1. Cownie, F Legal Academics. Culture and Identities (Oxford: Hart, 2004).Google Scholar

2. The literature on the relationship between research and teaching is vast. For a recent summary of the issues and a bibliography, see Barnett, R (ed) Reshaping the University. New Relationships between Research, Scholarship and Teaching (Maidenhead: SRHE and Open University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

3. Collier, R The changing university and the (legal) academic career – rethinking the relationship between women, men and the “private life” of the law school’ (2002) 22 LS 1 at 21Google Scholar (original emphasis).

4. See, eg, Trow, M. The public and private lives of higher education’ (1975) 104 Daedalus 113 Google Scholar; ; ;

5. Harris, P. and Beinat, S A survey of law schools in the United Kingdom, 2004’ (2005) 39 The Law Teacher 299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ;

6. Sabbaticals are usually awarded by law schools to individual recipients and thus the research to be conducted is likely to be conducted by the lone academic. On the other hand, of course, in some instances he or she may be temporarily joining a team from another institution and thus work collectively. Further research is needed to investigate the extent of this.

7. See also M Kogan ‘Teaching and research: some framework issues’ (2004) 16 Higher Education Management and Policy 9. Kogan points out (at 10) that of the approximately 105,000 full-time teachers in higher education institutions, only 43% were entered for the Research Academic Exercise in 2001. It is interesting to question how far staff became eligible for entry, thus enhancing their career prospects, as a result of previously allocated research time allowances rather than because of intrinsic differences between them in research capability.

8. See, eg, Hinde, J. Are sabbaticals being phased out? The Times Higher Education Supplement 14 July 2000Google Scholar. Hinde observed that most ‘old’ universities include provision for sabbaticals in their regulations with guidelines on who can apply and how often, and others have informal arrangements at the discretion of heads of departments. On the other hand, she reported, the new universities for the most part did not enjoy this generosity. She quoted the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) research officer Liz Allen regretting that in the former polytechnics winning a sabbatical is often ‘an impossible dream’. The implication is thus that they are desirable but unattainable. Allen commented: ‘There is no history of sabbaticals, nor often the resources for them. While some new universities may be sympathetic to the idea of sabbaticals, I don’t know of anywhere there is a formal entitlement. There is a huge difference between the two halves of the sector. Our members are struggling to fit in research. The notion of having a whole term to do research would be a luxury’. Even in the older universities, according to Hinde, if outside funding was not secured, it was getting harder to be awarded a sabbatical (NATFHE and the Association of University Teachers (AUT) amalgamated in 2006 to form the University and College Union (UCU)).

9. For an amusing account see Caesar, T. Flying high and flying low: travel, sabbaticals and privilege in academic life’ (1999) 33 Style 443 Google Scholar. She quotes David Lodge’s Morris Zapp reflecting on the joys of the academic life: ‘Of course, you had to be distinguished – by, for instance, having applied successfully for other, similar handouts, grants, fellowships and so on, in the past. That was the beauty of academic life, as Morris saw it. To them that had, more would be given… In theory, it was possible to wind up being full professor while doing nothing except be permanently absent on some kind of sabbatical grant or fellowship. Morris hadn’t quite reached that omega point, but he was working on it’:

10. Gerdes, E Remembering the contemplative life’ (1998) 84 Liberal Education 58 at 58Google Scholar. She added, ‘…those responsible for educating students in the life of the mind require time to think… Sabbatical leaves can be seen… as higher education’s method of intermittently restoring time to think’.

11. American Association of State Colleges and Universities Facing Change. Building the Faculty of the Future (1999) pp 26–27, available at http://www.aascu.org/pdf/facing_change.pdf.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid, pp 27–28.

15. See Bennett, H. and Scroggs, S Sabbatical leave’ (1932) 3 The Journal of Higher Education 196 at 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Even in the USA, however, sabbatical policies can run into difficulties. Wilson reported that travelling sabbaticals were being curtailed since the two-career families made it more difficult for professors to take leaves that involved uprooting their families. In addition, technological advances now allow academics to communicate with colleagues and get data without ever leaving their offices: .

