Academic labour and the politics of quality in higher education: a critical evaluation of the conditions of possibility of resistance

This paper examineslooks at the implications of quality auditing in Hhigher Eeducation in the UK from a labour process perspective. It examines and questions the idea that quality is a panoptic mode of managerial control and surveillance over the academic labour process from which there is no escape. The paper shows how conditions of possibility of resistance to quality auditing do exist, but that, unfortunately, these include 'peer exploitation'. This term reveals the ways in which academics avoid responsibility for, or significant involvement in, quality to protect their personal research and career interests at the expense of others who are left to shoulder their share of responsibility.