Is law teaching bad for your health?

Graeme Broadbent, Kingston University

Graeme’s paper at LILI 2006 reviewed two literatures relating to the experiences of those working in higher education with reference to their physical and mental health, seeking to locate law teaching within them. The first looked at issues relating to physical integrity, whilst the second strand considered the threats to mental health posed by the changing working environment and the consequential reconfiguration of workloads and professional identity. These were examined in relation to the changing context of higher education in general and university legal education in particular.

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A number of things came together, quite serendipitously, the result of which is this paper. I have been concerned for some time by the growing number of people I either knew personally or I knew of who had had lengthy absences due to work induced stress related illnesses, depression or similar. I have also for some time had concerns about campus safety, not least because of having been a victim of crime at work on more than one occasion and knowing colleagues who had also. It has long seemed to me that the human dimension, and especially the human cost, of the recent and current experience of higher education has been underplayed with regard to those working in the sector.

Conferences such as the LILI conference focus on ways of improving the educational process for students, but often neglect the impact of such initiatives on academic staff – the model seems to be one which has us in good health, bright eyed and bushy tailed all the time. The university ethos supports this. There is some evidence to suggest that, for example, law schools evidence a male macho culture (Cownie, 2004), in which it becomes difficult to admit to being unable to cope with the pressures, as this may be taken as a sign of weakness (Henkel, 2000). The observable response to the widely acknowledged (for example Henkel, 2000; Rolfe, 2002; Morley, 2003) increases in workload amongst many colleagues has been akin to that of Boxer, the shire horse, in George Orwell’s Animal farm, whose mantra was “I will work harder”. The trouble is, we know what happened to Boxer in the end.

A trawl through the Times Higher revealed that these issues were on the (or at least its) agenda in 2005, and I have used this as a touchstone for the issues raised (although not resolved) in this paper, hence the large number of references to that publication. This paper is thus a preliminary attempt to bring together a number of related issues that face those working in higher education and to think about them from the vantage point of somebody working at the chalkface in a new university law school. It does not purport to be a scientific or comprehensive account of the subject matter, but rather a preliminary attempt to pull together a number of strands in the literature. This paper is thus essentially a piece of synthesis.

There is a growing literature on the experience of those working in higher education, and, in particular, on the effects of changes within the sector. In this paper I review a selection of that literature, thinking especially of the possible effects on the physical and mental well being of those working in the higher education sector. Much of the literature does not distinguish between different disciplines, but is concerned with sector wide developments. This is essentially work in progress, and is part of a wider attempt to assess the changing nature of the staff/student dynamic in higher education. It does not purport to provide an exhaustive discussion, but is rather a first step toward identifying some of the issues and locating legal education in them.

The paper is divided into three sections. The first seeks to identify some of the important contextual changes that have affected, and continue to affect, the sector generally, and, as I suggest at various points in the paper, law schools in particular. The second part attempts to draw out some of the main themes from the literature and offers some evaluation of them with regard to the consequences for the health and safety of those working within the sector. The final part seeks to relate this more general material to developments in legal education, not on the basis of comparing law with other disciplines, but simply to look at law in its own right.

Some contextual influences

Focusing on three dominant forces – massification, marketisation and managerialism – is not to deny the significance of others. However, in the present context, it is suggested that these three have played a particularly significant role in the changing dynamic of law schools. In discussing them I have tried to identify those issues most closely linked to the theme of this paper. Clearly there are implications for other facets of the higher education sector in general, and legal education in particular, but these go beyond the scope of the present discussion.

Peter Scott (1995, 1998) makes two important points with regard to the move from an elite system of higher education to a mass system. First, he points out that this change has been qualitative as well as quantitative – the sector is not only bigger, it is also more diverse. Secondly, he argues that the sector was unprepared for the onset of massification. Four points, it is suggested, flow from Scott’s analysis. The first, and most obvious, is that there has been an increase in the intensity of existing activities – teaching, research, administration, pastoral, etc – as a result of the increase in the scale of university operations in all respects (Henkel, 2000). This has been exacerbated by a concomitant raising of the stakes at all levels of university activity, from, for example, competition for research funds and student numbers (Cuthbert, 1996; Jary & Parker, 1998; Trowler, 1998) to the student need to graduate with a good class of degree whilst combining study with paid employment in an attempt to keep debt within reasonable bounds (Curtis & Shani 2002; Cuthbert, 2005). All of these factors have had a significant effect on the traditional activities of universities, but the situation is compounded by changes to the way universities, and those working within them, operate, as discussed further below.

