Conference Agenda

Against the backdrop of universities’ current shift toward utilitarianism and performativity, this article examines the condition of higher education by contrasting today’s technocratic, outcome-oriented educational agendas with the modernist educational quest for free experimentation, collaborative research communities, and the convergence of research and teaching as core components of academic freedom. Building on the philosophical foundations of this notion, articulated by Kant and later institutionalised in the Humboldtian university model, the article analyses how early-twentieth-century progressive art schools established themselves as emancipatory spaces of intellectual and creative autonomy. The discussion highlights the crucial difference between the inventive practices developed in these schools and the contemporary, utilitarian conception of creativity, which aligns with what Lyotard (1984) identified as the performative turn in higher education – a shift still evident in a culture of efficiency, managerialism, and constant evaluation. Within this educational framework, the reform of higher education is contingent upon adopting flexible learning experiences that foster the capacity to navigate the uncertainties of the future and to professionally reinvent oneself to adapt to unforeseen challenges and economic necessities. Creativity, in this context, is posited as an indispensable skill to be acquired universally, which superficially appeals to associations between freedom and art, but in fact reinforces the logic of results and effects, testing and performance measurement. Yet if we look at the pedagogical programs of modern art schools founded in the early twentieth century, the teaching of creativity, particularly during the initial, so-called basic or preparatory stages of academic training, was based precisely on the principle of delaying the immediate application of artistic research and focusing instead on unlimited experimentation.

Although the link between art and freedom is often presented as self-evident, a historical perspective reveals that, for centuries, art education was about coercion rather than freedom (Bourdieu, 1993). Furthermore, as the French sociologist has also shown, discourses advocating aesthetic education reinforce rather than neutralise the division of social strata (Bourdieu & Darbel, 1991). And yet, the rhetoric of creativity and innovation in the debate on higher education and in global educational policymakers’ discourse is mobilised as a solution to world issues related to equality and access to education, economic and social problems, and, more recently, challenges that might emerge and should be anticipated creatively (UNESCO, 2014, 2015; OECD, 2019). In other words, there is a schism between the real-life experience of modern art schools as sites of dissent, critique, and creative freedom and the narratives that feed on the affective power of artistic experiences and the aesthetic desire for the ‘creative life.’ It becomes necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the discursive hegemony of creative topoi in higher education and the art university as a site of aesthetic, inventive, and, at times, emancipative practices.

Introduction

The literature on the entrepreneurial university has taken substantial shape since the 1980s but in a paradigm that places disproportionate emphasis on organisational change and evolution, while maintaining unexamined assumptions of competitiveness, innovation, and rationality. Little is known about how the entrepreneurial paradigm of university policies and practices is transmitted to the lifeworld of academics, alongside diverse voices and critical insights from dialogues within the academic profession. This paper re-examines ‘academic entrepreneurialism’ (AE) by exploring the ‘entrepreneurial turn’ in universities on the everyday work life of academics at flagship universities in three East Asian global cities. Dialogical interviews were conducted with 52 academics from various disciplinary, institutional, and generational backgrounds, supplemented by rigorous pre-interview documentary research on 100 official documents revealing how AE manifests in the institutional contexts of the three universities. The findings uncover competitive emulation leveraging AE for resources, advancement, legitimacy, and stability. However, organisational innovation convergence juxtaposes with academic profession differentiation. As sensemakers, individual academics navigate changing academia by adapting values, identities, professional learning, and career choices—potentially transitioning institutions, systems, or leaving academia. Academics experience and perceive academic meaning, life, and higher education changes variably by context, suggesting a ‘post-entrepreneurial university’ conceptualisation.

Research Objectives and Questions

This paper addresses two research questions:

(1) How does academic entrepreneurialism manifest in East Asian flagship universities’ institutional contexts and policies?

(2) How have these policies and practices impacted everyday work of academics from different disciplinary and institutional backgrounds?

