focus on the emancipatory potential of education exposes the ways that the academy has been self-replicating along classed (middle class), sexist (male-dominated), racialised (white, English-speaking), heteronormative, cultural (western) predispositions. In such a hierarchical, stratified, and competitive system, fuelled by fragile egos and pursuit of selfish competitive advantage, the capacity to care is strangled. Similarly, when one does not feel cared for, the conditions for caregiving are similarly damaged. Clegg and Rowland (2010) point to the deliberate hurdles placed in the way of caring by institutions, asserting that the creative, flexible, and responsive nature of caring challenges the slavish adherence to policy-as-rules, order, and bureaucratic regulation. This, Clegg and Rowland argue, translates care and kindness into subversive action by virtue of the fact that they ‘cannot be regulated and prescribed’ (p. 733). Displacing an all-encompassing focus on one’s own needs (as per the self-entrepreneurial imperative that underpins neoliberal and human capital arguments) to focus on those of others is radical in that it disrupts the everyday individualism and self-protection/promotion that higher education demands. Indeed, as Wood et al. (2020) lament, ‘when care is eroded from academic spaces, the dynamics underlying caring and radical scholarship are difficult to materialize as work becomes characterized by increasing pressure and isolation’ (p. 430). For Tim, a Professor of Law, it was possible for him to prioritise care because of his status: Tim: I guess in some ways I’ve been in a privileged enough position to be able to say “I’m not going to do most of what I do perfectly because

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otherwise I’m not going to put that oxygen mask on first”… Essentially everything I do at work; I know I could do better. And I could easily point out one to five things that would have been better about the teaching… I have to say, “I’ve done 80% or whatever and if I do the other 20%, that’s a day of my weekend or that’s time with my kids or those are the things that are going to push me over the edge” and trying to do as reasonable a job as I can go without. And it’s never perfect.

Resisting perfectionism is a difficult but necessary part of self-care: difficult especially because perfectionism is a version of self-control and can feel like a protective strategy (but it’s often not!). The politics of caring in higher education—the balancing of costs (for others or self) when deciding whether to (continue to) care in ways that are needed but not legitimised, recognised, or valued as part of contracted ‘work’ by institutions—are highly contentious. For Askins and Blazek (2017), care is political because of its marginal/periphery position in higher education: Care thus becomes explicitly political in destabilising and challenging such binaries, in being made visible and central in public as much as private spaces and processes. Care matters in the academic context because of its marginalisation. It is, then, central to our critique of the neoliberal landscape and power dynamics of academia. (p. 1097)

Similarly, Zembylas (2017) argues for a more reflexive approach to considering the radical potential of caring in higher education, making the case that we (insiders, people complicit in the system) ‘must explicitly challenge the idea that assimilation to dominant notions of caring is a neutral process; instead, educators in universities need to question the ways in which particular sociocultural contexts shape identities and thus influence expressions and interpretations of caring’ (p. 7). This need for reflexivity is echoed by Clegg and Rowland (2010), whose argument about kindness as beyond ‘due care’ is based on examination of personal accountability: While one can, and should, be held to account for the exercise of due care, kindness is a quality for which one can only hold oneself to account and is based on different normative criteria from those of audit. The difference between being held to account and holding oneself to account is crucial. (p. 725)

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However, as we described in outlining our motivations for writing this book, the undercare that is endemic in higher education—connecting with responsibility and duty, ethics and morality, social justice, and equity—creates a critical source of fuel for engaging in caring as radical action. Joining the chorus of many voices who critique the vagaries of neoliberal higher education for students and staff working within, and community looking in, we follow Tronto’s (1993) idea that some rage can be appropriate, providing it doesn’t subvert care and translate into contempt for care-receivers. This book is thus intended as an enactment of what Mariskind (2014) calls caring-as-activism and what Walker and Gleaves (2016) call caring-as-resistance, following their argument for more research into the imperative and contested possibilities of caring: …care and support for students is often conflated with emotional commitment and remedial orientation activities, if not in the eyes of these teachers, then certainly in the eyes of the institution. Such a view of care does a disservice to all: to the students with whom the teachers work, since they are in receipt of a ‘pedagogy of difference’; to the teachers at the university, since they are forced to adopt pedagogies that give lip-service to care and support because there is little time to do otherwise; to the university, since for all its concern to be visibly engaging with high quality teaching and research, it unwittingly fosters a relationship between them based not on dialogue and mutual understanding, but on competition. (Walker et al., 2006, p. 360)

Working ‘against the grain’ of undercaring universities makes selfcare particularly and problematically radical. Firstly, studying or being employed by a university is an opportunity (access to higher education: to learning, to libraries, to publicly-funded facilities, to hope and inspiration) that many others cannot and will not have. As such, being offered resources for self-care, even when outsourced and no matter how banal, is a privilege. Recognition of this is important because it turns a spoilt sulk into active resistance. Moreover, it reminds us that being involved in higher education confers great responsibility to role model; as Barnacle Dall’Alba (2017) remind us, educators have a responsibility to show students ‘how to care’, ‘not only in terms of promoting passion for ideas and objects, but also through students caring about each other in their interactions’ (p. 1333). Understanding what counts as self-care, therefore, needs to expand beyond ‘make yourself a cup of tea, and take a walk’ versions of advice (although these are indeed good suggestions!); we

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need to radically take care through taking action and prioritising our own needs, but not at the expense of the needs of others, to remind the institution that they need us more than we need them. As Jones and Whittle (2021) eloquently argue: ‘The ‘self’ part is crucial, therefore, because it brings with it a responsibility to act. Acting is what enables self-care to refute neoliberal co-option and become a regenerative and emancipatory action’ (p. 385).

Summary Care work is work. It is not self-indulgent; it is radical and necessary. —Mountz et al. (2015, p. 1238)

The answers provided by the scoping of the sector in Chapters 2 and 3 and exploring Tronto’s (2010) seven signs that institutions are not caring well (Chapter 4) suggest that universities are undercaring, if not outright uncaring. Indeed, the conditions for care have long been eroded to a point where self-care is almost impossible to balance with an everexpanding workload. Hegemonic un/dercaring conditions have been exposed by COVID in ways that institutions probably never thought possible. And despite the high-vis nature of this un/der/care, the fatigue that accompanied COVID—not from the virus itself, but from the overworked, undervalued, ‘pretend-everything-is-normal’ approach that is endemic across the sector—has meant there is scant energy left to fight for change. However, the solidarity that emerges at the ‘grassroots’ from fighting against unfairness offers a counter to the diminishment of trust between the institution and individuals, underpinning hope that emancipatory transformation will follow from collective resistance, of caring with each other for a better future for the many, not the few (Mariskind, 2014; Tronto, 2013). A framing concern for this book relates to the idea that caring is radical in the contemporary academy. We have discussed this in line with Ahmed’s (2014a) work on willfulness, and with a nod to Freire’s (1970) idea of conscientisation, and Foucault’s (1983/2001) idea of parrhesia. A notion of caring in higher education as radical needs to go beyond a focus on caring relations between individuals and extend to care about the role, purpose, and function of education. For Tronto (2013), educational

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care as accountability involves asking questions of what ‘good’ education could/should look like in a democratic society where care is central to decision-making. Tronto argues that a democratic/caring education system should have three foci: firstly, the foregrounding of the importance of education for developing the skills necessary both to care and to care about being a citizen in a democratic society (p. 135) over future economic contributors; secondly for parents to understand and communicate this to their children. Thirdly, Tronto asserts that teachers (and institutions) should be evaluated on how well they prepare students to care, rather than how well they prepare students to enter the workforce, arguing that what is more important is to assess the quality of teaching on the basis of ‘students’ substantive knowledge of the world, their curiosity about the world, and how well they have built a base for continued learning throughout their lives’ (p. 135). Such a shift in focus away from the individualist, economic imperative to participate in the future knowledge economy to the democratic, caring imperative to collaborate in active citizenry in the world constitutes a radical—transformational, emancipatory—form of care. Given the huge significance for every person who participates in the project of higher education, there is, therefore a critical need to explore the contexts of care and possibilities for/challenges to caring in higher education.

References Ahmed, S. (2014a). Wilful subjects. Duke University Press. Ahmed, S. (2014b, August 25). Selfcare as warfare. Feministkilljoys. https://fem inistkilljoys.com/2014/08/25/selfcare-as-warfare/ Alexander, J., & Kelch, B. (2021, July 8). Self-care strategies for faculty. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2021/07/09/academ ics-should-make-time-self-care-even-if-just-few-minutes-each-day-opinion Askins, K. (2009). ‘That’s just what i do’: Placing emotion in academic activism. Emotion, Space and Society, 2, 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa. 2009.03.005 Askins, K., & Blazek, M. (2017). Feeling our way: Academia, emotions and a politics of care. Social & Cultural Geography, 18(8), 1086–1105. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1240224 Baker, S., Field, R., Burke, R., Hartley, L., & Fleay, C. (2021). Discursive constructions of equity in Australian higher education: Imagined worlds and the case of people seeking asylum. British Educational Research Journal, 47 (4), 836–854. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3691

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Ball, S. (2016). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: Refusing neoliberalism? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37 (8), 1129–1146. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01425692.2015.1044072 Barnacle, R., & Dall’Alba, G. (2017). Committed to learn: Student engagement and care in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 36(7), 1326–1338.https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1326879 Barnett, P. (2011). Discussions across difference: Addressing the affective dimensions of teaching diverse students about diversity. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(6), 669–679. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2011.570435 Behari-Leak, K., Josephy, S., Potts, M., Muresherwa, G., Corbishley, J., Petersen, T., & Gove, B. (2021). Using vulnerability as a decolonial catalyst to re-cast the teacher as human(e). Teaching in Higher Education, 26(1), 557–572. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2019.1661376 Bondi, L. (2008). On the relational dynamics of caring: A psychotherapeutic approach to emotional and power dimensions of women’s care work. Gender, Place and Culture, 15(3), 249–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/096636908 01996262 Bosetti, L., & Heffernan, T. (2021, June 18). Why universities must act on the rise of a new kind of bullying. The Conversation. https://theconversation. com/why-universities-must-act-on-the-rise-of-a-new-kind-of-bullying-incivi lity-160870 Brantmeier, E. J. (2013). Pedagogy of vulnerability: Definitions, assumptions, and applications. In J. Lin, R. Oxford, & E. Brantmeier (Eds.), Re-envisioning higher education: Embodied pathways to wisdom and transformation (pp. 95– 106). Information Age Publishing. Burton, S., & Turbine, V. (2019). “We’re not asking for the moon on a stick”: Kindness and generosity in the academy. Discover Society [Online]. https:// archive.discoversociety.org/2019/07/03/were-not-asking-for-the-moon-ona-stick-kindness-and-generosity-in-the-academy/ Clegg, S., & Rowland, S. (2010). Kindness in pedagogical practice and academic life. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(6), 719–735. https://doi. org/10.1080/01425692.2010.515102 Darder, A. (2017). Reinventing Paulo Freire: A pedagogy of love. Routledge. Dowland, D. (2020, January 10). The problem of self-care in higher education. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/01/ 10/importance-caring-ones-students-and-oneself-academe-opinion Ecclestone, K., & Hays, D. (2008). The dangerous rise of therapeutic education. Routledge. Fetherston, C., Fetherston, A., Batt, S., Sully, M., & Wei, R. (2021). Wellbeing and work-life merge in Australian and UK academics. Studies in Higher Education, 46(12), 2774–2788. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020. 1828326

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PART III

Moving Towards a More Caring University

In this part of the book, we shift our focus from critique to hope. We return to the who, where, when, why discussions from Chapters 6–7 and ask questions of what more universities need to do (in terms of prioritising resources, making resources available, repurposing/ expanding the remit of existing resources) to create the conditions for care. We will also return to discussion of the inherent risks in caring, and how these can be mitigated if caring is reconfigured and prioritised by universities. This discussion will draw on the empirical accounts to make the case for where there are spaces/ possibilities for care (profiling any examples of ‘good practice’ that are shared). We draw on Tronto’s (2010) argument for the constituent parts of ‘good’ institutional care’: the purpose of care, recognition of power relations, and a need for pluralistic, responsive care. Refocusing our gaze through these three lenses offers a means of reimagining how care in universities might be better configured to serve all staff and students—a topic that we take up in Chapter 9. We end with a carefocused framework for universities to become more caring institutions, thus contributing a new take on Tronto’s (2010) work.