16. Zahorski, Kj The Sabbatical Mentor. A Practical Guide to Successful Sabbaticals (Bolton MA: Anker Publishing Company Inc, 1994) p 6.Google Scholar

17. Ibid.

18. Good was the editor of the Dictionary of Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959).

19. Zahorski, above n 16, p 5. He wrote, ‘Good’s definition is particularly useful in that it identifies the three defining elements that help us distinguish a sabbatical from other kinds of extended leaves of absence. First, the sabbatical has a clearly-defined purpose of providing opportunities for self-improvement; second, the sabbatical is paid leave, with the awarding of full or partial salary a vital part of the arrangement between faculty and institution; and third, the prime determinant of eligibility is a designated period of prior service (usually six years). At least two other distinguishing traits need mentioning; most sabbatical policy statements also stipulate (1) a required return to service and (2) the filing of a sabbatical report’. Our research has revealed that by contrast English university sabbatical policies do not generally specify a return to the institution as a contractual requirement.

20. Zahorski, above n 16, p 126: ‘If we are to strengthen significantly our sabbatical system, we must try to reach philosophical agreement on the purpose and place of the sabbatical. All too frequently the sabbatical is viewed either as a motivational carrot administrators dangle before the noses of faculty, or as a faculty entitlement about which administrators should have little or nothing to say. Perhaps a more balanced, and productive, approach is to view the sabbatical as a professional growth opportunity benefiting not only faculty but also students and the institution as a whole: in short, a programme for the good of the entire academic community’.

21. For a more recent review of policies and practice in the USA, see C Sima ‘The role and benefits of the sabbatical leave in faculty development and satisfaction’ [2000] New Directions for Institutional Research 65.

22. Collier observes that, ‘Whilst recognising there are dangers in drawing wider inferences from the study of one discipline, the exploration of a distinct subject area has a potential analytic use for developing an understanding of the changing nature of academic work more generally’: Collier, above n 3, at 5.

23. Above n 4.

24. Becher pointed out that ‘…[the] ways in which particular groups of academics organise their professional lives are intimately related to the academic tasks on which they are engaged’: Becher, above n 4, p 2.

25. Halsey, above n 4, p 2. Halsey quoted Burton Clark: ‘Observers have long noted that academicians study everything but themselves, a remarkable failing in an estate composed of scholars and researchers devoted to the task of assisting others to understand the natural and social phenomena that make a difference in shaping the modern world. Of this we can be sure; the academic profession makes a difference. We can hardly know too much about it. In the mid-1980s we still know little’.

26. Tight, M. Researching Higher Education (Maidenhead: SRHE and Open University Press, 2003) p 152.Google Scholar He adds, ‘Academics are, after all, the key to the higher education process, there would be no one to teach and supervise students, to carry out and disseminate academic research, or, to a considerable extent, to run higher education institutions’.

27. For the landmark discussion of the nature of academic research, see Boyer, E Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities for the Professoriate (Menlo Park, California: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990).Google Scholar

28. For a review of the current debate see Jenkins, A. and Zetter, R Linking Research and Teaching in Departments (London: The Higher Education Academy, 2002)Google Scholar. The authors recommended (p 12) that ‘…the way forward is to conceive research and teaching and the university’s role in the community in terms of a process of learning. The policy implications of this include how to structure and organise the university, including academic departments, to ensure effective linkages between forms of learning – rather than focusing on linking teaching and research at the level of the individual academic’. McNay has argued that the funding system operated by the Research Assessment Exercise has led to a gradual separation of research from teaching for individuals, departments and institutions. See I McNay ‘The paradoxes of research assessment and funding’ in .

29. Delanty, G. Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society (Buckingham: SRHE, Open University Press, 2002) p 155.Google Scholar

30. The authors gratefully acknowledge the award of a seedcorn grant for the research from Middlesex University to be used for administrative assistance.

31. It was anticipated that there might be situations where the university did not have a published policy, although where the law school did so, we sent questionnaires to all heads of law schools including those from universities which had told us they did not have a policy.

