Neoliberal sleight of hand in a university strategic plan: Weaponized sustainability, strategic absences, and magic time

Abstract

This research analyzed the University of Manitoba (UofM) Strategic Plan to both quantify the occurrence of specific keywords and make inferences about the purpose, messages, and effects being communicated by those keywords. In the first section of this paper, we provide an overview of the historical development and purpose of the neoliberal university. Second, we engage with content and critical discourse analysis to understand how academic work and academic identities are established by the strategic plan, a document that few faculty members consult regularly, and fewer still have a hand in developing. The foundational ideals of the UofM, cited at the beginning of the Strategic Plan are tracked through the document, and keywords as determined by frequency count are then similarly tracked. The findings reveal that most of the foundational ideals are not well-represented in the strategic plan; others, like sustainability, are euphemized. Keywords related to increasing workload are found over 60 times in the document, all in the context of decreased funding. We conclude that the strategic plan is a clear mandate for more to be completed with less. We refer to this aspect of workload creep as the need for “magic time.”