Reference Tronto, J. (2010). Creating caring institutions: Politics, plurality, and purpose. Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/174 96535.2010.484259

CHAPTER 8

Rethinking Institutional Care in Higher Education

Introduction Having navigated the perceptions, experiences, rationales, and excuses related to the endemic undercare in higher education institutions in Part II, we now turn our attention to hope for a more caring university. In this chapter, we return to considering what we mean by care in higher education, exploring possibilities for integrating more diverse care practices into institutional operations, with the intention of bringing care in from the periphery. To do this, we draw on Tronto’s (2010) argument, that ‘good care in an institutional context has three central foci: the purpose of care, a recognition of power relations, and the need for pluralistic, particular tailoring of care to meet individuals’ needs’ (p. 158). This requires recognition and dialogue around relations of: [C]ompetitive and dominative power within and outside the organisation…

. agreement of common purpose; . particularity and plurality…; and . awareness and discussion of the ends and purposes of care. (Tronto, 2010, p. 162)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7_8

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Tronto’s three foci are not distinct; as we have seen in Part II, paternalism threads through the ways that institutions imagine a-relational, ‘manageable’, and care-free workers, and legitimises the ‘care passes’ that permit some to pay for or delegate their care responsibilities, all of which fuels a general devaluing of care and amplifies care disparities. When coupled with a demonstrable lack of institutional care for the people who constitute the institution, care for others and care for self is made difficult, if not impossible. We therefore need to also recognise how consistent and explicit understanding of the purpose, power, and plurality of care can open possibilities for more caring higher education and resist the current systems and structures that stymie possibilities for care. Similar calls are peppered through the literature; for example, Walker and Gleaves (2016) argue that care can be emancipatory if it holds a ‘meaning and status of care as a mechanism to effect change, not just in pedagogic, but also social terms within education more generally’ (p. 67). Likewise, Vásquez Vedera (2019) contends that caring in higher education is not merely a contracted duty or a means to an economic end; rather than ‘just doing a job’, Vásquez Vedera argues that ‘our first responsibility [as university workers, as institutions] is to help students and the whole society flourish, not to only help employers or funding agencies fulfill their short-term desires’ (p. 89). Currently, these political possibilities are concealed, however, with conceptions of care as primarily pastoral (in terms of supporting students) and hived off as the responsibility of separate units, rather than a unifying and fundamental component of all parts of the university. In this chapter, we return to our data and our own experiences of studying and working in higher education to examine staff and students’ perceptions of what a more caring university could look like. To do so, we frame each section with guiding questions regarding the purpose(s) of care; the power dynamics at the centre of caring relations; and the plurality and particularity of the care given and received.

Purpose As we have argued in Part II, a core issue with care in higher education is that a small number of (similar) people think they know what a large number of (diverse) people need. To shift away from these paternalistic limitations, Tronto (2010) calls for us to attend to ‘the ends and purposes of care’ (p. 162). While there are challenges in raising

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questions of care in higher education, talking about care opens possibilities for new conceptualisations of the purpose of care in institutional settings. This task is discussed by participants in terms of a larger project of disrupting traditional power relations and valuing of certain forms of knowledge over others, while also understanding and responding to students’ lived experiences and circumstances, with the explicit purpose of building connections. The question of care-full purpose relates in no small part to the thorny question of the extent to which universities are a public or private good. If universities are a community resource, then the community (students, staff, alumni, visitors) should be purposefully cared for, about, with. As we discussed in Chapter 4, the notion of the public good has been corrupted by the zealous individualism and competition in neoliberal governance models, leaving us with a sector in the throes of an identity crisis. To be more hopeful, we should listen to Raewyn Connell, who reminds us of its collective and collaborative roots: …universities are real, working organisations, with real workforces, real environments, and real effects. Their research, their teaching and their operations are a weave of collective labour. To speak of a good university is to think about this collective activity and its possible futures. (2019, p. 171)

The tension between competition and public service clearly outlines a central challenge for the imagining of a more caring university. To this end, we ask two guiding questions about purposive care in higher education: . How could care be more legitimised and valued as an institutional aim? . How could care be shared more democratically across higher education?

Care as an Institutional Aim Engaging with the purpose of care in higher education inevitably leads to reflection on the form that such an institutional agenda might take.

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This question is worthy of considered debate. For instance, while embedding care as an educational aim would be pertinent to the core business of higher education, it may perpetuate the notion of care as something restricted to the classroom. This, as we have discussed throughout this book, impoverishes our understanding of the many ways in which care is practiced in higher education, and risks placing the responsibility for care solely at the feet of those with student-facing roles. Forging a shared aim for care within higher education is also discussed by our participants as a means of reflecting transparently and honestly on the system in its current state. For example, Xander (then a casual academic) suggests elevating epistemic care at the level of ‘powerful knowledges’ and knowledge of students: Sally: What do you think a caring university would look like? Xander: That’s a good question. What would a caring university look like? It would provide students the opportunities to participate at a level in which they can, obviously not depleting rigour or anything like that, but providing access points to different forms of knowledges, so I guess breaking down some of those powerful knowledges. It would be an institution that provides students with access or easy access to stuff like scholarships or ways to progress where they don’t have to have increasingly competing demands. I think at the moment, people don’t understand that students have to work.

Xander’s quote captures some of the undercare at the heart of higher education: universities certainly have a remit to create, critique, and curate a variety of knowledges; however, as we discussed in Chapter 4, this has largely been done narrowly, privileging colonial, masculine, middleclass purposes at the expense of ‘non-normative’, such as First Nations, ‘working’ class, feminine, queer, ways. Similarly, universities have equity mechanisms to open access to a broader (‘more diverse’) cohort but have arguably not developed shared understandings of such students and their ‘needs’. There are clear challenges for universities: doing things at scale requires tools that work at the abstract rather than nuanced, lived levels; moreover, the structures of these large, complex institutions mean that awareness or even expertise regarding students’ needs is often siloed, meaning it does not ‘trickle down’ to the people. Other participants also emphasised the importance of purposefully legitimising care as a means of supporting students, particularly in the teaching and learning spaces of the university. On being asked about care

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of/for students, Eve, an academic learning advisor, offered a definition that includes explicit recognition of where care initially takes place, as well as the plurality of circumstances that our students have: Eve: I guess recognising that it’s a really challenging journey for them, and that their transition isn’t necessarily going to be straightforward, that they’re not at deficit when they arrive, and I think that it would have filter effect because it would mean that the teaching first would be actually really important rather than research first… Caring for students would mean that teaching would come first, and that research would be related to that, not the other way around, I suppose.

As Hansen and Quek (2023) remind us, caring teaching is purposive, placing the functions of teachers’ work within ‘a larger sense of genuinely educational purpose’ (p. 9). For this to happen at scale, beyond those with a disposition towards caring (see Chapter 6), the value and legitimacy of care within the educational purpose needs to be explicitly outlined. However, clarifying the value ascribed to care should not be limited to teaching and learning because it is the most immediate site of caring relations. Eve’s quote highlights an overarching question about how ambiguity about the purpose of higher education (and how its component parts jostle for supremacy) creates ambiguity about the purpose of care; instead, we need to highlight how these imperatives are shared across the different parts, remits, and roles of the holistic project of higher education. Being purposeful with care also involves planning and predicting what is needed, in consultation with everyone who has a stake. Tim (a Professor of Law) discussed this in his definition of what a caring university could look like: Tim: To me, care is I guess more about what the active, that the proactive efforts on behalf of someone or a group in the institution to promote wellbeing…

Tim’s call for more proactive engagement with care in higher education is indicative of an intention to avoid Tronto’s (2010) first sign of the careless institution—that care is offered in response to misfortune—and suggests a desire for care to be at the centre of university

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strategic planning rather than on the periphery. This is particularly important as universities intentionally pursue massification and diversification strategies; as we have already argued, universities’ moral duty of care is compromised if a more ‘diverse’ cohort is recruited without adequate supports being provided. Barnacle and Dall’Alba (2017) remind us that to take responsibility (caring for), universities must genuinely engage with widening participation in terms of educational rights, rather than just as an economic strategy. Continually designing proactive supports are a key part of this rights-over-economics argument. Our participants also described how they imagine care practices in higher education could form an integral component of workplace relations. For Sara (a manager), an institutional aim for care would involve developing structures to facilitate collegiality, safety, trust, and agency: Sara: [Care is] enabling a safe environment for there to be robust discussion… [and] promoting opportunities for staff to genuinely engage in what strategic agenda is … feeling like they have some, not necessarily autonomy, but some level of influence over the work that they’re doing if they are in fact offering or providing expertise in that area.

The idea of relative autonomy may be familiar to academic staff but is less-often offered to professional colleagues. However, Sara viewed this aim as currently being undermined through an absence of role modelling in senior management, that has created a culture of ‘do what I say but not what I do’, as well as statements of care that are ambiguous in such a way that it is very difficult to create good practices and standards of care. This tells us that care needs to be purposefully planned, implemented, and role modelled at all levels of the institution. For Xander and Eve, the idea of institutional care extended to the notion of welcome. Xander described institutional care in terms of providing a welcome space, a space where students could interact with staff in a positive way, to work with other staff and support, in all sorts of ways, teaching research and other projects, and that it would be about recognising challenge and offering flexibility to accommodate individual needs. Eve offered examples of welcome in the Australian higher education context, such as the renaming of campuses in Indigenous languages. Again, the notion of care as a manifestation of what the institution values is evident in these suggestions. Furthermore, as we discussed in Chapter 6, engaging with ideas about pedagogic care helps to

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acknowledge the centrality of a shared purpose for care within these definitions. Here we extend the argument to a broader definition of ‘teaching’ as any role that supports learner engagement, meaning that everyone who works in a university is engaged in a pedagogic care. If this expanded cohort, beyond the teacher-learner dyad, is made explicit, the purpose of pedagogic care also needs to be expanded. Sharing the (Purpose of) Caring: Relationship and Connection Effectively attending to the ‘ends and purposes’ of care requires all of us to recognise that we are involved in networks of care that encompass the five ethics of care that Tronto (1993, 2013) articulates: caring about , for, giving, receiving, and with. As it stands, our participants’ experiences and key themes within the literature strongly suggest that the sharing of care is uneven, with privileged irresponsibility the norm in higher education (see Chapter 6). In this section we ask how care might be shared more democratically across higher education, in order to elevate and further legitimise its purpose. Firstly, care needs to be clearly and explicitly articulated as a component of wellbeing, connection, and belonging—all powerful discourses in contemporary higher education, particularly post-COVID. The literature is replete with accounts of desire for connection between students, staff, disciplines, institution, and their care networks (Gannon et al., 2019; Lolich & Lynch, 2017). Such accounts highlight the importance of connection, identification, and belonging, foregrounding the relational components of care and positive emotions as ‘intricately linked to social relationships, involving other students, lecturers, friends and family’ (Beard et al., 2014, p. 638). The value of relationships is clearly captured by Katie, a Lecturer in Education, as she reflected on caring in her practice: Katie: As I said before, my relationship with my students is one of the things that always keeps me going. I love teaching and I love meeting my students year upon year and kind of building those relationships. And I think all of us who work together feel very similarly, and that’s a great source of sustenance. That’s really sustaining. And I think that that focus on why we do what we do, despite the challenges that we face administratively and politically perhaps, culturally, is what we always kind of come back to.

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This notion of sustenance is integral to creating the fuel to continually maintain, continue, and repair our worlds, if we think back to Fisher and Tronto’s (1990) foundational definition of care. Our need for connection is a key component of our meaning-making of the world around us—and our role in it—and as such is a very important purposeful articulation of care. This stands in marked contrast to the dominant concerns of individual/ institutional competition, as Gloria (a postdoctoral fellow) notes: Gloria: I think understanding that a career isn’t just the things that you write, or your international reputation, it’s so much more than that. And actually, the supervision that you do, the teaching that you do, the way that you interact with other colleagues, if there was a way for that to be recognised as important, as publishing a paper, I think that would be amazing.

