An Analysis of a Rupture Point in the Discourse of Taiwanese
“New Higher Education”
“If one remains unperturbed that his greatness is not recognized in his time, is he not a sage?” (Confucius, The Analects: Chapter 1)
INTRODUCTION
Like many other Higher Education (HE) sectors around the world (see, for example, Deem & Brehony, 2005; Dominelli & Hoogvelt, 1996; Hayes & Wynyard, 2002;
Jary & Parker, 1998; Leung, 2007; Nkomo, 2009; Strathern, 2000), Taiwanese HE has been going through a dramatic transformation. A massive expansion in the number of Taiwanese higher education institutions (whereby the sector has grown from 28 to 162 institutions between 1985 and 2012) has been interlaced with a series of regulatory and institutional changes, culminating in the formation, in 2005, of the Foundation for Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT). With the establishment of HEEACT as the sole body responsible for the conduct of the evaluation of Taiwanese HE institutions and through the PDFURC program, universities in Taiwan are increasingly subjected to the rationality of the series of interconnected discourses and practices that, in the West, have become known as “the new higher education” (NHE) (Jary & Parker, 1998).
In this chapter, we approach the Taiwanese 3-I syndrome as a local embodiment of the NHE-driven “publish or perish” academic culture that is engulfing the global academia. We start the chapter by situating the Taiwanese 3-I syndrome in this global context and raising the question of the potential consequences of its trajectory. We then begin to examine this trajectory in more detail by tracing some of the interrelated discourses and practices that constitute the NHE formation. In particular, we look at aspects of the academic publishing game through which the
‘publish or perish’ discourse comes to dominate academic practice, as well as the points of rupture in this discourse that enable resisting discourses and practices to take root. By comparing the discursive field of the Taiwanese HE to its Western equivalent, we ask whether the existence of strong alternative discourses in Taiwan – such as those springing up around the person of Confucius as an academic role model in the Taiwanese HE sector – can act as an additional inventory of resistance that is lacking in the West but that can stop NHE becoming totalizing in Taiwan
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(and, potentially, East Asia). To this end, we focus on the analysis of a particular protest incident as a rupture point in the discourses of the Taiwanese NHE. This particular incident has acted as a catalyst for the subsequent media and public portrayal of the main protester as an embodiment of a modern-day Confucius-like ideal type of an educator perishing in the context of current HE reforms. We examine the aftermath of the protest and its effects by looking at the media reports and interview data collected from two Taiwanese publishing game players. From this analysis, we suggest that this particular version of symbolic Confucius is too weak to resist the 3-I phenomenon, but that this should not preclude the possibility of stronger versions becoming constructed, perhaps through an internationalization of resistance. In the sections below, we establish a relationship between the Taiwanese 3-I phenomenon and NHE before proceeding to our empirical analysis and finishing with conclusions.
SYNDROME OR SYMPTOM? 3-I AND THE TAIWANESE
“NEW HIGHER EDUCATION”
The emergence and entrenchment of the Taiwanese and East Asian 3-I Syndrome is the central tenet of this volume. The 3-I Syndrome refers to a maniac pursuit of academic publications in the SCI, SSCI and AHCI journals resulting in the academic culture of “publish or perish.” We postulate that the narrow focus on the measurement of academic performance through the proxy of 3-I publications is better understood as a symptom of something bigger – in particular, of the rapidly globalising chain of interconnected discourses and practices that has become known as the “new higher education” (NHE) (Jary & Parker, 1998). As the application of the rationalities of
“new managerialism” and “new public management” to the HE sphere, NHE is an embodiment of the neo-liberal governmentality (Foucault, 1991) that over the last decades has been transcending political divisions and national boundaries (Deem &
Brehony, 2005; Shore & Wright, 2000a; Strathern, 2000).