A second theme of Scott’s analysis is the increasing diversity of the student body. There are not only more students, but they are a more diverse body in terms of gender, ethnic origins, age and, especially, prior educational experience. Again, this is discussed further below.

A third factor is that the growth in the range and intensity of university operations has not been matched by a commensurate increase in the number so staff, with the consequence that individuals are not only doing more of what they were previously doing, but also that they are doing different things (Trowler, 1998; Henkel, 2000). This has, in the present context, changed the staff/student dynamic in a number of ways. Most obviously, the staff:student ratio (SSR) has worsened. A brief glance at some figures (rounded to nearest whole number) tells its own story. In 1970, the sector average for universities was 1:9 and for polytechnics 1:8. By 1990, this had reached 1:12 in the universities and 1:15 in the polytechnics (Henkel, 2000, figures rounded to whole numbers). The unified sector average in 1992 was 1:16 (Pratt, 1997, ditto). Law schools have always had above average SSRs, so that the trend to a higher ratio is one that will be exaggerated with regard to law. SSRs in the 1:30s seems not to be uncommon in modern law schools (although, of course, much depends on how they are calculated). One effect of this is a tendency to greater depersonalisation of the educational interface between staff and students.

The cumulative effect of this, fourthly, is to set up a number of tensions within the system, which are not readily capable of resolution. Thus the maintenance of standards whilst at the same time widening access (O’Neill, 2002), coping with increased volume of operations with a reducing unit resource (Trowler, 1998) and the potential mismatch between elite degrees in a mass system (Scott, 1995) have all exercised minds considerably in recent years.

The relocation of higher education in the discourse of commerce has also been significant in bringing about shifts in the way in which universities both see and are seen (Scott, 2001). The notion of the university as akin to a business has been matched by the infiltration of consumerist concepts and language into higher education. Thus the reconstruction of students as ‘consumers’ of educational ‘products’ and the importation of consumerist ideas such as ‘customer satisfaction’ (Shevlin et al, 2000) have had a profound influence on universities, as has the construction of a competitive market, albeit a controlled one. The creation of a market in higher education has had a number of consequences which have implications for those working in the sector. One fundamental change has been that a number of decisions within the sector are made for market driven rather than educational reasons. These can range from decisions to run particular courses, through attempts to manipulate positions in league tables and other public indicators to driving research agendas.

A significant contributor to this has been the need for universities to raise increasing proportions of their funding from sources other than the public purse. Whilst in 1970 the state provided 90% of the funding for higher education by 1995 this had dropped to 44% (Henkel, 2000). The move to tuition fees and the reliance on a variety of sources of income will continue to exacerbate this tendency whilst also engaging those in higher education in thinking ever more creatively of ways of ensuring continuing solvency.

The use of market mechanisms as measures of performance in higher education has also been felt. One recent example is the National Student Survey (NSS). This is but one of a number of ways in which students are involved in universities’ evaluative processes. However, there is a fundamental question as to what it is that such surveys are measuring. Located in the discourse of consumerism, they are usually taken to indicate satisfaction, delight even (Popli, 2005). Translating such notions into educational provision is more problematic and raises issues going beyond the scope of this paper (see for example Sirvanci, 1996; Shore & Selwyn, 1998; Scott, 1999; Delucci, 2000).

Suffice it to say that the impact of such devices has an impact on the lived experience of those working in higher education. As with the impact of massification, that of marketisation has set up certain tensions within the higher education sector, especially between traditional values and the new values the sector has been required to accommodate. Thus we may identify tensions between customer satisfaction and educational objectives (Lilley, 1998), a shift in focus from process to product, from content to form, and from knowledge to communication. Students are felt to have become more vocationally and instrumentally orientated and less interested in the substance of the subject they are studying (Rolfe, 2002).