Gloria outlines an explicit need to reorder institutional priorities, to make all facets of our work valued (rather than the meeting of KPIs or the number of Q1 journal articles published) so that care can be explicitly articulated, valued, and made more visible, which could then open a discursive space to consider where our priorities (and therefore allocation of resources, attention, investment) should be placed. For Eve, priority would start with students and care would be shaped by that focus: Eve: I mean, it would put care of students first, I think. Care of students, and if care of students is absolutely at the centre of the way everyone works, then I think that that would quite quickly filter out into the care of the staff who immediately are looking after the care of students, support staff, and that type of thing. That would then filter out to academic staff, and then to management staff, and all the way out. I think if care of students was actively at the centre, that it would have ripple effect.

Such an explicit articulation of where care starts, according to Eve, would allow the need for care to ripple. However, we suspect this is what universities argue already happens, so a more radical approach to valuing relationships and connections might be necessary. This will require structural support; as Vásquez Vedera (2019) argues, this should involve universities offering ‘conditions of possibility by providing reasonable adjustments for individuals and communities… [because] We all need the collaboration of others or certain conditions to be able to conduct

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ourselves’ (pp. 94–95). These adjustments need to permit for the catharsis of the collective to permeate our daily practices. As Gloria highlights here: Gloria: You know what? It’s actually just very nice to talk about this stuff, and I’m sure other people have said to you before, but you don’t often get the opportunity to also just talk about your experiences and so it’s been good for me.

The significance of being able to share the care, as well as share the experiences of caring (positive and negative) was clearly articulated as a need rather than a desire by our participants; for Eve this was because she had moved for her role, resulting in ‘Professional care inevitably [becoming] personal care and friendships because your colleagues are your friends’. While friendship is not the intended result of collegial caring networks, it can be a bonus. Moreover, sharing the care in a collective way can also fuel a sense of solidarity across the institution. As Eve described, this is particularly important for the more secure members of the university to demonstrate unity with more precariously positioned colleagues: Eve: I suppose that true expression of solidarity and expressing care would be to acknowledge that there’s similarities but also distinctive differences and now, if you’re in a situation where you’re now a professor or something, that you’ve become part of the machinery that is perpetuating casualisation.

This focus on the collective—for support, for friendship, for solidarity, and for hope—reminds us of Julie McLeod’s (2017) evocative argument that the relational and responsibility go hand-in-hand; when we silo and individualise these dimensions, we risk losing them altogether: Relations of love, care and solidarity build on and evoke a sense of responsibility toward others, not only toward one’s (performative) self, and are deeply embedded in the purposes and work of education. (p. 51)

By participating in the collective enactment of care, all members of the institution have an opportunity to share responsibility for each other, and for the broader project of providing pathways to equitable, recognitive, and socially just higher education.

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Power The second element of Tronto’s (2010) three-fold framework focuses on the need to identify and interrogate how power relations—both internal and external to the institution—impact the potential for care. This involves recognising how power dynamics increase the care burden on some members of the institution—usually those in the most precarious roles—and obscures care realities and responsibilities from others. Power dynamics, manifest in the degree to which an employee considers their position within the institution to be secure and agentic, also impact which care practices are perceived as possible. As Burton and Turbine (2019) note, there are many forms of care, with those related to acts of ‘radical kindness’ tied up in reconciling and remaining aware of complex power relations: Care and kindness is not simply a particular attitude of geniality or occasionally ‘brightening someone’s day’. Instead, we need to comprehend it as both radical dispositions and radical acts: speaking truth to power, refusing damaging hierarchies, rejecting restrictive and exclusionary interpretations of ‘professionalism’. Care is both remembering to take new colleagues for lunch and challenging harmful and marginalising policies; it is recognitions of, and robust responses to, university policy and rules failing to understand us as human and checking in on the welfare of colleagues. Care is, most of all, a constant vigilance as to your power and how you wield this. (para 4)

Awareness of how different structures in the university involve/ facilitate the ‘wield[ing] [of] power’ (Burton & Turbine, 2019, p.na) is a key theme in our participants’ discussions of their experiences of care. Further, perceptions of power, including the capacity for selfdetermination and agency within the institution, are key elements in determining whether the care they undertake is related to the ‘attitude of geniality and “brightening of someone’s day”’ that Burton and Turbine (2019) describe, or extend to broader and potentially risky practices of ‘speaking truth to power’ (Burton & Turbine, 2019). Gloria’s example of speaking out against precarious employment conditions, and the resulting impact on her sense safety within the institution, is an example of the latter form of care, enacted amid and despite the presence of complex power structures. This leads us to ask three key questions:

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. What do/would the power dynamics in higher education look like in caring relationships? . How do/would people practice care if they felt they had sufficient resources, status, security? . How can taking an ethics of care approach illuminate existing hierarchies and privileged irresponsibility in higher education?

Power Dynamics and Care in Higher Education The need for continual reflexivity regarding one’s own power, and a commitment to transforming institutional practices to be more caring is a key theme in our participants’ reflections. For them, power dynamics in a caring higher educational context requires members of the institution— both individually and collectively—to strive to ‘make things better’ for others, regardless of (or perhaps because of) how challenging or uncaring one’s own experiences of the institution have been/are. For instance, Emma, a Ph.D. student comments: Emma: Care is when they [university staff] want students to succeed and provide them with tools for succeeding, but also compassion to succeed as well—I think that often compassion is forgotten. Why is it forgotten? Because people like to complain about kids these days and that because they had it tough the next generation should have it tough etc. It’s like generational arguing but at university.

In Emma’s view, individuals perpetuate un/undercaring practices in higher education because such behaviour reflects how they have been treated, and/or reflects a belief that resilience in the face of such treatment is an inevitable ‘rite of passage’. However, other participants discussed ways in which awareness of their own security, agency, and power—all of which are usually hard-fought—allows them to provide the care to others that was not available to them at a similar career stage. For instance, Tim’s deliberate efforts to assist his early career colleagues to be included on publications and establish a track record is an example of using one’s position to offer care to others. As Lawson (2007) suggests, ‘Marginalizing care furthers the myth that our successes are achieved as autonomous individuals, and as such, we have no responsibility to share the fruits of our success with others or to dedicate public resources to the work of

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care’ (p. 5). This in turn allows ideologies of autonomy and ‘self-made’ success to go unchallenged (Tronto, 1993). The importance of individuals being motivated to continually repair and improve higher education rather than perpetuate the challenges of the past/present, is therefore key to determining how power dynamics shape care in university settings. Importantly, this work is understandably more impactful en masse; as Vickers (2020) notes: In the face of the manifold crises today confronting our educational institutions, societies, and the very planet upon which they subsist, we need constantly to remind ourselves that the capacity for evil, or just plain stupidity, is a quality that unites us all, and resolve to confront it together. (p. 184)

In this way, the enactment of collective care can bring together staff and students in the shared pursuit of repairing, improving, and transforming higher education to better attend to the critical issues that threaten our society and our wellbeing. Resources to Practice Care In our participants’ experiences, power emerges as a chief factor that shapes both the giving and receiving of care in higher education. As we have explored in previous chapters, frequently the most precarious and least powerful members of the institution carry the greatest care burden, particularly with regard to care practices that are largely ‘invisible’, less understood, and less recognised within the institution. An example of such care is the time-intensive pastoral work required to support students who are navigating challenging personal circumstances as they attempt to undertake academic studies. Assisting students to remain in their studies during such times of upheaval—or to successfully resume studies after a leave of absence—can involve a range of supportive actions, including regularly ‘checking in’ with the student, liaising with specialist support services particularly when the student is too vulnerable/ distressed for self-advocacy, and working with advisors and other support teams to ensure the student’s program remains on track/implement any necessary ‘work arounds’. This kind of pastoral support can be the determining factor that prevents a student from being forced to withdraw from studies despite academic, financial, and emotional investment, and is

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therefore essential to realising both the transformative potential of higher education for the individual student, their family, and community, as well as being central to the ‘core business’ of the university’s task of retention. However, the time, effort, and expertise required to offer this care are usually not acknowledged or understood by those in higher levels of management and are not seen as strategic to career advancement. Some university staff (for example, Xavier) feel unable to refuse to take on this kind of additional care work due to perceptions of precarity and a need to ‘step up’ and show leadership to retain their positions, as evident in Tim’s description of colleagues who are afraid to ‘say no’. Others, like Miles and Tim, appear to feel sufficiently secure in their position to refuse to take on additional care responsibilities but ultimately make the difficult decision to undertake this work anyway, fearing the human costs of the care vacuum that would result from their refusal, and choosing to sacrifice their own career advancement for the needs of others. From our observations, people also regret having to refuse to undertake such care due to pressures to prioritise their professional trajectory and direct time and energy to outputs that ‘count’ within the institution. In each of these responses to the call to care—a sense of obligation related to retaining one’s position, the decision to care despite the agency to refuse, and pressure to refuse in order to maintain/advance one’s career—issues of power are inherent. Of course, counter to each of these positions is the other choice; to reject care practices without concern for the impact on others/the institution. Awareness of power dynamics and the implications for care requires that those with more power understand that less secure colleagues may not have access to resources that can defray the costs of enacting care (for example, administrative supports, personal assistants, funding to support other aspects of work such as teaching, marking, and research) and that the burden of care may well be larger for colleagues in these circumstances. This involves recognising that without resources to meet the time and emotional costs of such care, opportunities to pursue other, more strategic activities, such as external funding or research outputs are reduced. Importantly, awareness of power also requires recognition that the system, while directly benefiting from the efforts of individuals who ‘go above and beyond’ to care for colleagues and students, also punishes these same people by failing to recognise the importance of this care.

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Where our participants describe how the power imbalances within the system restrict their ability to offer care to colleagues and to students, trust emerges as a key factor. As Vásquez Vedera (2019) describe: Trust arises in caring practices between colleagues, workers, students, and institutions because receptivity and recognition give people a feeling of being secure enough to challenge all kinds of difficulties and to practice ethical decision-making. (p. 93)

Our participants articulate concerns about whether they can safely practice ‘riskier’ forms of care, such as voicing objections to precarious work conditions for colleagues on sessional contracts or calling out individual experiences of injustice in the workplace. Xander’s experience of wanting to support his colleague during a meeting with the human resources department but being concerned that this would damage his own position, is one such case. The importance of trusting that care will not lead to punitive consequences raises a question of what ways might staff and students take a more caring position, speak truth to power, and challenge harmful policies and practices in higher education if they felt sufficiently powerful/secure (Burton & Turbine, 2019)? Care as a Means of Illuminating Hierarchies and Privileged Irresponsibility Just as we have made the case for engaging with paternalistic notions of care—the minority assuming to understand and respond to the needs of the majority—we likewise suggest that awareness of power and differential positioning within the institution is essential for authentic and responsive care to flourish in higher education. This requires those with the most power to remain attentive to the constraints and precarities of those with the least power, and importantly, to understand how these differences might play out with regard to care. Taking an ethics of care approach to relational supports in higher education also requires those with the most power to enact care in ways that are visible and valued in order to ‘normalise’ such practices as part of institutional culture. This reminds us that care involves more than good intentions; such modelling of care is important from top-down as well as bottom-up institutional layers. As Burton and Turbine (2019) remind us:

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Crucially, radical kindness must be done by all: it is unjust, unethical, and unsociological to rely on already-marginalised people to speak up against injustice, to undertake caring labour, or to create and perform atmospheres of happiness.” (Burton & Turbine, 2019, para 13)

While some of us may lean into the kinds of engaged pedagogical practices that bell hooks (1994) wrote of, never asking our students to share or do things we ourselves would not want to share or do, we are likely in the minority. If we are not shown how to do this, how will we learn? Institutional leaders therefore need to actively and overtly shape an institution in which, as Sara, an academic, describes: ‘things like the values in action are actually adhered to and demonstrated at a senior level and that that filters down”. Colleagues need to be willing (will-fully) to model and nurture these kinds of practices, particularly in the caring professions. Part of such modelling may involve institutional leaders exhibiting a willingness to share their own experiences of care; being vulnerable and open regarding these issues. As Emma, a PhD candidate, suggests, “I see caring institutions as ones that have care embedded as a core principle throughout all their work and that decisions are made to align with care rather than capital values’. While we have discussed how the ‘everyday’ practices of care that are integral to student retention and success are frequently ‘invisible work’ that is undervalued in terms of career advancement, student comments regarding possibilities for a more caring university indicate that respect for the people who offer them care throughout their studies is a key theme and at the forefront of their own experiences with an institution. Emma, a PhD student, articulated: Emma: I feel like I am cared for and cared about when I am seen as an individual and not merely a number, when time and thoughtfulness is allocated to me and my development.

