Struggles for identity : A Finnish university’s identity transition in its own policies after reform

Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Gabriele Molzberger (eds), Disciplinary Struggles in Education Tampere University Press 2019, 61–80 http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-359-002-1 Struggles for identity A Finnish university’s identity transition in its own policies after reform Henry Yuan Wang Abstract As a case of disciplinary struggle of discipline, this study introduces a Finnish university’s struggles over its own identity of what it is as an institution of higher knowledge during a transition period. Although higher education as a discipline itself is not discussed in this article, higher education institutes, at the heart of higher education, shoulder the responsibility of disciplining disciplines. The struggle of a modern university in quest of finding its own voice brings our attention to the historical changes and our contemplation of the deeper meaning of this transition and its possible impact. Keywords: institutional identity, marketisation of higher education, higher education reform, policy analysis, critical discourse analysis Henry Yuan Wang 62 Introduction This study investigates a Finnish university’s struggles over its own identity around the crucial period of Finnish higher education reform. Under the transition brought by the reform, Finnish universities are forced to think about a crucial question: who are we, and where do we go from here? The University of Eastern Finland (UEF) is chosen as a case study, and its own strategy policy during 2000– 2015 is examined through critical discourse analysis (CDA). The results show how the identity transition is reflected in the policy discourse and how the policies are justifying the transition and further assisting the fulfilment of the transition. The identity struggle itself also reflects the emerging disciplinary struggle of the mission of higher education: should higher education still stick to its old purpose of conferring knowledge, empowerment and emancipation, or should it also adapt to the timely expectation of the society to improve the country’s economy? More recently, European universities, like their counterparts all over the world, have been going through a transition over recent decades (Enders & De Boer, 2009; Huber, 2016). Under such transition, European universities are experiencing an identity crisis through a status of confusion and institutional changes (Enders & De Boer, 2009). Besides this common European context, Finnish universities are also under a transition in their own special context, with immediate influence from the Finnish higher education reform. Previous literature is mostly focused on the transition at the macro level (Ek et al., 2013), thus, there is a need for this study to investigate the transition at the micro level, from the perspective of one institution’s changes. This research cut into a specific perspective to investigate one Finnish higher education institute’s transformation with the comparison of its own past during the time scale of 2000–2015. To investigate the transition, Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework is adopted to examine the policy discourse transition in terms of how the social transition is reflected in the policy and how the policy will continue to facilitate the transformation in Finnish higher education. 63 Struggles for identity The context – Where are we going after the reform? The immediate context of the transformation is the Finnish higher education reform started by the new University Act (558/2009) in June 2009. The reform brings a massive and multiple-level transition to Finnish higher education, from a restructuring of the whole system, the funding model and the strategy direction to internationalisation, etc. Public funding is radically reduced, but unprecedented autonomy is granted to universities by endowing universities to use the identity change of becoming independent legal personalities to collect external funding (University Act, 2009) and generate revenue from commercial means. Due to the stress over the need for resources to survive, many universities have to change their strategies and prepare themselves to compete in the global market. Such transition is reflected in the policies discussed later. Under the reform, three groups of universities merged into three bigger universities during 2007–2010 (European Commission, 2016). The University of Eastern Finland (UEF) is chosen as the case study because UEF went through both the merger and the overall reform, which provides a representative case. The new branding renamed the two merged universities (the University of Joensuu and the University of Kuopio) as the University of Eastern Finland (UEF). However, this study considers UEF as a whole for the matter of clarity. Under this transition, UEF published a series of strategy policies about how to take the university into a new era of development, trying to make UEF stronger and more competitive. These policy documents are used as the data to inspect the transition. The discursive construct of identity The theoretical ground of this study’s research on the identity transition of a university through discourse lies in the postmodernist view of institutional identity as a discursive construct and identity as the totality of the narratives of who