The third contextual element that bears on the position of staff is the development of managerialism. The emergence of new public management throughout the public sector has been identified by a number of commentators as a key shift in organisational operation (Clarke et al, 2000). It is a commonplace that universities have become larger organisations, and that this alone would have tended to promote more structured managerial regimes (Barnett, 1997). This has always been a feature of the former polytechnics, emerging as they did with regimes deriving from the days of local authority and CNAA control (Pratt, 1997). The importation of private sector values into the public sector, and the notion that universities were in effect businesses to be run as such, coupled with moves toward greater public sector accountability combined to create a new form of managerial regime of wide ranging potential (Clarke et al, 2000).

Some key shifts may be highlighted. When coupled with the marketisation of higher education, the predominance of market considerations is established. Thus, the values by which institutions are driven become those of the market rather than those of education or subject discipline, and this is reflected in the change in organisation from the traditional collegiate to a managerial model (Dearlove, 1997; Deem, 1998). This managerial model has been reinforced and provided with tools for its operation by, especially, the quality assurance agenda, which requires that it is no longer sufficient to do things – whether teaching, research or administration – well. The imperative now is to demonstrate performance in these areas and to be accountable for it by holding the performance up to scrutiny and to judgement against criteria which are often externally imposed (Brown, 2004). Similarly, in research, the requirements of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) enable research to be managed in contradistinction to the situation that previously pertained whereby research was essentially self driven in content, format and time frame (Henkel, 2000; Morley, 2003; Cownie, 2004).

The upshot of this is that management is equipped with these and a range of other tools by which it can exercise power over the working life of staff in universities – the juxtaposition of quality and power in the title of Louise Morley’s (2003) book is no coincidence. It is the potential that is the significant feature here. How these managerial tools are used inevitably varies from institution to institution and from faculty to faculty, thus forming a significant variable which can have a profound impact on the way that individuals experience their working lives (Henkel, 2000). Staff are subject to constant surveillance in all their activities, in which they are required to demonstrate ‘quality’ rather than simply achieving it by professional self discipline (Morley, 2001, 2003, 2005). The situation fits the Foucaultian notion of power as a disciplinary technology (Foucault, 1991), capable of being exercised to control those subject to the regime in question (Shore & Roberts 1995; Strathern, 2000). It fits also with the notion, used by Foucault but deriving from Bentham, of the panopticon, the ever seeing vantage point which conditions behaviour in the subject because the subject can never know when he is or is not being observed.

The picture that emerges from the above is of a changing context in which traditional educational values and imperatives are challenged and, in many respects, reconfigured by the changes that have occurred to the organisation and cultures of higher education, some might argue conspiratorially (Bradney, 2001). The speed of these changes has posed a challenge in itself. Relationships between staff and students have altered from Barnett’s (1997) joint venturers in exploration of the subject to supplier/consumer (Lilley, 1998), and between staff and senior colleagues from collegial to manager/subordinate (Dearlove, 1997). The combined effects of massification, marketisation and managerialism have been, it is suggested, to produce structural power shifts from lecturers to students and from lecturers to managers (Cuthbert, 1996; Dearlove, 1997). Some of the consequences of this for individuals are discussed below. The key, it is suggested, is the potential offered by these forces for the improvement or otherwise of the lot of individuals working in universities.

Themes and consequences

The vast literature on the consequences of these contextual features discloses a number of themes, which are considered first, followed by a consideration of some of the effects of these on the health and well being of those working in universities.

A theme running through the literature is that of fragmentation (Rowland, 2002). The old certainties have gone but not been replaced. This has been true of law. Fiona Cownie’s recent book (2004) suggests a fragmentation of identity amongst legal academics. Whereas the technocentric black letter tradition held sway, she regards the discipline as being in transition, although whether it is heading in the same direction is surely in doubt. It seems likely that pluralism will characterise law schools both internally and externally. Equally, projects such as the comparative marking project (Hanlon et al, 2004) suggest that consensus might be breaking down.