Emma’s recognition of the importance of care also reflects the student agency regarding caring networks and practices discussed in the literature. For instance, Cheng’s (2016) observation of ‘students establish[ing] small-scale supportive networks in their own friendship circles, and in the process islands of solidarities emerged in the space of the campus’ (p. 927) highlights how students value and actively pursue more caring educational environments. Through such student engagement in creating spaces of care and solidarity through giving time and energy to each other:

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‘They were also practicing care in a political manner aimed at remaking the socio-material circumstances for the better, albeit in their own subtle ways’ (p. 928). Cheng’s example matches what we have observed with students leading and participating in campus action, contributing to antiracism collectives, and creating supportive solidarity networks—wanting to harness their energies to enact change. Such forms of action, if not activism, constitute a willful and radical configuration of student-led care that bolsters other forms of collective care/ing that happen in universities. We see this as a hopeful indication that the work required to overhaul and transform higher education according to principles of equity, care, and compassion is already underway, albeit quietly. As a critical mass, students who continue to demand more transparency and care for the practices that they value in their own education—for instance, the many recollections of student-facing staff who have ‘gone above and beyond’ to assist them in their studies—will surely begin to draw the attention of university leaders. Solidarity and collective voicing of critical issues related to care therefore offer hopeful possibilities.

Plurality and Particularity Tronto (2010) also identifies the importance of plurality as a marker of authentic and holistic care. This involves both ‘…attention to human activities as particular and admitting of other possible ways of doing them’ and recognition of ‘diverse humans having diverse preferences about how needs might be met…’ (p. 162). Actively engaging with diversity in all aspects of care in higher education therefore means understanding the different ways in which care is conceptualised and practiced across staff and student populations, and how the many different roles and responsibilities in the university involve—and are shaped by—varying enactments of care. As we have previously asserted, concepts of a generic university student/staff member, and related assumptions about their circumstances and lives, are long outdated. Maintaining such narrow understandings of those who engage with higher education obscures the complexity and diversity of their needs and strengths. This can lead to well-intentioned yet ultimately ineffectual and/or harmful attempts at care that fail to engage diverse capacities, experiences, and resources, and limit participation in the transformational work of creating more caring institutions. Likewise, discussions of care that exclusively reference teaching contexts,

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devalue practices that occur beyond the classroom, contradicting the idea that care in higher education is everyone’s responsibility. These considerations lead us to ask: . How could universities recognise a more diverse range of care? . What would it look like if responding to diverse and individualised care needs was part of core university business?

Recognising Diverse Care Needs Previously, we have discussed the need to consider diversification or widening participation in higher education in terms of educational rights, rather than solely in relation to economic imperatives (Barnacle & Dall’Alba, 2017). As we have suggested, this requires the active provision of supports to assist students from traditionally under-represented cohorts to navigate institutional structures and the academic/epistemic tenets of higher education. This requires both acknowledgement that existing structures in higher education privilege particular cultural, linguistic, and epistemic positions, and the active unpacking of these assumed values, knowledges, and practices to support equitable engagement. In other words, plurality of care in higher education means recognising that all students are positioned differently in terms of institutional culture, with some requiring assistance to access learning equitably. For student and staff participants in our various studies, this type of support forms an important manifestation of care, particularly where students are from minority and/or marginalised communities. For instance, Patrick, an undergraduate student, suggested: Patrick: …universities can be more caring through implementation of policies that are more responsive to individual needs of students and being more understanding and flexible with how students are assessed (without compromising on academic integrity)… depending on personal circumstances (an example can be: providing adjustments to an assessment for students who have social anxiety don’t need to give an oral presentation to their class, instead being able to record a video that they can submit for the teacher to view and mark).

Here, care is interpreted as a willingness to understand and support students whose life circumstances and/or educational histories impact

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their ability to participate in tertiary studies. Likewise, Katie, a lecturer in education, expressed the view that a caring university is dependent on understanding the various challenges facing students and how these may impact their ability to engage with their studies: Katie: To my mind it comes largely back to economic conditions for our students who increasingly, as we’ve all seen working in universities over the last two decades, the changes, students are working multiple casual jobs. Their ability and taking on vast amounts of debt. That compromises their ability to concentrate and care about their own education and what that means.

While the importance of flexible, responsive support for student engagement is therefore identified by our student and staff participants as an important enactment of care, a key point of contention within the literature is the perceived conflict between offering such assistance and maintaining academic rigour (see Burke, 2022; Ryan & Viete, 2009). Particularly in relation to supporting learners for whom the dominant language of instruction is an additional language, research identifies a persistent belief among some staff that supporting student engagement threatens academic integrity. We posit that this view fails to account for how unfamiliarity with institutionally valorised ways of communicating cognitive/epistemic development can restrict students’ engagement with and capacity to demonstrate learning. In these circumstances, awareness of expected academic literacy expectations rather than cognitive ability, knowledge, and understanding is reflected in student outcomes. Tension regarding the need for universities to implement targeted support for students who are less familiar with institutional practices is evident in student Simon’s experience seeking assistance regarding an assessment rubric. I didn’t know what they wanted [in the assessment], and when they explain[ed] it to me, my mark went up to like …a good mark in the end…and I said, “you know maybe you should change your rubric…”, and he’s [the tutor] like, “yeah, but we shouldn’t have to do that because scientists should be able to just read it and understand it.”

Here, Simon’s suggestion that the rubric might be rewritten in ‘plain language’ to enhance accessibility for other students was rejected, seemingly based on assumptions about the universality of academic discourse/

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literacy requirements. Such assumptions operate on an understanding of shared educational and sociocultural backgrounds that deny the diversity of the modern university (Burke, 2022). Such assumptions also lead to narrowly defined care practices that can fail to meet the needs of all students, particularly those from traditionally underrepresented populations. The idea that supporting students to understand the language and academic literacy requirements of higher education detracts from the rigour of instruction suggests a misreading of such support as amounting to ‘spoon-feeding’ and a dilution of content, rather than a means of opening tasks to all student participants. Further, such a stance may be seen as partly emanating from the traditional perceptions of the division of care between the home and work domain. Clegg and Rowland’s (2010) observation that while kindness is frequently viewed as ‘out of place’ in higher education—in similar ways to care, with its focus on the affective— it involves ‘considerable rigour… entailed in working out what would be kind in relation to the realisation of the projects of others’ (p. 724). Such efforts do not come at the expense of the cognitive but in fact enhance the pursuit of knowledge. For Simon, a clearer understanding of the assessment rubric allowed for better application of knowledge to demonstrate learning. Of course, such an understanding of care as enabling learning is linked to overall perceptions of the role of higher education. For student Vanessa: Vanessa: Universities are eco-systems and community for staff and students, they are spaces of growth and learning and personal discovery. Students put their future and education into the hands of institutions and deserve to be cared about and cared for. Care does not mean ’doing it’ for a student but rather having the time and space to meet students where they are at on their journey and build them into their potential rather than assuming that anyone who can’t catch up or needs a pause is therefore not ready nor worthy.

Recognising Diverse Care Practices Engaging with different understandings of a caring institution also requires recognition of the myriad types of work undertaken by staff. As we discussed in Chapter 6, expanding our understandings of ‘teaching’ to include any role that supports learner engagement, necessitates an appreciation of diverse manifestations of pedagogic care. For instance, Gloria, a postdoctoral researcher, describes a caring institution as characterised by:

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Gloria: …a valuing of different kinds of work within the institution…a university that valued the teaching, the supervision, the other kinds of community engagement and sitting on committees and doing all of that kind of work in the same way as research work would be amazing.

In recounting their experiences in higher education, students and staff identify how care is manifest in counselling, Ally networks and other student/staff associations that support equity, diversity, and inclusion, financial aid, management, and informal caring networks including friendship and collegial groups. Understanding more about how care works in these different contexts—including where the overlaps and distinctions occur—will help university management to support staff more effectively both in terms of care of self and others. Open discussions about the enactment of care in higher education will also help raise awareness of this as a central part of institutional culture, encourage knowledge exchange and collegial support, and help value care as central to university work. Responding to Diverse and Individualised Care Needs Pluralistic approaches to care therefore require awareness of how wellintentioned but ultimately uni-dimensional, one-size-fits-all, and topdown understandings can be extremely limiting and harmful. For instance, returning to student cohorts that we first discussed in Chapter 5, including students with refugee and asylum seeker experiences, engagement in higher education is subject to specific financial, social, and educational circumstances and challenges that can impact care needs and practices. For a student who does not have a laptop and must complete all assignments on a mobile phone, access to shared computing facilities will be essential. However, these supports can only be useful in terms of engagement in higher education if the student is also provided with assistance for understanding academic literacy and language requirements. For other students, the offer of a fee waiver might be their only pathway to enrolling in higher education, but if they are on a temporary protection visa, they may lose all government benefits and—if required to undertake full time studies as part of their waiver conditions—will have little time to earn money for food and accommodation (see Hartley et al., 2018). Awareness that no two students (or staff) are the same, and that each person experiences intersecting factors related to socio-economic status, carer responsibilities, gender, sexuality, educational history, language,

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health, and other variables, means recognising the importance of care practices that are equally diverse and flexible. The transformational work of pursuing a more caring institution thus requires space for multiple voices, experiences, and values to shape whole-of-institution change. As with other aspects of the task of imagining higher education according to more caring principles and practices, responsibility for identifying how best to meet student, staff, and community needs for care cannot lie with the university executive or any one entity within the institution. All members of the community need to be involved in ongoing work towards more representative and recognitive practices of care. The challenge, of course, lies in how to facilitate such whole-of-institution engagement; an issue we take up in Chapter 9. Ultimately, strengthening the university’s capacity for recognising and responding to diverse care needs and practices depends on genuine and continuous community engagement. This requires the allocation of resources, including time, space, and representative participation, and the mandate from top levels of institutional leadership that this consultative work is essential, impactful (i.e., accompanied by positive action), and a core part of university operations. Such consultation and community engagement needs to occur in all areas of the institution: epistemologically, structurally, socially, and politically. As Seats (2022) urges, we need ‘an approach that can creatively utilize difference, incommensurability and epistemic complexity’ (p. 690).

Summary In this chapter, we have explored our participants’ imaginings regarding possibilities for more caring higher education, considering different understandings of the purposes, related power dynamics, and plurality of care. Our discussion has reinforced the centrality of care to the overarching task of disrupting historically entrenched power dynamics, privilege, and marginalisation in higher education, both in terms of epistemic and ontological justice and the enactment of true widening participation. The latter necessitates a diverse range of tailored and responsive care practices to ensure all students are supported to engage equitably in higher education regardless of life circumstances and educational histories. In exploring our participants’ hopes for a more caring university, we also note a strong theme of care as a marker for what is acknowledged, appreciated, and valued by the institution. In other words, participant

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imaginings regarding possibilities for care in the university also offer insights into a broader desire to rethink the very foundations of the academy and its purpose within society. In Chapter 9, we turn our attention to considering possibilities for care that are proactively focused on maintenance, continuance, justice, and repair of higher education.