32. We estimated that this period of time would give meaningful figures on trends in the granting of sabbaticals and that it would also be possible for the figures to be supplied without causing too much inconvenience to the respondents. Information was also gathered on the number of academics employed in the law school; the frequency of sabbatical awards; the purpose of sabbaticals (ie predominantly research, predominantly teaching related, mixed purpose); and the characteristics (gender, post) of the recipients. The data were collected in the academic year 2003/4.

33. The success of the study largely depended on the goodwill and cooperation given by human resource departments, to whom we express our thanks. The Head of the Human Resource Service at the authors’ university kindly agreed to send a request to all heads of university human resource departments asking them to send a copy of their sabbatical policy or to let us know if they did not have one. It was necessary to follow up the initial email with telephone requests in a number of instances. A number of universities have their policy documents available on their public website. It proved quite difficult to get up-to-date information.

34. Very helpfully the AUT sent us a copy of Essential AUT Conditions of Service which lists universities with sabbatical policies. However the research officer commented that it was not clear when the information was collected and he therefore ‘questioned its reliability’. In response to a request for information on sabbaticals in post-1992 universities, the NATFHE research officer responded that ‘generally the post-1992 institutions do not give sabbaticals other than in occasional hard won circumstances – and even then they are not always paid or teaching has to be covered from within departmental resources’ (email to authors).

35. For an illuminating examination of the impact of the RAE on a post-1992 university, see Sikes, P. Working in a “new” university: in the shadow of the Research Assessment Exercise’ (2006) 31 Studies in Higher Education 555 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. The written policy defined study leave as involving ‘(a) undertaking some specific teaching-related project such as the development of computer-aided learning software, the production of a textbook or other published output as distinct from the preparation of a new course of lectures or practical classes, or (b) developing a new teaching-related skill and (c) in either case providing in advance details of a predicted outcome or outcomes against which achievement can be measured’.

37. There is some controversy over the origin of the word ‘sabbatical’. Zahorski (see above n 16, p 6) points out that, contrary to a common popular misconception, sabbatical does not mean every seventh year but is derived from the Hebrew word ‘shabbath’ meaning ‘to rest’.

38. One post-1992 university has devised an intricate policy which was sent to us in draft form. It contained an elaborate ‘Sabbatical Leave’ arrangement obviously designed to be as efficient as possible: ‘Members of staff, by prior written agreement of their dean, may accumulate professional development time to provide a significant period of continuous sabbatical leave in accordance with the following: (i) in any year not more than seven days of holiday and eight days of professional development may be “banked” towards sabbatical leave; (ii) not more than a total of sixty days may be “banked”; (iii) when the time banked is 60 days, the university will add a further 15 days’.

39. Since law schools differ widely in their size as well as their nomenclature within the university, with some known as ‘departments’ or ‘academic groups’, we focused on the UKCLE list of institutions with qualifying law degrees for the purpose of the survey.

40. Some respondents did not answer all the questions and some told us they were giving estimates rather than precise figures in response to some questions. We have not distinguished these estimates from the other data. As a result of different response patterns the survey population varied between questions. The lower response rate from pre-1992 institutions may be partly explained by the fact that universities who did have policies had more questions to answer.

41. A number, but not all, heads of law schools, gave us permission to identify their university. It was decided however that since we were interested in general trends rather than specific instances the responses could best be analysed collectively and anonymity was preserved for all.

42. As has been explained above, the researchers did seek copies of university policies from human resource departments so in some ways this question was redundant. It was included in case there were instances of university sabbatical policies where we had not obtained a response from the human resource department.

43. Of course it may be that our survey is not representative in that law schools which have sabbatical policies in post-1992 universities were more inclined to respond than those who did not, while an alternative explanation is that law schools more readily grant sabbaticals than departments in the rest of the university.

44. One other law school which did grant sabbaticals but where there was no university policy did not respond to the question about the criteria set.

45. In fact no respondents used this additional category.

46. See, eg, Wells, C. Working out: women in law schools’ (2001) 21 LS 116 Google Scholar and .

47. Wells, C. ‘Ladies in waiting: the women law professors’ story’ (2001) 3 Sydney Law Review 167 Google Scholar. Wells wrote (at 167) ‘In the UK there are more men in academic positions in law schools than women by a ratio of about 60 to 40. There are more men than women in senior positions in law schools by a proportion of about 70 to 30. There are more men at the professorial level by a factor of about 83 to 17. This translates to approximately 55 woman law professors. That is less than one woman professor for every law school in the UK. Nearly 60 per cent of law schools in the UK have never had a female professor. The same percentage of schools has never had a female head of school’.