NHE is driven by the neo-liberal belief in the power of (quasi-)market mechanisms to regulate performance in HE and has become associated with the ‘audit explosion’
of academic performance measurement and management (Shore & Robert, 1995;
Strathern, 2000; Willmott, 2003). According to Shore and Wright (2000b: 61), the evidence for these developments can be seen, firstly, in “the emergence of new discourses” and the “semantic clusters” from which they are constituted – in particular, the new managerialist vocabularies of “performance”, “excellence”,
“quality”, “productivity”, “efficiency”, “competitiveness”, etc. Secondly, it can be seen in the emergence of “new kinds of practices associated with these discourses, and the new institutions, norms, and areas of expertise that they hail into existence, and through which they are implemented”. Thirdly, it can be seen in “the effect of these norms and practices – embedded in mundane routines and duties – on conditions of work and thought and… on the way in which individuals construct themselves as professional subjects” (ibid.).
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Our argument is that the coming of the Taiwanese NHE can be witnessed in terms of all of the three aspects, which makes it an increasingly totalizing phenomenon. In terms of the emergence of new managerialist discourses and semantic clusters, the series of regulatory reforms, including the enactment of the revised Higher Education Law (大學法) in 1994 and the publication of the Whitepaper of Higher Education Policy in 2001, have progressively introduced into the Taiwanese HE sphere the new managerialist rhetoric of international competitiveness, research excellence, quality and productivity. The regulatory reforms have brought into existence specific organisational arrangements and particular “institutions, norms and areas of expertise” through which they are being implemented. In 2005, HEEACT was established as a means of entrenching the reforms and the US$1.56 billion PDFURC program was launched as its key instrument of academic performance measurement and management. PDRURC has visibly mimicked Western academic research evaluation exercises such as the British Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), now Research Excellence Framework (REF). Like RAE/REF, PDRURC has adopted a 5-year evaluation period and smelted together research excellence and the production of tangible outputs by making the allocation of funding conditional upon the delivery of quantities of publications – ideally, articles in prestigious, international journals (cf. Willmott 2003). Similarly to UK and the RAE/REF, one of the noticeable effects of PDRURC has been the spread of the “publish or perish” culture in the Taiwanese HE. In Taiwan, the “publish or perish” phenomenon has translated into the 3-I Syndrome that is the object of this book. This is subtly different from many Western countries, where the rules of the “publish or perish” imperative have become even more specified – i.e. it is no longer enough to publish just in the 3-I journals, but in journals that achieve particular impact factors in those indices (e.g. more than 1 or more than 2), and/or in journals that appear in particular journal lists and achieve particular scores in subject-specific journal rankings (e.g. a 3 or a 4 rating the British Association of Business School list). As Taiwan is a relatively late adopter of the NHE bundle of discourses and practices1, it is likely that its version of “publish or perish” is still rapidly evolving, and it is possible that a more specified version of the 3-I Syndrome is yet to emerge in a bid to mirror the earlier adopters.
Whether or not this will happen, it is imperative to look closely at the discourses and the practices that constitute the 3-I Syndrome, as well as to question the trajectory of its possible effects on “conditions of work and thought and… on the way in which individuals construct themselves as professional subjects” (Shore & Wright 2000b, p. 61). This needs to be set in the context of the global debates about detrimental effects of the dominance of citation indices, journal rankings and impact factors on academic work, identity and knowledge (see, for example, Harley & Lee, 1997;
Leung, 2007; Macdonald & Kam, 2007; Nkomo, 2009; Seglen, 1997; Willmott, 2011).
The growing marginalisation of teaching vis-à-vis research, of non-Anglophone countries, of softer, qualitative subjects and research approaches, the onset of short-termism, the demise of collegiality and blue-sky thinking, the widening gap between elite and non-elite HE institutions, and the commodification, commercialisation and
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McDonaldization of academia have been just some of the effects raised in these debates. Unsurprisingly, in the light of this long list, another key debate has emerged over the extent to which the coming of the NHE and its effects should and can be resisted (e.g. Parker & Jary, 1995; Prichard & Willmott, 1997; Trowler, 2001). Given how widespread the academic journal publishing gamesmanship is as an institution, a norm and an area of academic expertise (Macdonald & Kam, 2007), it is reasonable to say that resistance to NHE and its effects, in the Anglophone world at least, have not to date been particularly effective.