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Hartley, L., Fleay, C., Baker, S., & Burke, R. (2018). People seeking asylum in Australia: Access and support in higher education. National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education. Curtin University. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. Lawson, V. (2007). Geographies of care and responsibility. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97 (1), 1–11. Lolich, L., & Lynch, K. (2017). Aligning the market and affective self: Care and student resistance to entrepreneurial subjectivities. Gender and Education, 29(1), 115–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1197379 McLeod, J. (2017). Reframing responsibility in an era of responsibilisation: Education, feminist ethics. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 38(1), 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2015.1104851 Ryan, J., & Viete, R. (2009). Respectful interactions: Learning with international students in the english-speaking academy. Teaching in Higher Education, 14(3), 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562510902898866 Seats, M. (2022). The voice(s) of reason: Conceptual challenges for the decolonization of knowledge in global higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 27 (5), 678–694. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.172 9725 Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. Routledge. Tronto, J. (2010). Creating caring institutions: Politics, plurality, and purpose. Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/174 96535.2010.484259 Tronto, J. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York University Press. Vásquez Vedera, V. (2019). Care ethics in universities: Beyond an easy “add and stir” solution. Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 20, 83–101. https://doi.org/10.24908/encounters.v20i1.13417 Vickers, E. (2020). Critiquing coloniality, ‘epistemic violence’ and western hegemony in comparative education—The dangers of ahistoricism and positionality. Comparative Education, 56(2), 165–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03050068.2019.1665268 Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2016). Constructing the caring higher education teacher: A theoretical framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 65–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.11.013

CHAPTER 9

Imagining More Caring Universities

Introduction Everyone, including the university as an institution, is responsible for creating a safe, inclusive environment by providing the conditions under which care can flourish —Vásquez Vedera (2019, p. 98)

In this final chapter, we offer a provocation to consider what it might look like to co-imagine a more caring university. We return to our reading of the literature, ending the book on a hopeful note because while we know that the challenges are multiple and complex, we reject the idea that they are insurmountable. We again revisit Raewyn Connell’s (2019) powerful reminder that universities are ‘a shared social resource, a collective asset’ (p. 188), and we follow Sumison (2000), who imagines creating a university community that cares: … [and] in which students and university teachers alike support each other by creating relationships that honour the connections and the space we all need to more effectively continue to develop our capacities, insights and talents so that we might come closer to fully realising our personal and professional potential. (p. 174)

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We need to do this through resisting care vacuums that are caused by agendas that lean towards individualisation of responsibility, competition, and privatisation. Solidarity practices, such as collective bargaining, advocating for precariously employed colleagues, mentoring, acts of collegiality, and just ‘being kind’, can help us to unite to create visible, legitimate, and shared caring networks. Like Joan Tronto (2013), we imagine what it might mean to create the conditions required to: …live a care-filled life, a life in which one is well cared for by others when one needs it., cares well for oneself, and has room to provide for the caring that gives one’s life its particular meaning. (p. 170)

In this final chapter, we therefore revisit Tronto’s (2010) seven warning signs that institutions are not caring well and subvert these to propose a framework of eight signs of a more caring university. We probe these ideas by revisiting examples of un/dercare given by our participants, using a caring lens to recast them in terms of: . More equitable uptake of care responsibilities. . Greater sense of security and agency for all staff and students. . A whole-of-institution commitment to care. We then turn to consider the changes to the sector that may be necessary to bring about the circumstances in which ‘care can flourish’ (Vásquez Vedera, 2019, p. 98). In doing so, we return to the key questions posed in the book, exploring the purposes of care in higher education, considering definitions of the institution in discussions about care, and imagining possibilities for self-care as a collective value.

Reframing Tronto’s (2010) Seven Signs to Imagine More Caring Universities Before offering our suggestions for recasting Tronto’s (2010) seven signs of institutions that are not caring well, we revisit the original framework that we first discussed in detail in Chapter 5: 1. Misfortune necessitates/causes care, 2. Needs are taken for granted by the institution,

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3. Care is seen as a commodity, not a process, 4. Care-receivers are excluded from making decisions because of perceptions of vulnerability or incapacity to judge, 5. Care is reduced to caregiving, 6. Care givers see organisational requirements as barriers rather than facilitators, and 7. Care work is distributed along class, gender, and ethnicity lines. We suggest the following eight signs of a caring university, working from our engagement with the scholarly literature, and our dialogue with our participants’ insights and experiences: 1. Care is proactive, well-considered, and involves care for, about, and with. 2. Care is based on wide and careful consultation. 3. Care is valued, rewarded, and a purposive part of ‘core business’. 4. Care practices recognise all people and their diverse needs. 5. Care is relational and reciprocal. 6. Care is acknowledged and discussed collectively and with adequate space and time. 7. Care work is enacted equitably by all people regardless of particular identity markers. 8. People are not asked to care so much that they neglect self-care/use up all available time/energy. In what follows, we explore how each of these signs of a caring university might become manifest in institutional practices and values, as well as the necessary pre-conditions for them to take shape in higher education. Care Is Proactive, Well-Considered, and Involves Care for, About, and With Ensuring that care is an ongoing and expected characteristic of a university’s core operations, rather than merely a response to misfortune, requires institutional awareness of the many ‘everyday’ care needs and practices of staff and students that may otherwise go unnoticed except in the event of a crisis. This includes the various aspects of care that Tronto (1993, 2013) identifies, such as responsibility to care for others and self,

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attentiveness to caring about issues, actions, and causes that matter to members of the institution, and willingness to care with, in trust and in solidarity. Proactive care—in all these forms—requires genuine engagement beyond a focus on protecting the institution and reporting metrics regarding student and staff satisfaction, to generate open and honest discussions about what ongoing care might mean for different members of the university. Our participants describe this kind of proactive and comprehensive care as attention to individuals ‘as whole people’ (Gloria) and provide many examples of how such care may become manifest in university structures and operations. For instance, ongoing mentoring and career support for all staff and students, including those employed on sessional contracts, attention to facilitating stronger relationships between sessional and ongoing staff to help build collegial networks, and preventing the exploitation of precariously employed staff through excessive teaching, service, and care loads, are just some of the ideas our participants have offered. Of course, each of these enactments of care necessitates the allocation of resources, a point that our participants identify as one of the most significant impediments to proactive care, particularly given the economic constraints currently impacting universities. Yet, for many of our participants, perceived conflicts between resource allocation and the fulfilment of institutional commitment to staff and student care—and the issues they care about—remain pressing concerns. A chief example of this is evident in Ph.D. student Emma’s comment about reconciling the limited allocation of funding that is presently channelled towards more secure employment for sessional staff members with the significant institutional expenditure on physical infrastructure. Of course, we are not attempting to minimise or understate the complex financial management and forward planning required to keep universities financially afloat in the era of privatisation and minimal government support. Rather, we suggest that greater communication around issues of finance and institutional spending, coupled with stronger consultation about staff and student care needs and the issues that most impact their wellbeing, would enable increased dialogue between executive-level leaders and other members of the institution. This could open new spaces to consider the allocation of resources and everyone’s responsibility to care ‘for, about and with’ in proactive and meaningful ways. As Tronto (1993, pp. 136–137) asserts:

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Care as a practice involves more than simply good intentions. It requires a deep and thoughtful knowledge of the situation and of all the actors’ situations, needs and competencies. To use the care ethic requires a knowledge of the context of the care process… care rests upon judgements that extend far beyond personal awareness.

As we identified in Chapter 4, the contemporary shape of the sector— characterised by its linearity, its competing tempos, its competitiveness, and insecurity—offers little encouragement for the amplification of care and minimises opportunities for open and trusting dialogue between executive-level leadership and staff/students. Proactive engagement with care may be aided by what Waghid (2018) describes as ‘rhythmic caring’ which: …involves pushing forward, acting within the moment and decisively, yet simultaneously pulling back to restrain overzealous interventions or actions. This rhythmic push-and-pull effect allows caring to flow and be interrupted, and highlights the potential of caring, an indispensable human virtue, to counter antagonism and violence. (p. 387)

Maintaining a tempo of active provision of care punctuated by reflexive and whole of institutional evaluation/dialogue regarding whose needs are being met and whose interests are being served, may better facilitate proactive and flexible care practices. Such forms of care may also be better able to adapt to and with the rapidly changing landscape of the higher education sector. Care is Based on Wide and Careful Consultation Ensuring that the enactment of care is proactive, responsive, and effective also requires knowledge about the people who comprise the university. This necessitates wide and regular consultation to ensure understandings of care needs are not assumed or fixed and provide opportunities for individuals to choose who to connect with/how to represent and manage themselves in receiving care. We suggest that reflexivity, vulnerability, and active listening must underpin such consultation, with a desire to disrupt the current status quo in higher education and interrogate the assumptions and expectations that presently underpin policies and practices regarding care. This necessitates questioning the still-prevalent, yet long outdated, image of the traditional university student/staff member, to

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better acknowledge the lived diversity of individuals and their care responsibilities and preferences. Such transformation of institutional processes regarding care will require the involvement of multiple and diverse voices in all stages of needs analysis, planning, and implementation. Reflexive engagement with assumptions and expectations regarding care also requires actively rejecting entrenched ideas about all people being ‘care-free’, mobile, and having ample time and energy to dedicate to their studies and/or work (Lynch, 2010). Greater attention to family-friendly programs of learning and professional placement opportunities, availability of childcare, responsiveness to different temporal and spatial needs (Brooks, 2012; Moreau, 2016), and ways of harnessing online and hybrid delivery without sacrificing connection and sense of community (Stone & O’Shea, 2019) should follow. Consultation should drive mechanisms for implementing real change in response to feedback, as well as shaping and refining the structures intended to facilitate care. For instance, Sara’s example of the unintended burden of online platforms designed to help facilitate carers’ leave during times of personal crisis would not occur in a caring university—or would be modified in response to feedback to better accommodate staff needs. Acting on feedback to correct what might be perceived as ‘minor’ issues such as this will not only greatly assist staff to meet their care responsibilities but will build relational trust and a sense that staff and student concerns are important to institutional leaders. This would be an act of care in and of itself. Care Is Valued, Rewarded, and a Purposive Part of ‘Core Business’ A university that genuinely values care as an integral part of the work of the institution, would openly celebrate the practices that are so clearly essential to what might be considered the ‘human side’ of higher education. These include the many pastoral, academic, administrative, and collegial manifestations of care that respond to hardship or marginalisation, and that allow capable and dedicated students and staff to participate in higher education despite entrenched exclusions. A caring university would foreground these practices, recognising them in contracted duties and in secure employment and appointment/promotion frameworks that reward those who care. Importantly, in a caring university, such labour would never be expected to be undertaken entirely on the basis of goodwill or beyond staff role descriptions and remuneration.

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Such institutional valuing of care would also necessitate role modelling from senior leaders, and open dialogue about the importance of care to the ‘core business’ of the institution. Genuine engagement with care for the whole person necessitates a range of supports and for these services to be localised and individualised rather than treating solely as a commodity to be outsourced. Such investment in local care networks would allow for greater responsiveness and continuity in the provision of care—such as enabling sustainable relationships with counselling services and the involvement of people who have first-hand insights into staff and student needs. While economic pressures were seen by our participants as ‘eroding’ such capacity to care—such as Kate’s example of the doubling of class sizes while being expected to maintain the same level of care that is critical to the ‘student experience’—an institution that values such care would consider how to employ resources to support these practices rather than relying on staff to ‘do it anyway’ (Kate). This would require greater communication between those who do the work of caring (the ‘care footsoldiers’; Lynch, 2010) and those who make decisions about care (care managers). This also requires recognition that existing economic structures and funding models for higher education are creating critically uncaring conditions that require urgent attention from all stakeholders (including governments). Care Practices Recognise All People and Their Diverse Needs Closely linked to genuine consultation is the urgent requirement for universities to better recognise the diversity and fluidity of staff and student care needs and experiences across all aspects of engagement. The rejection of static and universal approaches to care is essential to the task of recognising this diversity of care needs, impacted as they are by health profile, language background, ethnicity, sociocultural status, sexual orientation and/or identity, gender, carer duties, and community responsibilities. An institution that invests in ongoing dialogue to better understand staff and student perspectives, needs, and values therefore would not adhere to outdated assumptions or maintain fixed and standardised models of care that are ineffectual, serve only some individuals, and/or are outright harmful and offensive. In such an institutional context, care would also be discussed as pertinent to all facets of the university (including professional staff, managers, researchers, and the university executive), not just restricted to teachers,

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case workers, and middle managers. Further, all students and staff would have agency to shape processes and policies that are in place to offer care. For instance, students might be engaged as partners in their own education and consulted about how best to support their learning needs in order to disrupt highly bureaucratised processes that often cast them as passive ‘end-users’ of support systems. Likewise, a way of countering Tim’s example of staff feeling unheard in the matter of how best to configure their workspaces mandates institutional leaders to consider diverse work practices and spatial/temporal requirements for the enactments of care across different roles, disciplines, and types of employment in the university. Such dialogue may facilitate greater relational integrity and trust, both essential components of care. Care is Relational and Reciprocal In contrast to neoliberal logics that position responsibility for wellbeing solely with the individual, a more caring approach to higher education would make space for care to be discussed and shared across networks of students and staff. Such a collective and relational understanding of care might also provide a context for greater attention to the importance of care-receiving, rather than exclusive focus on caregiving, and a shifting beyond duty of care ‘checks and balances’ to engagement with more holistic and reciprocal models. This would mean that, rather than Miles’ example of ‘tick box’ consultation, there is genuine valuing of staff and student views and ideas for collectively shaping a more caring institution and a true concern for the enactment of care in practice. Such a shift in institutional culture would also require direct engagement with the current stigma that surrounds many aspects of receiving care, including perceptions related to taking personal leave, a point raised by Tim when recounting his attempts to encourage a colleague to access this form of support during a time of significant hardship. In a university where the relational enactment of care is valued, taking leave during times of hardship would be seen as an essential act of care for self and for colleagues/students. Further, taking leave would not result in care vacuums or the increased workload that Sally and Eleanor describe, but would be supported by structures that focus on facilitating reciprocity and sharing care loads to enable genuine time away rather than producing an avalanche of need to be addressed on one’s return.