48. Ibid, at 176.

49. Ibid.

50. Acker, S and Feuerverger, G. Doing good and feeling bad: the work of women university teachers’ (1996) 6 Cambridge Journal of Education 401 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Their research is based on experiences in Canadian Universities but it has considerable resonance for the UK. The expectation was that that the feminist university teacher would ‘be intellectually inspiring yet endlessly nurturing’ (at 403). The job descriptions of university lecturers require that they engage in teaching, administration (or ‘service’ in the Canadian context) and research. One of the respondents complained (at 410): ‘Nobody else in the real world is saying do everything, in order to be an acceptable professional. Except academe. Academe’s saying, you must do scholarship. You must do service. You must do teaching. And they must all be wonderful. A third, a third, a third. It’s bizarre’. The authors showed that many of the women believed that they should care for their students yet they also found that an emphasis on working with students tended to the overlooked in the promotion system and left them with heavy workloads. See also .

51. McGlynn, C. The Woman Lawyer: Making the Difference (London: Butterworths, 1999) p 50.Google Scholar

52. Cownie, above n 1, p 95. See also Cownie, F Women legal academics – a new research agenda’? (1998) 25 Journal of Law and Society 102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. The question itself caused some concern. The head of a post-1992 university law school was ‘somewhat taken aback’ by it and responded simply ‘a proportionate number’. We did not ask for historic figures on the employment of women.

54. Taking just the pre-1992 law schools which offered sabbaticals, the mean percentage of women staff in the survey year was 44%.

55. The proportion of women sabbatical recipients in that same year in the relevant universities ranged between 12% and 100%. The individual percentage figures for each university, particularly the new universities, are too small to be meaningful.

56. Taking just the post-1992 law schools which offered sabbaticals, the mean percentage of women academic staff in the survey year was 51%.

57. One of these sabbaticals was just for 1 month, the only one in the study which was not either a semester, a term or a year.

58. One disadvantage faced disproportionately by women academics is that traditionally a greater proportion of them are on fixed-term contracts; such staff are rarely eligible for sabbaticals. See Halvorsen, E Female academics in a knowledge production society’ (2002) 56 Higher Education Quarterly 347 at 356CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Devos, A. Women, research and the politics of professional development’ (2004) 29 Studies in Higher Education 591 at 600CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. Above n 58, at 354. She noted that ‘The number and proportion of female academics increases annually. In 2000, 36% of academics were women. How those women’s time is allocated within their institutions is under-researched. There is some evidence to support the theory that women carry the administrative burden in departments, and have less time than their male colleagues for the research that can so often play a major part in their promotion prospects, but it is largely anecdotal’.

61. Gender and Research Activity in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (London: Association of University Teachers, 2004).

62. Ibid, p 4. See also Knights, D. and Richards, W Sex discrimination in Uk academia’ (2003) 10 Gender, Work and Organisation 154 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63. Cownie, above n 1, p 91.

64. Ibid.

65. Collier, above n 3, at 22. See also Becher and Trowler, above n 4, p 13: ‘Academics are expected to work longer, on a greater variety of tasks with fewer resources. There has in short been an intensification and degradation of academic work’.

66. Henkel, M. Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000) p 135.Google Scholar

67. Talib, A. The continuing behavioural modification of academics since the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise’ (2001) 33 Higher Education Review 30 Google Scholar.

68. See Cownie, F Two jobs, two lives and a funeral: legal academics and work-life balance’ (2004) 5 WJCL I Google Scholar. Cownie points out that all the respondents in the old universities and two thirds of the respondents in the new universities said they carried out research. Cownie reported that respondents were pretty evenly split between those who thought the RAE had beneficial effects and those who saw it in negative terms.

69. Cownie, above n 1, p 138.

70. Morley, L Quality and Power in Higher Education (Buckingham: SRHE, Open University Press, 2003) p 23.Google ScholarHenkel, above n 66, p 106, refers to the RAE as ‘a vehicle of professional and personal humiliation’.