A common theme has also been that workloads have not only diversified but also increased (Scott, 1995; Jary & Parker, 1998; Henkel, 2000). Particular pressure points such as visits by the Quality Assurance Agency or the RAE can put enormous pressures on those involved – the personal accounts in Louise Morley’s (2003) book are both heart rending and disturbing in charting the effect of the quality regime on those subject to it. Those in law schools have had to take on new tasks in order to address the quality agenda, the need to locate new sources of funding and to find new ways of providing legal education in the light of the move to mass higher education. With workloads increasing in both volume and diversity it is hardly surprising to find that there is evidence of displacement, as academic staff try to offload work to administrators, who, in their turn, are trying to offload some of their excess onto academics; management of all kinds are equally engaged in this activity (Henkel, 2000; Kinman & Jones, 2004).

The student body itself has gone from being relatively homogenous to being heterogeneous. This in turn has meant that assumptions about ‘the students’ have to be questioned and discarded, and replaced with notions that encompass the diversity that is the reality. In order to address the student experience (an unfortunate term suggesting that there is only one – see Morley, 2003), much greater attention has to be given, in the new consumer led spirit, to providing a range of experiences appropriate to the range of student identities (Yorke, 2000; Yorke & Thomas, 2003).

The consequence of the changing context discussed above has been that the identities of legal academics have had to be reconstituted (Henkel, 2000). This challenge may be seen as either one of deprofessionalisation or reprofessionalisation (Morley, 2003) – that is, the loss of former professional identities or the reconstruction of new ones. Some have benefited from the change. Whole careers have been made out of administration (Luke, 1997) or producing RAE rated research (Elton, 2000), for example. For others, the effect has been more negative, even punitive in some cases. For example, being designated ‘non-research active’ can produce loss of esteem, whilst being required to carry out tasks such as those attaching the quality assurance agendas are not traditionally those to which lecturers are emotionally attached (Barrow, 1999; Newton, 2000).

This displacement – and many would argue diversion from engaging in activities to which lecturers are traditionally attached, such as research and teaching – can be disconcerting at least and destructive in more extreme instances (Henkel, 2000; Cownie, 2004; Kinman & Jones, 2004). The result, identified in a number of studies, has been a feeling of disempowerment characterised by a loss of control over aspects of the job with regard to teaching, research and even day to day matters such as presence in the office (Dearlove, 1997; Henkel, 2000; Morley, 2003; Cownie, 2004; Kinman & Jones 2004).

These changes may be due to a drive for standardisation, ostensibly to ensure equality of provision or even brand identity – having to produce materials in particular formats or teach in particular ways, for example. An extreme version of this would have the agenda of many lecturers dictated by both management and student demands. Even traditionally regarded academic freedoms, such as the ability to teach what a person thinks to be appropriate, have been to a degree undermined by requirements such as the law subject benchmarks and the need for outcome driven, rather than process driven, provision (Dearlove, 1997; Rolfe, 2002; Morley, 2003).

Feelings of disempowerment are exacerbated by frustration or anxiety arising from requirements to carry out tasks that are either impossible or seemingly pointless, or both (Kinman & Jones, 2004). The quality agenda provides evidence of both these phenomena. The whole quality agenda is premised on the notion of a quest for the continuous improvement of quality. This is impossible to achieve for two reasons. First, there is no agreed notion of what ‘quality’ is (Shore & Roberts, 1995). Those working in higher education are thus required to achieve something which has no clear or agreed characteristics. Secondly, the model of continuous improvement means that quality, whatever it might be, can never be achieved, as there is always room for improvement (Morley, 2005). Further, various quality assurance activities, paper trails and the like do not always seem to serve clear ends. If the object of the exercise is to improve quality, then one might expect to see improvement in student success and enjoyment as possible outcomes. Too often the lack of emotional attachment staff have to such exercises (Henkel, 2000; Cownie, 2004) is fuelled by a feeling that the exercise simply becomes an end in itself – “feeding the beast”, in one of Jethro Newton’s (2000) respondents’ memorable phrase – and compliance simply becomes ritualistic or dramaturgical (Barrow, 1999).

Not only are staff required to engage in activities that may be seen as impossible or pointless, but in some cases they undertake such things voluntarily. Whilst the notion of providing feedback on student performance, of whatever type, is educationally sound, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that particular manifestations of it do not fulfil the purposes for which they are designed (Hodgson & Bermingham, 2004). Thus, hours spent writing comments on student work are wasted because work is not collected, or because the student cannot physically read the comments written (often itself a result of rushing due to unrealistic deadlines for returning work, although in some cases, it must be conceded, appalling handwriting), or, even if these two hurdles are overcome, because the language used is not meaningful to the student (Chanock, 2000).