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Care is Acknowledged and Discussed Collectively and with Adequate Space and Time Adequate provision of time, material resources, status, and security would enable all staff and students to collectively discuss the enactment of care in higher education is also essential. The genuine exchange of ideas, judgements, and experiences relies on relationships that are built on foundations of trust and agency to care with (Tronto, 2013). These underpin the solidarity and support necessary to co-create an institution that better serves all. Such honest and democratic dialogue has the potential to enrich institutional understandings of care and how staff and students’ external commitments may shape the modes and temporal realities in which they can best engage in learning/work. This also mandates that care be afforded a greater presence in course curriculum and student/ staff orientation, progress reporting, and feedback materials to highlight its critical importance and better generate wider discussion of its many forms and complexities; however, we want to be clear that care does not start and end with teaching relationships. Of course, facilitating such space to acknowledge and discuss various forms of care/evaluate existing approaches necessitates more than surveying staff and students; it requires local, responsive, and tailored opportunities for consultation. Care Work is Enacted Equitably by All People Regardless of Particular Identity Markers In a caring university, there would be awareness of historically entrenched and unethical patterns of passing of care to women, people of colour, Indigenous people, people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and people employed on sessional contracts, and the active and explicit rejection of such exploitation. Enactments of care would be recognised as a key element of institutional membership for all staff and students, with mechanisms in place to identify and limit ‘care passes’ and ‘privileged irresponsibility’. Such mechanisms might include having a shared language for talking about caregiving and receiving and explicit attention to maintaining equitable distribution of these practices across various roles and layers of the institution. With greater valuing and sharing of care, the need to avoid this work in order to ‘get ahead’, such as Delia’s example of doctoral supervisors who deliberately reject ‘building relationships’ and opt not to supervise candidates from linguistically diverse backgrounds,

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would be countered by the explicit valuing of such practices. This would not only happen in institutional statements of equity and inclusion but also in workload and metrics that recognise that ‘timely completion’ of candidature is not the only measurement of supervisory success. Likewise, fairer uptake of care in higher education would respond to the issues presented in Xander’s observation of how female colleagues who are perceived to avoid care are both seen as atypical and as having advanced in their careers due to deliberate rejection of care responsibilities. If all people are charged with undertaking and receiving care, and these practices are visible and valued in institutional structures, everyone involved in higher education, including students, Vice Chancellors, professional staff, academics, and community members, will be involved in maintaining, repairing, and improving the contexts within which they work. Importantly, such work will not prevent career progression but rather would be seen as valued organisational citizenship behaviours to support purposeful, reflexive, sustainable, and plural/holistic forms of relational care. People Are not Asked to Care so Much that They Neglect Self-Care/Use up All Available Time/Energy We have added this eighth point to our proposed framework for envisaging a more caring university as a direct response to the current widespread occurrence of professional burnout in academia. While certainly not the only driver of staff exhaustion, increased care demands on some members of staff following the pandemic, coupled with a marked reduction in the resources available to engage in their ‘daily load’, let alone additional care, has created the conditions in which some people are shouldering critically unsustainable loads. Many colleagues have reached the point of using all their time and energy and precluding all but the most basic forms of self-care. In truly cruel irony, these staff are also punished for undertaking these unreasonable levels of care via disadvantage in appointment and promotion metrics that value outputs such as funding and publications over other forms of (relational, caring) labour. In a caring university, unreasonable burdens of caregiving that result in burnout would be cause for collective and concerted action, not seen as an ‘occupational hazard’, a rite of passage, or a badge of honour. In a caring university, all staff would have the security and agency to better balance self-care and external care responsibilities with the care required

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of them in their institutional role, and to contribute to collective conversations about how such employment-related responsibilities might be more evenly shared.

Returning to Some Key Questions Posed in the Book Having offered a framework of indicators for describing universities that are working towards becoming more caring, we now turn to consider three main questions raised in the first part of the book: how the ‘institution’ is defined in conversations about care, the purpose of higher education when thinking about care, and how self-care might be prioritised and ‘normalised’ as part of institutional culture. We return to these questions by way of focusing on the conditions necessary for care to be valued and considered ‘everyone’s business’ in higher education. What is the Institution When Talking About Care? Our exploration of the scholarly literature and our participants’ experiences has indicated that care—as a practice—is most often discussed as an individual undertaking in higher education, with the institution constructed as consisting of multiple individuals, some of whom (usually those employed in student-facing or middle management roles) have caring responsibilities. Conversations of care rarely explore the importance of executive-level leadership in modelling, valuing, and proactively planning for whole-of-institution enactment of care (albeit see Kathleen Lynch’s work, e.g., 2010). This image of the university and the location of care responsibility predominantly with the individual contrasts with other practices in higher education, which are more routinely cast as whole-of-institution endeavours that are led from the executive levels and expected to permeate throughout staff and student populations. For instance, institutional mission statements, strategic goals, and frameworks for performance review usually incorporate reference to qualities such as ‘leadership’ or ‘industry/community engagement’. To bring about the conditions where care is likewise foregrounded as an important institutional value, the ‘institution’ itself will need to include all staff and students, with every member having the responsibility and the right to care and be cared for in ways that are responsive, flexible, and diverse. Top-down modelling of care therefore needs to be present alongside

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bottom-up practices—with bi-directional flow—and with care afforded visibility and value in all role descriptions, aspirational statements, and practical structures for, ‘day to day’ operations such as workload. What is the Purpose of Higher Education, When Thinking About Care? Both the scholarly literature and our participants’ experiences have also highlighted the centrality of care to equitable access and engagement to higher education, both for students and for staff. True participation in higher education requires care for student knowledges, educational histories, linguistic repertoires, sociocultural perspectives, carer and community responsibilities, and career and life trajectories. Staff fulfilment, wellbeing, and success in higher education are likewise dependent on tailored support that acknowledges differential positioning in the academy due to sociocultural, ethnic, linguistic, and educational background. This tailored support is essential care work that sits at the heart of widening participation. This care should not be treated as additional to ‘recognised’ workload or disproportionally shouldered by selected members of staff to the point of burnout. Current failure to acknowledge and value these practices places universities in danger of what Ph.D. student Emma describes as an inherent contradiction between the institutional principles espoused in equity, diversity, and inclusion statements and the undervaluing of care across university structures. Genuine change to institutional structures and cultural practices to better value care in its many forms will require time, perseverance, and ongoing commitment via collective action, awareness, and resoluteness in the face of resistance. How Can We Prioritise Self-Care Without It Being Viewed as Selfishness or Privileged Irresponsibility? The need for care to be taken up as a whole-of-institution priority is perhaps most clearly seen in the case where self-care leads to unintended negative results. When an individual who has previously undertaken an unsustainable care load is no longer able to continue these practices, and there is no one else willing or able to take up some of the responsibility, the resulting ripple effect or care vacuum sees students and staff ‘fall through the cracks’. That the practice of self-care might have such unintended and harmful implications shows the urgent need for institutions to actively support more reasonable and shared caring responsibilities and to

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have explicit conversations about how such practices are to be allocated and maintained. Our addition of an eighth sign of a caring university is motivated by this desire to ensure that no one individual is so overtaxed with care that they become depleted of energy, space, and time to the detriment of themselves and those around them. We suggest that any discussion of self-care should involve the expansion of the hitherto limited engagement with the multiple forms of care that are required/practiced by staff within the institution. This task of identifying what care looks like in all its complexity, diversity, messiness, and fluidity, is an important first step towards a cultural shift in higher education where care is not only foregrounded in institutional mission statements in tangible (if not measurable) terms but is actively discussed and debated as key to the healthy management and ongoing operations of the university and staff, student, and wider community members’ responsibilities and rights. While recognising the impact of external care responsibilities is undoubtedly an important first step, and is essential to developing better and more equitable engagement with self-care for students and staff, these policies fall short of exploring the very real and unevenly distributed practices of care that threaten individual wellbeing.

Working Towards Greater Care in Higher Education Imagining the role of care in higher education—noting its uneven distribution, the gaps, and the unidirectional flows—as more purposeful, reflexive, and plural in how it is valued and enacted is as complex and challenging as the scholarly literature has led us to believe. We might be mindful of Nel Noddings’ evocative claim that ‘[t]he primary aim of every educational institution and of every educational effort must be the maintenance and enhancement of caring’ (1984, p. 172), but if it was easy, we would already be doing this. And let’s face it, most universities will argue that they are already giving care. However, as our analysis illustrates, care’s ephemeral nature means that the discussion of care ‘on paper’ does not necessarily translate to the kinds of care that students and staff want, nor ensure that the sector’s systems, structures, assumptions, and pockets of privileged irresponsibility will not impede these practices. We therefore need to probe the major barriers and consider how these might be mitigated in the short term (with a view to longer term dismantlement). Importantly, we offer these suggestions by way of provocation

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and as a means of offering a contribution to collective considerations, in no way suggesting that we have the necessary knowledge or representation to answer questions of such fundamental importance to all who are involved in higher education. One idea that has been advanced to conceptualise a caring ontology in higher education is the salutogenic focus on well-health, rather than ill-health as per a pathogenic view. Ian Kinchin’s (2022) work is particularly useful here; he argues that a salutogenic university should be based on local, contextually-dependent assemblages of care, with salutogenesis and pedagogic health as an antithesis to the neoliberal, audit culture that is currently dominant. Many of our participants recognised the need for such a salutogenic view of care in the academic domain. Indeed, a core argument throughout the book has been that resting on the goodwill and organisational citizenship behaviours of individuals cannot support purposeful, reflexive, sustainable, and plural/holistic forms of relational care in universities. To develop salutogenic (well-health focused) systems and structures, we argue that attention needs to be redirected towards three tacit but foundational dimensions of the cultural practices and politics of higher education: the affective, the temporal, and the reflexive. Considering the Affective Dimension: Acknowledging and Valuing Emotions Over and over, in our readings of the literature, our interactions with our participants, and our own experiences, the knotty connections between care and emotions have been profiled. There is a strong thread of dis-ease (aka, not salutogenic feeling) with the hostile and hypercompetitive shape of higher education. The literature is replete with scathing analyses of the ways that neoliberal thinking has ravaged universities, and while it might be comically described as ‘whackademia’ (Hil, 2012; McKay & Monk, 2017), it’s just not funny. Studying and/or working in higher education costs a LOT—not just in terms of money (but it is not cheap!), but also in the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears given by the student/worker and their families. This investment creates expectations, and they carry a heavy load of feelings, especially when they are not met. If universities fail to really, properly acknowledge the affective dimension of our engagements with higher education, they do a disservice to us all. Just as we all experience care, emotions (anger, frustration, disappointment; joy, desire, excitement) are a core part of the human condition. To numb or silence