Analytical Concept of the Research

The study employed sensemaking (Sandberg and Tsoukas 2020; Weick 1995; Weick et al. 2005) to analyse how academics experience, interpret, and give meaning to their changing profession. Distinct from understanding or interpretation, sensemaking focuses on generating world interpretations. It involves continual reality construction through retrospective sense of situations (Weick 1995), via immersive sociomaterial practice worlds imbuing actions and identities with meaning (Sandberg and Tsoukas 2020). Sensemaking constructs, filters, frames, creates facticity, and tangibilises subjectivity (Weick 1995: 14).

We propose academics as ‘sensemakers’ for AE-related changes in higher education. It involves identity, retrospection, social contexts, cues, information, and plausibility over accuracy (Weick 1995), understanding AE ‘practice worlds’ (Sandberg and Tsoukas 2020). Young academics perceive academia as meaningful wholes; experienced ones renew work meaningfulness for action. Sensemaking draws on social cues, communications, expectations, beliefs, and experiences, often post-event via reflection for future decisions. It seeks plausible narratives, not accuracy.

An iterative three-stage thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) examined AE’s impact. First: open coding of documents and transcripts for AE-related issues, concerns, debates, tensions. Second: organising codes into categories capturing voices and silences (Nowell et al. 2017). Final: broader themes encompassing insights and perspectives. First author coded with assistants; refinements via author discussions. Authors independently analysed final codes/themes, compared for >90% consensus; discrepancies resolved through discussion.

In this article, we examine the practices of academic resistance and the forms of silencing, obstruction, and suppression they encounter. The research material consists of interviews conducted in 2024 with academics (n = 36) identified as democracy activists at seven Finnish universities. The individuals we define as university activists have actively opposed and sought to remedy internal injustices at universities and defended the democratic self-governance of universities. By conceptualizing resistance and the actions that suppress it, we also structure the spaces for resistance at today's universities and its limits.

According to several reports by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, university communities in Finland have experienced a decline in their influence in recent decades (Kohtamäki & Poutanen 2025). The higher education policy has sought to improve the cost-effectiveness and competitiveness of universities by streamlining administrative structures, centralizing power from the university community to university management, and tightening performance management. University communities have struggled with organizational changes and limited opportunities for participation, and have protested against the changes (Kallio et al. 2020; Poutanen et al 2022). A key point of contention has been the self-governance of universities, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, and its implementation in university practices.

In the research literature, the forms of resistance practiced by university community as well as the perceived obstacles to resistance, and the reasons for passivity have been analyzed in various ways (Anderson 2008; Kalfa et al. 2018; Poutanen et al. 2022; Nikkola & Tervasmäki 2022; Smidt et al. 2020). Studies have described negotiations between researchers, teachers, and middle management (among themselves and with others) about how visibly they dare to resist and what kinds of experiences and feelings this arouses in them and their immediate communities (e.g., Li & Li 2023; Suopajärvi 2024). The research literature has also highlighted a paradox: many university employees reject changes to their work and organizations, but still comply with the rules and practices that cause these changes (Alvesson & Spicer 2016; Kalfa et al. 2018; Rintamäki & Alvesson 2023). The literature on forms resistance emphasizes the micro level and often personal forms of everyday resistance related to the organization of work. However, examples of open resistance by university staff are rare in the research literature and often consist of individual case descriptions (e.g. Bowes-Catton et al. 2020; Nikkola & Tervasmäki 2022).

The discontent and dissatisfaction of university communities has been widely described, but less attention has been paid to the practices used to suppress resistance among them. Researchers in other countries have shown how those who engage in resistance have been harassed or threatened, for example, with termination of employment and cuts in resources (e.g., Gagnon & Collinson 2017). Examinations of forms of resistance prevention, repression, and suppression can be found in general political research (e.g., Martin 2016), but no comprehensive presentation of this kind has been made in the university field prior to our study.

The scarcity of research literature mapping out diverse forms of resistance and describing practices of suppressing resistance among academics leads us to formulate the following research questions: What forms of resistance do the interviewees describe? What kinds of obstacles to influence and means of preventing resistance do the interviewees account? By answering these research questions, we also increase the understanding produced by previous research literature on the forms and practices of academic resistance in the Finnish context.