71. See Court, S The use of time by academic and related staff‘ (1996) 50(October) Higher Education Quarterly 237 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72. Kinman, G. Pressure Points – A Survey into the Causes and Consequences of Occupational Stress in UK Academic and Related Staff (London: Association of University Teachers, 1998)Google Scholar paras 9.3 and 9.4.3.

73. Cownie above n 1, p 141.

74. Collier, above n 3, p 15.

75. Ibid, p 19.

76. See also Cownie, above n 1, pp 148–150.

77. Douglas, G. Sabbaticals in the age of productivity The Chronicle of Higher Education 13 October 1995 at B3Google Scholar.

78. On the position in European universities see Enders, Y and Teichler, U ‘A victim of their own success? Employment and working conditions of academic staff in comparative perspective’ (1997) 84 Higher Education, 347 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The authors draw on a European-wide survey covering Germany, England, the Netherlands and Sweden.

79. Douglas, above n 77, at B3. Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) taught economics at McGill University. Douglas quotes from his eulogistic essay ‘Oxford as I see it’, which was first published in 1922.

80. Ibid.

81. Deeble, S How to get away with getting away The Guardian 21 June 2003Google Scholar. However, it might be considered that private employers are not overgenerous in relation to sabbaticals. British Airways employees can volunteer to take unpaid leave for 1–15 months. John Lewis offers partners 6 months fully paid sabbatical after 25 years’ service.

82. Cownie, above n 1, p 45.

83. Henkel, above n 66, p 205. She reported: ‘The overall evidence of our interviews is ambiguous. Academic values had remained robust. Academic narratives about their research agendas reflected underlying assumptions that their disciplines and disciplinary cultures continued to be the source of their academic identities. In one sense they continued to constitute the ‘normative space’ in which academics lived and worked. Things were, however changing as academics confronted new diamonds and competing cultures. They could no longer assume that they had the authority and power to regulate or maintain that space. They were increasingly adopting strategies to enable them nevertheless to conserve it’.

84. Lyotard, J-E [G Bennington and B Massumi (transl)] The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) p 46.Google Scholar

85. Zahorski, above n 16, p 8. He listed four purposes of such leave: ‘to provide opportunity for scholarly enrichment, to improve teaching, to promote course and curriculum development, and to enhance artistic performance and creative growth’.

86. M Miller and K Bai Impact of Sabbatical Leaves on Teaching: A Case Study of Post-Sabbatical Measures (2006), available at http://www.weleadinlearning.org/feb06mtm.htm.

87. See Cownie, above n 1, pp 110–111. She quotes Ryan, D. ‘The Thatcher Government’s attack on higher education in historical perspective’ (1998) 227 New Left Review 3 at 31Google Scholar: ‘The focus on research is now obsessional, far beyond reasonable measure in the life of learning’.

88. M Healy ‘Put scholarship into teaching’The Times Higher Education Supplement 4 February 2000. See also A Brew and Boud, D. Teaching and research: establishing the vital link with learning (1995) 29 Higher Education 261 Google Scholar. These authors illustrate how research work during sabbaticals could become, in effect, laboratory studies for understanding how these two aspects of academic life are related. They argue (at 262) that ‘…if there is a link between [teaching and research] it operates through that which teaching and research have in common; both are concerned with the act of learning, though in different contexts’. A recent survey conducted by the University and College Union (UCU) reported that 78.7% of responses from academics were in favour of an external funding regime which recognised and rewarded the dissemination of research through teaching: , available at http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/1/4/researchfundingfuture_1.pdf.

89. Some argue that the proposed metric system replacing peer review for the next RAE will increase divisions in the sector. The Society of Legal Scholars has expressed its opposition on a number of grounds including the probability it would generate fierce competition for empirical research funding and researchers. It would also incentivise quantity over quality in terms of publication outputs.

90. Boice, R Is released time an effective component of faculty development programs?’ (1987) 26 Research in Higher Education 311 at 314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91. Vick, D. et al ‘The perceptions of academic lawyers concerning the effects of the United Kingdom’s Research Assessment Exercise’ (1998) 25 Journal of Law and Society 536 at 552CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92. Ibid, at 554.