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this part of ourselves is ridiculous, especially if dressed up in a guise of professionalism. It blocks the possibilities for visibilising and valuing care. Instead, we follow Askins and Blazek’s (2017) call for more ‘feeling the way’ when it comes to care: We want to envisage a politics of care grounded in embodied, emotional, and thoughtful perspectives, rendering emotions visible in process and relations. We want to hear and share more about the role of emotions in positive and inspiring examples that contest the dominant neoliberal framing of academia. (p. 1101)

Askins and Blazek argue that creating this ‘wider’ remit for care means that accountability will be shared beyond the small number of people compelled to care, extending to others invested in the project of caring with/academia, therefore ‘challeng[ing] the traditional enlightenment withdrawal from desire in academic working, and especially risk advancing the personal, aware of an academic communality ready to care’ (p. 1101). This chimes with how Zembylas et al. (2014) talk about the possibilities for critical reflection and reflexive insight if the consequences of privileged irresponsibility are explored, drawing on people’s emotional reactions ‘as points of departure for critical reflection and renewed action towards relational responsibility and attentiveness’ (p. 208). We recognise that this requires the tenets of radical care we describe in Chapter 7—political awareness, solidarity, willfulness to speak up, and trust to share and be vulnerable—while also acknowledging that differential power dynamics and varying degrees of security and forms of exclusion in higher education render these practices less viable for some individuals. Another important component of the affective dimension is the energy and range needed to continually bring oneself to the job. As we outlined in Chapter 6, there are significant costs to caring, not least the danger of burnout and compassion fatigue. There are, sadly, no silver bullets on how to protect and sustain ourselves when caring—making self-care, and the put-your-own-oxygen-mask-first adage, acutely (and perhaps primarily) important. However, there are ways of resisting the pull of despair when more is asked of us than we can give. For example, Raimondi (2019) argues the case for mitigating against compassion fatigue by focusing on ‘compassion satisfaction’; rather than suppressing feelings as part of emotional labour, he argues for a recasting of interactions in terms of the resources and experiences we are able to share and celebrate the fact that

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we were asked to care. While he acknowledges that this is rarely possible in the moment, with hindsight a great ally, he compellingly argues for this more positive framing as a way to build a protective mechanism. Considering the Temporal: Making Time for Collegial and Convivial Care As we have argued several times in this book, time is an extremely significant component of our capacity (as individuals, as institutions, as societies, and political systems) to care. As we outline in Chapter 4, the contradictory and hostile temporal dimension of higher education is a cause of great distress; the ‘projectification’ of academic time (Ylijoki, 2015) has corrupted our capacity to engage in what Barnett (2015) calls ‘convivial time’. We are pushed and pulled by the competing forces of slow bureaucratic (traditional) and hyper-fast competitive (contemporary) academic tempos (Vostal, 2013). No one has spare time; no one—it seems—is having fun. However, while economic drivers and individualistic discourses certainly have colonised academic timescapes, a counterhegemonic push has also developed against the economically centred tempo of higher education. In higher education, the antithesis of acceleration is the slow movement, which calls for ‘unhasty time’ (Vostal, 2013): a slowing of the pace and movement away from the busy work of quantifiable production to careful, quality production. For example, Wood et al.’s (2020) call for slowing down is a response to the tightness that time poverty creates: Navigating intersubjective and personal distress in research and teaching requires time. We need time: to reflect, to read, to learn, to write, to volunteer, to hang out, to do service work, to heal, and to channel experiences into avenues and relationships that are transformative and that expand the capacity of our work to create meaningful change…Yet, our need for time is hindered by the neoliberal university setting where financial support for service scholarship is virtually non-existent, a context that also discourages the development of care networks; fuels hit-and-run research; and emphasizes speed of completion and a prolific publication record over service and community engagement. (p. 433)

However, while few can argue against the need for change—let’s remember that in the competitive arena of higher education, only a few are ‘winning’—there are challenges to the radical change needed to slow

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down. A significant barrier is the valorisation of perpetual growth and movement, a hallmark of capitalism. Indeed, Vostal (2013) argues that the call for slow scholarship can be counter-productive if it is perceived as stasis. Additionally, this perception shift will require a mass revaluing of what ‘counts’ in academia and a dismantling of the current apparatus that measures, ranks, and reports on the craze for unfettered productivity. Telling (2019) cautions against zealous calls for slowing down, arguing: …workers at the university described cannot slow down their productivity rates, practise mindfulness, or any of the other suggestions made by the slow academia movement. Rather, it is that the working conditions at their university are simply different from those at other sorts of institution, and that such differences will affect not just a sense of temporal control, but actual temporal control. (p. 132)

However, while critique is of course important, the slow scholarship movement holds promise for imagining a more caring university. If taken up collectively and slowly, the slowness movement offers real radical possibilities for more caring and care-full engagement and work in higher education. Slowing down is absolutely fundamental to prioritising care in higher education; it is, according to Shahjahan (2015), ‘about focusing on building relationships, not about being fixed on products, but accepting and allowing for uncertainty and being at peace without knowing outcomes’ (p. 497). This ‘collegial and caring relational time’ (Ylijoki, 2015) is a radical recasting of how we work, study, and engage in higher education, highlighting the meaningfulness of what we do, and how we do this together. Many a large, competitively-funded project has ruptured—often in painful ways—because of the spiky dynamics that emerge from (a) not knowing each other well enough; and (b) not enough time to get to know each other. Without time (and space) to engage in convivial, collegial time, the very projects for which we competitively clamber to get funding fall apart. There is, therefore, a huge cost to not slowing down and taking time. Perhaps you are thinking ‘if it was this easy, we would just do it, yeah?’ We know that these are difficult things to do—illustrated for us in the long (!) gestation of this book: we just couldn’t make the time for this to be a priority, despite the very firmest of intentions (and thanks to our publishers for their enduring patience!). We understand that being slower requires ‘unlearning’ and is a privilege for securely employed

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(and, in a time of global financial and housing crises, housed) people. And yet we persist. We are inspired by Shahjahan’s (2015) strategies for ‘embodying laziness’: taking a ‘less is more approach’ rather than accumulating tasks/projects/responsibilities; carving out time for more reflection and contemplation; remembering how “focusing on our breath and our body helps ground us in the present and nurture focused attention, escaping the pitfalls of distraction or racing thoughts” (p. 496); refocusing our ideas about higher education away from ‘scarcity’ to abundance thinking. Shahjahan (2015) argues that by taking steps to slow down, we …disrupt a subjectivity that ties time with rationality or productivity, or, more importantly, with being civilized or modern. It is about inviting abundance thinking in the present and focus on our bodies now for its intrinsic value as a knowledge producer, rather than later, or for some other extrinsic value (p. 498)

These efforts to embrace a slower temporal rhythm, to take time for mindfulness, careful reflection, and conscious engagement with the present, can be made all the more possible and powerful via collective action. Through solidarity with like-minded colleagues, profound cultural shifts towards the normalisation of more caring uses of time are even more attainable. Considering the Reflexive: Acknowledging Vulnerability, Actively Listening The third, and perhaps most challenging, area that requires us to shift our priorities is that of our reflexive engagement and capacity to actively listen. This links to the decolonising project we discussed in Chapter 3: to resisting exclusionary ways of being-knowing-doing (western, imperial, linear, scientific), and moving towards the kinds of epistemic justice and plurality we discuss in Chapter 8. To disrupt, we need to first practice reflexivity by honestly addressing the relative privilege we have in the undercaring system we work or study in. Our reflexive engagement requires us to critically interrogate our own positions and privileges, so that we can (if we wish) extend beyond the intentional and relational and into the radical—to be able to name and resist what is exclusive and exploitative, we must first be able to recognise it. This takes us back

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to the body of work on discomfort and vulnerability in higher education (Behari-Leak et al., 2019; Mangione & Norton, 2023; Zembylas, 2017). As we have discussed throughout this book, caring requires us to be willing to be vulnerable, so that we can: displace our own motivations (Noddings, 1984); be willful and take risks (Ahmed, 2014); and ensure we ask nothing of our students that we wouldn’t ourselves feel comfortable doing (hooks, 1994). Being part of higher education, as a core site of the reproduction of such dis/advantage (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) demands we reflect on how we benefit: as beneficiaries of the prestige conferred from studying; as powerful gatekeepers as educators, as creators of research agendas, and as principal communicators of gathered stories. Those of us who are securely inside the academy should reflexively address the privilege this brings, necessitating us to mobilise our care and empathy, resist undercaring practices, and ideally make space to act. We need to start from an understanding that caring, like much—if not all—of our engagement in higher education is neutral. However, to engage reflexively, we must actively listen and question what we have heard. As Les Back (2007) reminds us, this is difficult, particularly for those whose ‘culture is one that speaks rather than listens’ (p. 7). This is perhaps even more difficult in institutional settings such as higher education because the politics of expression are tied up with (oftconflicting) epistemologies and values of the hierarchical and somewhat archaic academy. Active listening involves seeking out ‘voices’—moving beyond the tick-box consultation that Miles discusses in Chapter 5 towards more habitual, authentic engagement with colleagues, whether they are students, colleagues, or visitors. Julie McLeod (2011) encourages us to think about this not just in terms of ‘who is speaking?’ but also in terms of ‘what is heard?’ This, she argues, highlights the significance of listening, which aligns clearly with the arguments we have already extended about relational care, in that by carefully and actively listening and seeking feedback/input from others, we are concerned with maintaining, repairing, and continuing our worlds. In line with the disruptive agenda of the decolonising project, we need to also extend our reflexivity to question what we have heard— checking with others that our recollection is not overly informed by our own interests and/or agendas. As Julie McLeod powerfully reminds us, in discussion of how to engage with students ‘voices’, this requires a reframing so that it is understood as ‘a matter of listening, recognition

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and engaged dialogue’ (p. 187) which requires a response. To do this, we need to craft ‘safe and brave spaces’ (Behari-Leak et al., 2021) where we are vulnerable in our reflexivity, where we can listen and learn how to respect differences and the humanity of others (Waghid, 2018). These practices do not necessarily come naturally; they need to be nurtured, to be explicitly cultivated in ourselves and promoted in the environments in which we live and work. As Kinchin (2022) reminds us, community and dialogue are ‘health indicators of a salutogenic [read: caring] university’ (p. 9).

The Fundamental Importance of Solidarity for Change While cogent and impassioned arguments are necessary for agitating for change, greater provocation through other forms of advocacy, activism, and collective action are also required. Resting on scholarly works like this book and the literature we have drawn on to enact change will only ever have limited impact. Indeed, Miles is an expert in higher education, and his work has made many provocations for change. As a scholar in his field, he is extremely well-regarded. Talking about his work, Sally asked him whether he could send his publications to senior colleagues to shift attitudes and practices: Miles: I have done. I have sent papers, and I have delivered copies of books, of which they say, “Oh, thank you so much and I will definitely read that.” And then six months later they’ll say, “I haven’t read it. I will. I will read it. I haven’t read it yet, but I will read it.” And you think, “You won’t, will you? But thanks anyway.”

Dialogue and debate are obvious and much-needed pathways to greater understanding and change, as are attempts to diversity and elevate the voices of a range of stakeholders within higher education via participation in research. Yet, a key theme throughout our discussion in this book, is the need for these ideas to also gain traction across the entirety of the institution; to become ‘core business’ for all members of the community, and to respond to the current metrics-driven quantification of success. Indeed, any effort to promote the urgent need to better acknowledge and value the practice of care in higher education must also consider the political and financial contexts in which institutions currently function.