One of the questions that this raises in relation to the Taiwanese 3-I Syndrome in particular is whether there is anything sufficiently distinctive and powerful about the chains of interconnected discourses and practices constituting HE in Taiwan that could act as a resource for more effective resistance to NHE than what can be found in the West. In particular, we posit that the set of discourses and practices centered on the person of Confucius, given his cultural influence on Taiwanese education and way of life, is a prime candidate for acting as such a resource. In the next section, we examine the potential strength of this resource by looking at a particular
‘rupture point’ in the discourses of Taiwanese NHE that involved heavy reliance on Confucius as a source of resistance. We examine the media reports in the aftermath of a Teacher’s Day protest incident that have brought NHE and Confucius into a direct confrontation, and also draw on interviews with 2 academic publishing game players as a postscript to the protest incident. We outline some of the features of the Taiwanese 3-I publishing game and draw the somewhat pessimistic vision of the perishing Confucius in Taiwanese NHE.
PERISHING CONFUCIUS: THE GAME AND THE RUPTURE POINT
We now turn to Confucius as the pivotal symbolic figure in our empirical exploration of resistance to the NHE-induced intensification of the Taiwanese “publish or perish” game. The historical person of Confucius has, in many ways, long become inextricably linked to Confucianism – a highly sophisticated ethical and philosophical system of doctrines and beliefs that has evolved out of the teaching of Confucius and has contributed to the shaping of societal and educational values in many East Asian countries, including Taiwan. With its core in humanism (Juergensmeyer, 2005), Confucianism highlights the malleable nature of human beings, who are basically educable and teachable. However, it is the historical person of Confucius as a great role model of a teacher and educator that is central to the resistance incident that we examine here.
Confucius (September 28, 551BC - 479BC) is widely considered as the very first teacher in Chinese history (Fung, 1976). Throughout Confucius’s lifetime, apart from serving briefly in the area of politics, Confucius dedicated himself continually to educating/teaching his students. That was the pursuit in which he excelled to the point of earning himself the timeless title of “the Teacher Master and Ultimate Sage” (至聖先師). His educational philosophy of instructing all and rejecting none
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(有教無類)2 was exemplified through his teaching over three thousand students regardless of their social class. Confucius as the Teacher Master is acclaimed over the course of history, surviving into the era of modernity. The ongoing relevance of Confucius to contemporary East Asian educational identity is evident, for example, in the establishment of Confucius Institute (孔子學院) in 20043 and the nationwide celebration of the Teacher’s Day on Confucius birthday in Taiwan. The cultural power of Confucius as educators’ role model is reflected in the historically ingrained norm of the primacy of teaching, instructing and enlightening students throughout Taiwanese educational institutions, regardless of the level of education with which the institution is concerned, or the particular role focus of the academic professional.
However, the coming of NHE as the dominant discourse, with the associated prioritization of research and the emphasis on 3-I outputs as part of annual academic performance appraisals, promotion criteria and the HEEACT funding regime, raise the question of what is currently happening to the traditional Confucian, educative values in Taiwanese HE.
THE TEACHER’S DAY PROTEST, THE MEDIA REPORTS AND THE AFTERMATH The Teacher’s Day celebration ceremony in Taiwan is normally the occasion for celebrating the success of the recipients of Outstanding Teaching Awards (OTA) to thank them for their excellence in teaching. Teacher’s Day is rich in Confucian symbolism, as it falls on September 28 annually to celebrate the birth of Confucius.
On Teacher’s Day, across Taiwan, virtually all educational institutions from primary schools to those in higher education hold similar festive activities, of which the awarding of OTAs is normally the highlight. However, at a collegiate ceremony of celebrating annual Teacher’s Day in 2010, Professor Guo – an academic in the Politics Department at the National Chengchi University (NCCU) – caused a scene and caught media’s attention by wearing a vest inscribed with “Contract not renewed” on one side and “Outstanding teacher” on the other to protest against the enforced end to his academic career despite his teaching excellence as recognized by an OTA award from his university. The protest incident gained wide media coverage the following day. In the public outcry that ensued, Professor Guo came to be represented as a kind of modern-day Confucius fi gure, ousted by current reforms of the Taiwanese HE. His forced early retirement as an educator who had chosen to concentrate on teaching and persistently resisted the publishing and the associated performance management games (Professor Guo had refused to be evaluated for 18 years prior to his Teaching Day protest) became treated by the public and the media as symbolic of the growing marginalization of teaching and the demise of its historical signifi cance in Taiwan vis-à-vis research and the production of publications. Various media outlets ran very similar stories on the protest, so here we turn for illustration to the journalistic reports of one particular national newspaper.