we think we are (e.g. Humphreys & Brown, 2002). Identity is a complex concept, and the identity of a university, as a collective identity, is multi-vocal from multiple voices inside the organisation (Boje, 2001; Mayr, 2015). Thus, to Henry Yuan Wang 64 maintain the clarity of the study, this paper investigates only one important aspect constituting the collective identity – how the university portrays itself in its own policy discourse. The postmodern theoretical ground of studying an institution’s identity through its discourse is how the connection of discourse and intuitions is conceptualised – the ‘linguistic turn’, with emphasis on the role of language use in social constitution, essentially views discourse as constitutive of institutions (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; Mumby & Mease, 2011; Mayr, 2015). Mumby and Clair (1997) explain this point as follows: Organizations exist only in so far as their members create them through discourse. This is not to claim that organizations are ‘nothing but’ discourse, but rather that discourse is the principle means by which organization members create a coherent social reality that frames their sense of who they are. (1997, p. 181) That is to say, discourse plays a constituting role in shaping the institution’s identity. Institutional identity is a socially constructed meaning by its own institutional members who share the idea of what it is, and it is not fixed but rather a dynamic construction (van der Walt 2007, p. 183). This study’s investigation of the particular crafted changes imposed upon the university’s identity exposes the deeper meaning of the direction the policymakers are leading the university towards and what kind of social reality they are trying to construct. Research question and policy documents as data The objective of the study is to make sense of the recent University of Eastern Finland (UEF) transition in policies and to analyse the identity changes of a Finnish university. The transition can be seen from the comparison of the identity presented in the university policies before and after the reform. It reveals the development and evolution of a Finnish higher education institute. The research question is: how is the identity transition of UEF reflected and justified in its policy discourse after the higher education reform? 65 Struggles for identity Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework is adopted to examine the policy discourse transition. Fairclough’s account of discourse analysis is three-dimensional, consisting of textual analysis, discursive analysis and social analysis. Within the CDA framework, a set of specific university strategic policy documents during 2000–2015 are the data for this study, as shown in the following table. Table 1. The documents (coded as the year they were published) Policy document Code name by publish year To a new millennium: The strategy of the University of Joensuu for the years 2000–2006 Document 2000 Strategy for the internationalisation of the University of Joensuu for the years 2007–2015 Document 2007 A university of the future – Strategy of the University of Eastern Finland (2010) Document 2010 Internationalisation policy of the University of Eastern Finland 2012–2015 Document 2012 Interdisciplinary solutions – Strategy of the University of Eastern Finland for 2015–2020 Document 2014a (Auxiliary document) Implementation programme for the strategy for 2015–2020 Document 2014b The new policies after the reform (Documents 2010, 2012, 2014a and 2014b) form the data that present the new strategic priorities of UEF, which also provide the resource for the fragmented narratives of UEF’s identity. In addition, the transition is seen through comparison to the old policies (Documents 2000 and 2007). I treat the new policies as a whole for the evidence after the reform, whereas the old policies as a whole provide the resources before the reform. The study only chose English documents as the data – the discourse in English is a medium that reflects how the university constructs its identity on a global scale. The university provides the English documents publicly to the global audience. Henry Yuan Wang 66 Findings The analysis distils the distinctive discursive practices that help to shape the new reality, which provides the ground for the identity transformation. The new identity construction is justified and fulfilled by three predominant discursive practices: 1. justified by different layers of re-contextualisation; 2. legitimised by dominant ante-narratives; 3. intermediated by discursive practice normalisation. Re-contextualisation Re-contextualisation is a process in which one discourse or its meaning transfers into another context. Linell (1998) simply put it as ‘the dynamic transfer-andtransformation of something from one discourse/text-in-context ... to another’ (p. 154). One prominent analysis finding is that the new University of Eastern Finland (UEF) strategy policies justify themselves by noticeably re-contextualising elements from European Union (EU) policies and Finnish national policies. This forms the top-down level consistency (EU level–Finnish national level–UEF institutional level) in policy direction, which I denote as EU–FI–UEF consistency in this study. The most remarkable transferred discourses include establishing an increasingly concrete quality assurance system, the transit to a ‘student-centred university’, the same justification to exit the economic crisis, the encouragement to export following the European Commission’s country-specific recommendations, etc., which all indicate that UEF’s current development is in line with EU’s planning direction. For example, the discourse of marketising higher education, with the same presumption of treating higher education as a product/service that can be exported, is transferred from EU policies and Finnish policies, as shown below: 67 Struggles for identity Table 2. Example of how education export discourse is re-contextualised from EU to UEF From the EU level: Europe 2020: A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth Unleash Europe’s innovative capabilities, improving educational outcomes and the quality and outputs of education institutions, and exploiting the economic and societal benefits of a digital society. Europe 2020 Strategy (2010, p. 12) From the Finnish national level: Finnish education export strategy Educational know-how will be a Finnish export cluster in the future. Educational knowhow will be an increasingly important part of industrial and service products and in this way, it will bolster other export sectors. Education export strategy (2010, p. 7) From the UEF institutional level: Interdisciplinary solutions – Strategy of the University of Eastern Finland for 2015–2020 We promote the transfer of the university’s research findings to support knowledgebased growth … Document 2014a, p. 6 We are known as a partner …, and as a producer of research data and education … Document 2014a, p. 3 As the analysis of other core discourses shows, the EU crisis rhetoric is transferred into the Finnish higher education context, and the same justification to escape the economy crisis, to be ‘competitive’ and ‘succeed’, is adopted to justify the transition of the Finnish university. It suggests that the Finnish university’s priority is aligned to the economic priorities of the EU and the state in a synchronised way. The compliance to EU policies’ economic initiative to take a share of global market and occupy a competitive position therein has spread to Finnish higher education. Dominant competition ante-narratives The ante-narrative, namely ‘before narrative’, is a concept defined by Boje (2001) to study those fragmented pieces of narratives in an organisational context because, Henry Yuan Wang 68 in organisational settings, narratives are often articulated only in fragments. Antenarratives, simply put, are pieces of discourses before they become a complete story. The reoccurring rhetoric patterns that formulate the constituent antenarratives of the new identity after the reform are the ‘global competition’ ante-narratives. The competition-focused storytelling constantly serves as the background to justify the transition. The new policies set out the tension for competition at the very beginning. For instance, Document 2012 sets up the backdrop that ‘Europe is failing’ before any story is being told: … according to analyses by the European Commission in 2005 and 2006, only a few European universities are recognised as global leaders. Indeed, European higher education institutions are failing to attract enough students, researchers and investments from outside the EU. Currently, the United States is the leader in attracting the best students, while China and India are also emerging as rivals to European higher education institutions. (Document 2012, p. 3) At the very beginning, the discourse states ‘the fact’ that European universities are ‘failing’, which gives a sense of imperativeness – it is an unavoidable obligation to deal with the ‘failure’. The competition ante-narratives also harbour the presupposition that it is the European higher education institutes’ primary duty to compete in the global market, such as Document 2012, with some specific major competitors given, e.g. ‘the United States, China and India’ (p. 3). The discourse ‘only a few European universities are recognized as global leaders’ (p. 3) implies that European universities not only must compete in the global market but also should dominate the market. Higher education institutions used to be expected to cradle the civic development and intellectual competence of the society, but now ‘a high level of expertise and international networking’ is expected (Document 2010, p. 4). They have to ‘meet the demands of operational efficiency’ (Document 2010, p. 4), they are expected ‘to succeed’ (Document 2010, p. 4), to ‘attract the best students’ (Document 2012, p. 3) and to ‘attract researchers and investments’ (Document 2014a, p. 3, p. 4, p. 6) and to be ‘global leaders’ (Document 2012, p. 3). 