Introduction

The pressures of neoliberalism on higher education are abundantly clear (Heller, 2016); manifest in the demands not only for outputs, but outputs that are quantifiably valuable, and are increasingly reliant upon precarious forms of work (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Lynch, 2006; Zawadski and Jensen, 2020). Max Weber's (1917) characterization of the American academic as being ‘as precarious as that of any “quasi-proletarian”’ is as relevant, if not more relevant, in 2020 as it was a century ago, and is now applicable to many academic systems outside of the United States. The purpose of this chapter is to consider the university of the [not-too-distant] future. It is an institution marked by the neo-villeiny of staff. Commercial contracts rather than traditional employment contracts are the norm for faculty. Remuneration therein is wholly contingent on satisfactory research output and customer (read student under other circumstances) satisfaction. Under such conditions, and as with the neo-villeins of the fitness industry (Harvey et al, 2017), control of workers is no longer necessary. This is not because of a work environment that inspires organizational commitment and greater levels of effort from staff that perceive some emotional or normative obligation to give more of themselves. Rather, it is one wherein entrepreneurial zeal resolves the indeterminacy of labour power problems (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997).

In this chapter, we begin with a brief summary of the concept of neo-villeiny: highly precarious work that is marked by an absence of a guaranteed wage, payment of rent, bondage to the organization, and extensive work-for-labour (Harvey et al, 2017). Applying the concept to the contemporary higher education sector we observe aspects of neo-villeiny such as the rents paid by academic staff currently ranging from the mundane – for example, car parking – to the more abstract, for example, in the UK where academic outputs (namely academic papers and impact case studies) generate lucrative government funding for ‘their’ institution. Whereas academics aren't bonded to any single university, their occupational identity is predicated upon association with a seat of learning. One might continue to research and write outside of higher education but just as the fitness industry neo-villeins lose access to the resources available in the gym so too does the academic lose access to the most recent scholarship that exists behind a paywall.