A ‘problem’ to be managed?

Driven largely by efficiency imperatives, many universities have come to adopt a managerialist approach to research over the last several years. University administrators have become actively concerned with the traditionally long times taken to complete a PhD and high attrition rates. Consequently, the PhD, and PhD students’ experience of struggle when writing a PhD, is now often framed by universities as a problem to be managed. This framing is problematic if we consider that, for many students, the personally demanding nature of the PhD is central to the research process. In the first part of this article I discuss the contemporary administrative response to the PhD. I then go on to discuss the lived experience of writing a PhD, from the students’ point of view, drawing on my own and other students’ accounts. I utilize the writings of Maurice Blanchot in my analysis, who views the personal ups and downs of writing as integral to knowledge production.