69 Struggles for identity The university henceforward is also expected to increase the attractiveness of the country and serve to help the country to ‘become one of the world’s leading education-based economies’ (Document 2012, p. 4) and ‘increase the export’ (Document 2012, p. 4), e.g. Document 2012: The attractiveness of Finland as a business, work and living environment must be increased … The strategy … strives towards Finland becoming one of the world’s leading education-based economies, which relies on the high quality of its education system, as well as towards significantly increasing the proportion of education and knowledge exports in relation to overall exports by 2015. (Document 2012, pp. 3–4) ‘Competition’ is accelerated on an unprecedented level in the new UEF policies compared to those before the reform. Competition as the motif of the new documents is set as the background to justify the policy direction – to justify the transition of the university’s identity. Discursive practice normalisation There are prominent discursive features in the new policies that bring out a striking contrast to the old documents before the reforms. These discursive practices facilitate the transition for the social changes with fine subtlety. Without comparison, they are almost undetectable because they appear very natural. Just as Fairclough (2007) suggests, it is through this naturalising and normalising of certain discourses and their backgrounded ideologies that the engineering of a certain legitimacy is achieved. The most pervasive discursive practice change is that the new policy discourses largely incorporate commercialand business-style discourses, resulting in hybrid quasi-advertising and quasi-corporate discourses. A new discourse feature from the new documents with the integrated business and advertising style can be found from the individual word-choice level, to the discursive-style level, to the overall visual-layout level. From the choice of vocabulary, there is a notable increase in self-promotional words such as ‘efficient’ and ‘top-level’, which clearly indicate the significance of the university; see the table below. Henry Yuan Wang 76 Conclusion The realisation and legitimisation of the transition is fulfilled at different levels, and they are interconnected and complement each other. Together they construct a consistent and compelling storytelling of a new imaginary construct of the university – a competitive, high-standard, world-class, top-ranked, attractive international university, with an emphasis on transferring knowledge to smart economic growth. It contrasts the old identity of a collaborative university with local and regional development as the priority, committed to promoting tolerance and equality in society. The discursive change in the university policies creates a convincing representation of the institution, which is only loyally serving the ideology change of the policies. With the social constitutive power of the discourse practice, the policies are devised to construct certain aspects of reality – as if the policy is saying, this is the new reality of the university. The identity struggle and transition reflected in the policy changes are largely steered by economic rationales and neoliberal ideologies, which are justifying the transition. The policy is furthering the implementation of this transformation. The results show substantial evidence of the marketisation of the higher education discourse, which indicates the marketisation process of the education system and its influence on the development of the Finnish universities after the reform. This case study documents a detailed account of a university’s recent development and its struggles within the broader frame of ‘Europe under transition’. It contributes to the wider empirical research on higher education marketisation and its impact on social changes. Part of the goal of the study is to shed light on the ways in which systems of power can affect higher education via the meanings they construct and represent in the policy texts and processes. The power is constructed by the policy, and one examination result is that some power has transferred to the university through the autonomous authority granted by the 2009 University Act. However, this aspect is beyond the scope of this research and will not be further discussed here. The analysis of the discursive transition of university discourse also indicates the changing governance of higher education in Finland. The relationship changes 77 Struggles for identity between the state and the university are reflected in the discourses of operational anatomy, university responsibility and funding. Part of my research project addresses these issues, and the results will be presented in later papers. Henry Yuan Wang 78 Official documents referred in this study: European Commission. 2010. Europe 2020: A Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Working paper {COM (2010) 2020}. European Commission. 2016. Structural Higher Education Reform – Design and Evaluation Synthesis Report April 2016. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC). 2010. Finnish education export strategy: summary of the strategic lines and measures. Publications of the Ministry of Education and Culture 2010/12. Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC). 2016. Universities Act 558/2009 (Amendments up to 644/2016 included). Translation from Finnish. University of Eastern Finland. 2000. To a new millennium: the strategy of the University of Joensuu for the years 2000–2006. University of Eastern Finland. University of Eastern Finland. 2007. Strategy for Internationalisation of the University of Joensuu for the Years 2007–2015. University of Eastern Finland. University of Eastern Finland. 2010. A university of the future – Strategy of the University of Eastern Finland (2010). University of Eastern Finland. University of Eastern Finland. 2012. Internationalisation Policy of the University of Eastern Finland 2012–2015. University of Eastern Finland. University of Eastern Finland. 2014a. 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