There may be a lack of common language on aspects of assessment that prevent engagement between marker and student. Similarly, time expended on developing virtual learning may be wasted if students prefer to learn face to face. Here there is some evidence that, notwithstanding assumptions that may be made about the attachment of the rising generation to electronic forms of communication, such technology is not always embraced wholeheartedly (Crook, 2002), and even developments such as e-books do not really seem to have taken off as a publishing medium.

Not surprisingly, the consequences of these developments have varied considerably. One theme that emerges is security. This has a number of aspects. Job security has become an issue. The traditional notion of a job for life is breaking down across the globe (Reich, 1993), and UK higher education has not been immune from such forces (Henkel, 2000). The notion of flexibility has resulted in an increase in short term, temporary, fractional and part time contracts, which in turn reduce feelings of security for those affected, whatever benefits they may bring to management.

Law does not have a tradition of individuals engaging in a long period of research prior to taking up a lectureship. Thus the tradition of gaining a PhD and then spending a number of years on short term postdoctoral contracts that characterises the career structure of those in, say, science (Henkel, 2000), is not paralleled in the career structure of legal academics;. Notwithstanding the trend to an increase in PhDs in law, the PhD is not yet the norm as an entry qualification (Cownie, 2004).

Insecurity of a less formal kind occurs in relation to the issues discussed above relating to changes in identity. As Mary Henkel (2000) points out, the changes have not been uniform across the sector. Her study found that those working in old universities tended to construct their identities in terms of their relationship with the subject, whereas those in the polytechnics/new universities tended to construct themselves in terms of teaching as their primary identity. The abolition of the binary divide has challenged such notions. It has meant that the new universities have acquired an explicit research agenda (Pratt, 1997; Elton, 2000), now regulated for all under the auspices of the RAE, whilst the old universities acquired the regulatory regime that characterised the former polytechnics under both local authority and CNAA control, which metamorphosed into the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Quality Assurance Agency.

This was not generally a welcome development (Henkel, 2000; Morley, 2003). As suggested above, there has been a structural power shift away from academic staff and toward management and students, which, for some, adds to insecurity about identity. Whilst this might affect those working in the sector prior to 1992 more acutely (Henkel, 2000), it seems evident that the reconstruction of collective and individual identity that has occurred since the unified sector was created has not yet been completed. So whilst Fiona Cownie (2004) suggests that law is a discipline in transition, this is occurring within a sector that is also in transition (Scott,1995, 1998, 2001).

A further dimension of security is personal security, and there is a strand in the literature that identifies threats from a number of sources. Sir David Watson (2000) refers to the issue of campus security as one of the “wicked issues” – one which is incapable of solution but has to be addressed. The issue has most often been addressed with regard to student safety, but it has implications of an ongoing concern for those working in universities.

A report published in 1998 (Campbell & Bryceland) found wide variations in campus security and in strategies for managing the situation. In a number of cases, designing security measures is difficult because of location – universities situated in city centres are particularly vulnerable because of the presence of uncontrollable public space. The same report also found considerable variations in relationships between universities and the police in terms of their respective roles in promoting campus security. Universities are always going to be vulnerable to criminal activity by their very nature and the accessibility of university premises, sometimes encouraged by institutions themselves as part of their community outreach activities. The effects of massification and the inevitable depersonalisation of the university experience mean that it is less easy to spot those who have no legitimate business on university premises, and we might therefore expect the unscrupulous to exploit this.

The types of crime identified by Campbell & Bryceland (1998) were predominantly, though not exclusively, crimes against property. Recent contributions have tended to point up threats to the person from disgruntled and aggressive students (for example Times Higher, 2003; 2003a; 2005f; 2005g; 2005h; Guardian, 2005; Lee, 2006) and from extremists (Kelly, 2005; Times Higher, 2005n; Guardian, 2005a), with the consequence that improvements in security have moved back up the agenda (Times Higher, 2005p).