93. See Collier, above n 3, p 28, ‘There is no reason to believe, in short, that the dominance of men has shifted simply because a new intellectual terrain has evolved or because lip service is now paid to gender equity’.

94. Devos, above n 59, at 597.

95. Ibid, at 594.

96. G Elton ‘Scholarship and the research and teaching nexus’ in Barnett, R (ed) Reshaping the University. New Relationships between Research, Scholarship and Teaching (Maidenhead: SRHE and Open University Press, 2005) p 100 at p 108Google Scholar.

97. Ibid, at p 117.

98. Kogan, above n 7, at 15.

99. Ibid, at 16.

100. Ibid, at 17.

101. Walker, M. Reconstructing Professionalism in University Teaching (Buckingham: SRHE and Open University, 2001) p 8.Google Scholar

102. Morley, above n 70, p 72.

103. Deem, R and Morley, L Negotiating Equity in Higher Education Institutions (London: HEFCE, 2005) p 41 Google Scholar, available at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/Pubs/rdreports/2005/rd10_05/. The authors also note (p 81) ‘Some of our most disturbing findings relate to the way in which the pressures of the audit culture and quality issues appear to over-ride concerns about equalities’. The present approach would appear to leave some staff marginalised. Large numbers of academic staff do not have the benefit of sabbaticals to conduct their research. Some studies have shown that job satisfaction for academics is as much concerned with research autonomy as with pay. See also , available at http://www.grad.ac.uk/downloads/documents/Reports/DfES%20recruitment%20and%20retention%20report%20Jul%202005.pdf.

104. Talib, A. The continuing behavioural modification of academics since the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise’ (2001) 33 Higher Education Review 30 Google Scholar. He comments (at 45) ‘The challenge for policy makers is to recognise the importance of process measures and innovations and learning strategies for genuine long term quality improvement in the delivery of value for money services. Genuine improvement over the long term will only occur when policy makers pay attention to the way academics work and the attitudes and beliefs they hold while performing this work… These unintended consequences of the RAE need to be continuously monitored and the RAE process fine-tuned where necessary’.

105. Valimaa, J. Culture and identity in higher education research’ (1998) 36 Higher Education 19 at 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106. Cownie, above n 1, p 2.

107. Trowler, P. Academics Responding to Change; New Higher Education Frameworks and Academic Culture (Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press, 1998) p 151.Google Scholar

108. Bradney, A. Conversations, Choices and Chances. The Liberal Law School in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Hart, 2003) p 201 Google Scholar. See also Collier’s review of Bradney’s monograph, .

109. For the public responsibilities of academics, see Said, E Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (London: Vintage, 1994)Google Scholar. Said was a little scathing about the professoriate. He wrote (pp 70–71) ‘Today’s intellectual is most likely to be a closeted literature professor, on a secure income and no interest in dealing with the world outside the classroom’. For a penetrating study of the ‘demise of the independent intellectual’, see U Huws Begging and Bragging: The Self and the Commodification of Intellectual Activity Inaugural professorial lecture, London Metropolitan University (7 June 2006).

110. Nixon, J. et al What does it mean to be an academic? a colloquium’ (1998) 3 Teaching in Higher Education 277 at 278CrossRefGoogle Scholar (original emphasis).

111. Boyer’s comments referred to the USA but they do have general significance. ‘We urge that a sabbatical leave policy be available at every institution, with the understanding that such leaves will be competitively awarded and will be used in ways that will promote faculty growth and assume benefits to the institution and its students’: Boyer, quoted in Zahorski, above n 16, at 125.

112. Morley, above n 70, p 162.

113. Arguably there is desire among academics for a re-assertion of public values in higher education. See Bone, J. and McNay, I Higher Education and Human Good (Bristol: Tockington Press, 2006)Google Scholar for a powerful account of current academic staff unease about the increasing commodification of higher education. McNay writes (p 33), ‘The heavy hand of the “system” and internal managerialism have subordinated the human element of the HE experience, and may have contributed to lower standards as well as a loss of a sense of community’.