The United Daily News ran a complete coverage of the incident as well as raising several related issues in follow-up reports. It ran news reports on the protest immediately after the incident and followed with three more news reports including one special report to highlight what was at stake in the protest incident. The reports
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told the story of the incident, situated it in its immediate context and placed it in a wider context, i.e. the practice of academic evaluation and promotion in higher education. They included views from the offi cials of the MOE, and the university’s Students’ Association and Teachers’ Association. From the amount of coverage, as well as the tone and the contents of the follow-up and special reports, it was obvious that the media was supportive of the protest incident and critical of the university and the underlying issues.
In the immediate aftermath, the protest has gathered much momentum by attracting the following: (1) concurrent support for Professor Guo at the Teacher’s Day celebration ceremony by some of the ceremony participants, (2) unanimous support from Students’ Association of the university voiced by the president of the association, (3) fi ve weekly public forums hosted by the Teachers’ Association of the university largely induced by the protest incident and (4) the broad support of media as noted above. The snowballing support represented various-dimensional discourses of local resistance to the marginalization of teaching vis-à-vis research.
This was epitomized, in particular, in a key question that reverberated throughout the resistance network following a headline that had asked whether Confucius himself would survive in the present-day academia (Wang, 2010). Wang’s special report article (ibid), published two days after the protest incident, questioned whether anyone who, like Professor Guo, chose to focus on teaching at the cost of research and publications could avoid suffering the same fate and what this implied for the future of education in Taiwan. The special report proceeded to claim:
“大學評鑑制度重研究、輕教學，曾讓大學老師感嘆，如果孔子接受教師評鑑，
恐怕也是不及格。”
(“That the evaluation system of universities/colleges placed its focus on doing research and thus not valuing teaching has made university teachers lament that if Confucius received annual evaluation, he would probably not have made it through the evaluation.”)
This sentiment was echoed throughout the protest support network. After the incident, the president of the Students Association voiced his views on the association’s web pages and asked: why cannot an excellent teacher be allowed to stay in his teaching post? After all, a large proportion of the population in an academic and educational institution was constituted by students. Writing about how he felt about the course of Chinese Ancient Philosophy instructed by Professor Guo, the SA president concluded:
“這樣好的老師不能被續聘，我無論如何是無法接受的，我感覺到我的 受教權被剝奪。”
(“As for such a good teacher whose work contract was not renewed, I absolutely cannot accept the result. I have felt that my right to education has been withdrawn.”)
In the course of Chinese Ancient Philosophy, Confucius and his teaching would occupy a prominent place. The performance appraisal failure of Professor Guo, a
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teacher of Confucius’s philosophy and recipient of an Outstanding Teaching Award was thus at once highly ironic and highly symbolic.
Formally, the protest incident and the public outcry have failed to change anything.
A Politics professor had dedicated decades of his life to the education of his students and to the resistance to the growing marginalization of teaching and the increasingly publication-skewered mind-set (Giacalone, 2009) of NHE-induced obsession with academic performance measurement. His resistance culminated in the Teacher’s Day protest, but, despite the support of the media, the Students’ Association and the Teacher’s Association, his career ended prematurely. The university responded to the public outcry simply with a statement, saying that every faculty member should abide by the regulations and accept the criteria of the annual performance review.
Officials from the MOE stated that they respected the university’s decision, which was within the University Law. If Professor Guo were indeed taken to represent a modern-day Confucius-like figure of a great educator and to stand for the importance of HE teaching as a worthy academic pursuit in its own right (as opposed to an
Officials from the MOE stated that they respected the university’s decision, which was within the University Law. If Professor Guo were indeed taken to represent a modern-day Confucius-like figure of a great educator and to stand for the importance of HE teaching as a worthy academic pursuit in its own right (as opposed to an