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Propositions for change will need to speak to economic imperatives—at least in part—and engage the various allies/levers that might be utilised to push for change. Of course, this also takes energy and time: resources that are in critically short supply. As hooks (1994) so evocatively articulates: To commit ourselves to the work of transforming the academy so that it will be a place where cultural diversity informs every aspect of our learning, we must embrace struggle and sacrifice. We cannot be easily discouraged. We cannot despair when there is conflict. Our solidarity must be affirmed by shared belief in spirit of intellectual openness that celebrates diversity, welcomes dissent, and rejoices in the collective dedication to truth. (p. 33)

Importantly, the fundamental premise of our discussion, is that this work should not and cannot be undertaken by any one individual or group; rather, the complex and diverse nature of care and the varied ways in which it is experienced across cultural, gendered, socioeconomic, geographic, and age-related positionalities render this a collective, ongoing, and ever-dynamic task.

Summary In this chapter, we have synthesised key themes from our review of the literature, our engagement with our participants’ experiences and perceptions, and our consideration of Tronto’s seven signs of institutions that are not caring well, to propose a framework for describing universities that are moving towards greater enactment of care. We offer this framework as a contribution to the collective consideration of care and in full recognition that we speak only from our own limited perspectives and experiences and make no claims to have the representation or expertise to present a model that reflects the needs and values of the diverse range of individuals who engage with higher education. We also acknowledge that the eight signs we have outlined are co-constitutive, overlapping, and, in many ways, raise more questions than answers. Chief among these ongoing points of consternation is how to direct adequate resources to the enactment of care within the current climate of austerity in higher education, and how to agitate for change most strategically and effectively when time and energy are in short supply. We have also explored the relevance of salutogenic approaches to considering care in higher education, focusing on the need to attend to the affective, the temporal, and the

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reflexive elements of institutional cultural and political practices. In this chapter, we draw our discussion to close, offering an overview of the key tenets of our analysis.

Conclusions Care, much like diversity, equity, and inclusion, is, on the surface, not something that we can easily dismiss. We understand that care is important—that we are all involved in care at many points in our lives; that caring and being cared for makes our lives infinitely better. However, we don’t really have good and well-established ways of talking about, defining, prioritising, and instantiating what ‘good care’ is, where it should exist, who should give and receive it, how we should pay for it, how it is valued, how it is sustained. We started this book by navigating the extant literature on care to seek a working definition for this book, landing on Fisher and Tronto’s (1990) definition of what we do to maintain, continue, and repair our worlds. We also included the ideas of intentionality and relationality, of trust, embodiment, and feelings, of an ethics of care, and of care as part of a moral education. We extended these ideas by considering more radical forms of care: Tronto’s (2013) notion of caring-with; Mariskind’s (2014) notion of caring-as-activism. We then turned our attention to care at the institutional level, specifically in the context of higher education where we have both studied and worked for many years. We again sought to define care against the backdrop of a neoliberal, hyper-competitive, market-oriented system of university business. We noted the literature that talked of education (specifically teaching) as a caring profession, although we also noted that this description is rarely used when talking about higher education. We used Joan Tronto’s (2010) seven signs that institutions are not caring well to ask whether universities are caring institutions; we argued that they are resoundingly undercaring—exhibiting some surface (tokenistic) signs of caring, but no deep commitment to maintaining, continuing, or repairing our academic worlds, and little evidence of engaging in caringwith. The consequences of the individualisation and invisibility of care in higher education mean that care has been an undervalued and takenfor-granted component of the experience of being in higher education, leading to attrition, burnout, and an endemic sense of discontent.

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In the final chapters of our discussion, we considered possibilities for more caring universities, asking questions about the institutional practices and cultural understandings that would need to shift to facilitate more pro-active, power-conscious, and diverse forms of caring for, about, and with (Tronto, 2013). We also discussed the type of honest and open dialogue that might bring about greater awareness and understanding of the importance of care in higher education—in its many forms—amid the turbulence and uncertainties that characterise the contemporary sector. To end, we returned to the fundamental importance of solidarity and of collective action; both of which represent acts of care with the potential to not only maintain and repair but also transform higher education to better care for all students and staff.

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Index

A Academic work, 4, 94, 95, 97, 106, 108, 110, 141, 166, 182, 269 Acker, Sandra, 26, 141, 156 Adam, Barbara, 46–49, 109, 111 Ahmed, Sara, 199, 202–204, 217, 223 Askins, Kye, 11, 174, 203, 212, 221, 269 Axiological care, 59

B Ball, Stephen, 169, 205 Barnacle, Robyn, 63, 64, 66, 87, 222, 236 Being and becoming, 63 Berlant, Lauren, 107, 114 Bhopal, Kalwant, 101–103 Blackmore, Jill, 86, 89, 114, 187 Bosanquet, Agnes, 3, 175 Burnout, 7, 40, 41, 139, 146, 148, 165, 168, 177, 178, 180, 183, 192, 264, 269

C Care care ethics, 27–29, 49, 198 care footsoldiers, 261 caregiving, 22, 31, 51, 53, 84, 85, 149, 160, 177, 198, 220, 262–264 care managers, 261 care-receiving, 22, 31, 149, 262 care vacuums, 165, 176, 178, 191, 192, 218, 243, 256, 262, 266 caring about, 3, 6, 26, 31, 37, 50, 63, 67, 222, 237, 258 caring for, 31, 37, 38, 50, 63, 65, 108, 135, 236 caring professions, 8, 51, 165–167, 191, 245 caring with, 31, 33, 34, 204, 208, 211, 269 Carer, 10, 40, 45, 46, 49, 50, 100, 137, 140, 184, 209, 250, 266 staff-carers, 141 student-carers, 138

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Baker and R. Burke, Questioning Care in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41829-7

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INDEX

Casualisation, 8, 34, 86, 99, 112, 200, 204, 239 Compassion fatigue, 165, 167, 176–178, 183, 192, 269 compassion satisfaction, 269 Competition, 34, 81, 83–85, 87, 89, 91, 94–97, 114, 116, 168, 186, 187, 191, 222, 233, 238, 256 Compulsion, to care, 170, 171, 182, 198 Connell, Raewyn, 71, 81–83, 87, 88, 98, 107, 143, 233, 255 Conscientisation, 199, 213, 223 COVID, 7–9, 11, 13, 25, 31, 35, 61, 81, 105, 113–116, 132, 135–137, 140, 144, 154, 177, 178, 187, 190, 197, 202, 219, 223 Cruel optimism, 107, 114 D Dall’Alba, Gloria, 63, 64, 66, 87, 222, 236 Decolonisation, 68–70 Detached care, 175, 176 Discretionary effort, 51, 168 Dispositions, caring, 100, 165, 170–174, 211, 218 E Embodied care, 52, 158, 174 Emotions emotional components of care, 40 emotional labour, 39, 40, 59, 104, 112, 145, 167, 169, 177, 212, 269 Empathy, 1, 5, 32, 62, 75, 131, 132, 170, 183, 209, 273 Engaged pedagogy, 74, 167 Epistemic care, 65, 67, 70–72, 74, 234

Equity, 9, 10, 84–86, 90–93, 108, 148, 154, 190, 222, 246, 250, 264, 276 equitable access and participation, 266 Ethics of care, 13, 27–29, 31–33, 36, 37, 49, 91, 208, 237, 241, 244, 276 Etieyibo, Edwin, 64, 132

F Feminism, 3, 13, 24, 26, 28, 30, 35, 39, 65, 99, 154, 155, 157, 158, 234 Fisher, Bernice, 25, 34, 38, 40, 50, 51, 53, 61, 186, 238, 276 Foucault, Michel, 32, 33, 213, 215, 217, 223 Freire, Paolo, 213, 223

G Gender, 4, 24–26, 30, 31, 45, 95, 96, 99, 103, 104, 134, 139, 153, 155, 211, 250, 257, 261 Gilligan, Carol, 22, 24, 30, 39, 52

H Heidegger, Martin, 36, 47, 63 Held, Virginia, 27–29, 33, 165, 170, 184 Hoagland, Sarah, 28, 38 Hochschild, Arlie, 39, 40, 44, 45, 153, 154, 177, 211 hooks, bell, 74, 167, 210, 220, 245, 275 Hope, 7–11, 14, 92, 106, 107, 171, 202, 216, 222, 223, 231, 239, 251, 255

INDEX

I Institutional care, 6, 50, 52, 149, 152, 232, 236 K Kindness, 1, 5, 21, 30, 60, 62, 64, 159, 170, 171, 203, 220, 221, 240, 245, 249 Kittay, Eve, 22, 23 Knowing-as-care, 65, 76 Knowing, care-as, 65, 68, 72 L Listening, 32, 36, 172, 259, 273 Lynch, Kathleen, 86, 87, 99, 100, 141, 142, 154, 155, 157, 212 M Mariskind, Clare, 26, 53, 87, 157, 198, 199, 202, 213, 222, 276 Marketisation, 13, 81, 89, 116 McLeod, Julie, 239, 273 N Neoliberalism, 34, 44, 83, 85, 89, 92, 99, 142, 160 Noddings, Nel, 5, 11, 24–30, 36–40, 42, 43, 49, 50, 52, 63, 67, 73, 132, 156, 171, 175, 176, 198, 209, 267 O Ontological care, 62 Organisational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB), 51, 52, 93, 165, 168, 202, 264, 268 P Parrhesia, 33, 213, 215, 223

283

Paternalism, 149, 165, 175, 183–185, 232 Pedagogical care, 26, 157 Plurality, of care, 42, 71, 232, 246, 247, 251 Political economy, of care, 175 Power, and care, 5, 6, 14, 22, 23, 30, 32–34, 44, 48, 51, 52, 75, 90, 134, 155, 215, 231, 232, 240–243, 277 Precarity, 35, 94, 107, 112, 114, 115, 145–147, 200, 203, 243 Privileged irresponsibility, 31, 41, 45, 48, 154, 165, 175, 187, 191, 237, 241, 263, 267, 269 Purpose, of care, 6, 23, 52, 134, 136, 231–233, 235, 237, 256, 268 R Radical radical care, 12, 199, 269 radical solidarity, 203 Reflexivity, 63, 66, 221, 241, 259, 273, 274 Relational care, 26, 53, 158, 175, 264, 268, 273 S Self-care, 22, 40, 41, 142, 149, 199, 216–219, 223, 256, 264, 266, 269 as warfare, 217 Seven signs institutions are not caring well, 14, 131, 133, 134, 160, 223, 256, 275, 276 Sharing, 10, 11, 45, 61, 67, 95, 155, 157, 199, 209, 211, 212, 237, 239, 262, 263 Solidarity, 14, 31, 33, 62, 153, 189, 192, 199, 202–204, 206, 208, 211, 212, 223, 239, 245, 246,

284

INDEX

256, 258, 263, 269, 272, 274, 275, 277 Student-facing staff, 246 Sumison, Jennifer, 155, 255 T Teaching, 3–5, 26, 27, 39, 51, 53, 59, 61, 63, 69, 97, 114, 135, 145, 147–149, 151, 155–158, 166, 167, 174, 198, 224, 237 Time temporality, 45–47, 49, 109, 110 timescapes, 14, 36, 46–49, 64, 81, 91, 99, 108–110, 112, 116, 270 Tronto, Joan, 6, 12, 14, 21–23, 25, 29–34, 38, 40–46, 48–53, 61, 131–133, 139, 142, 151–154, 160, 165, 170, 175, 183, 186, 204, 208, 222, 224, 231, 235, 236, 238, 240, 246, 256, 276 Trust, 31, 33–35, 38, 153, 208, 236, 244, 258, 276 U Uncaring, 2, 52, 85, 94, 112, 115, 134, 137, 145, 155, 197, 203, 223, 241, 261

Undercare, 3, 9, 13, 176, 180, 191, 192, 218, 222, 231, 234

V Values, 46, 60, 73–76, 87, 89, 97, 99, 138, 160, 211, 236, 245, 247, 251, 257, 260, 261, 273, 275 Vásquez Vedera, Victoria, 132, 232, 238, 244 Vocational responsibility, 165 Vulnerability, 2, 11, 52, 99, 114, 134, 209–212, 257, 259, 273

W Waghid, Yusef, 62, 64, 259 Walker-Gleaves, Caroline, 166, 171, 173, 203, 213 Widening participation, 84, 90–93, 138, 236, 247, 251, 266 Willfulness, 199, 203, 204, 223, 269 Wood, Lydia, 12, 155, 197, 220, 270

Z Zembylas, Michalinos, 63, 75, 221, 269