Relocating professionalism in an English university

Higher education is becoming increasingly market-oriented. In a bid to enhance performance, reputation and competitive positioning, universities are increasingly embracing managerialist axioms and discourses. In the process, a new class of professional administrator has been created. Increasingly specialist in nature, the professionalised administrator is ‘carving out space’ in university hierarchies, often in places formerly reserved for academics. This paper queries whether the emergence of this new professional class is symptomatic of a more fundamental relocation of professionalism from academics to administrators. A study of staff in a mid-sized university in South-East England reveals higher levels of autonomy and satisfaction amongst administrators than academics, but little sense of professional affiliation. In contrast, academics have a strong sense of professional identity, but a growing sense of deprofessionalisation. Relationships between the two groups remain collegiate, but the findings support the proposition that there is an ongoing relocation of professionalism in universities.