Against the evidence of insecurity it is equally the case that some have benefited from the changes outlined above in career and personal terms. One feature of the growth in size and regulation has been that more managerial posts have been necessary, thus enhancing the careers of those filling them (Henkel, 2000; Morley, 2003). Those excelling in RAE research (Elton, 2000) or in quality assurance (Luke, 1997; Morley, 2003) have undoubtedly thrived in the reconstructed sector.

The literature has, however, also drawn attention to some of the less advantageous consequences of this brave new world we now inhabit – some 10 years ago, Ronald Barnett (1996) was able to talk of a new age of anxiety. A quick survey of the Times Higher in 2005 threw up a number of recurring themes – anxiety, stress, pressure and bullying were four commonly encountered terms (for example Times Higher, 2005; 2005b; 2005h; 2005k; 2005m; 2005o) – and this is not to criticise any paucity of invention for Times Higher headline writers, nor to underestimate the role of the Times Higher as manufacturer of news as much as reporter and barometer of the sector.

Many of the negative effects on those working in higher education could be related to the effects of the contextual changes outlined above, not least to the various regulatory regimes driving the need to demonstrate quality, visits by the Quality Assurance Agency and the RAE being two prime examples (Morley, 2001, 2003; Broadhead & Howard 1998; Times Higher, 2005o). A good example was provided by reporting of the recent National Student Survey. On 9 September 2005, the Times Higher (2005j) reported the initial results of the survey under the headline: “Students satisfied – official”. Two weeks later (23 September 2005), and following the inevitable league table, we find the NSS revisited under the headline: “Student poll puts staff under pressure” (2005m), reporting institutional responses to the survey.

This is but one example of a much wider phenomenon. The Association of University Teachers’ survey (Kinman & Jones, 2004) found widespread evidence of stress, anxiety and, in some cases, depression, deriving from a range of sources including the consequences of under-resourcing, quality assurance measures such as student evaluation, low levels of pay and esteem, and the consequences of being required to engage in activities to which respondents were not emotionally wedded, especially administrative requirements.

Evidence that higher education is characterised by a long hours culture (Times Higher, 2005e), and that one response to the pressures of the job is increased alcohol consumption (Times Higher, 2005d) will not come as a surprise. Reports that academics take fewer days off due to illness (Times Higher, 2005l) might, at first sight, appear to suggest that, contrary to suggestions elsewhere in the literature, we enjoy good health, but need to be examined further. It does not of course follow that fewer recorded days off equal evidence of good health. A more likely explanation might be that lecturers continue to work even when they are ill, because of the difficulties of rescheduling classes, or simply do not report themselves as being on sick leave on days they do not have any fixed commitments.

A lessening of job satisfaction also emerges from a number of studies (Henkel, 2000; Rolfe, 2002; Morley, 2003), which is a matter of concern given that a recent meta-analysis of nearly 500 studies (Faragher et al, 2005) found a significant correlation between lack of job satisfaction and stress, anxiety and other threats to mental health. It will be interesting to see the results of the recently announced Health and Safety Executive stress audit (Times Higher, 2005b) due to be published in 2006.

Legal education

What has all this to do with legal education? Nearly all of the studies to which reference has been made relate to higher education generally and do not seek to discriminate between disciplines or indeed sectors within higher education with regard to their findings, although I have, where appropriate, sought to make links to our discipline. There is some evidence of differences between the subsectors (old and new universities), in that the impact of increased workloads seems to fall more heavily on those working in new universities (Henkel, 2000). There may also be a correlation between low RAE score and stress (Times Higher, 2004). This is to a degree counterbalanced by the impact of (especially) the RAE on those working in old universities (Vick et al, 1998; Broadhead & Howard, 1998). The conclusion might be that individuals in both sectors are subject to pressures, but that those pressures may differ.

Other differences may also link to issues of gender, with women, who tend to occupy more junior positions in law schools or who are sidelined into administrative roles, being disadvantaged when set against traditional measures of success in the sector (Cownie, 2004), although, as commentators have acknowledged, women have taken advantage of new opportunities that have arisen as a result of, for example, the growth of the quality agenda (Luke, 1997; Morley, 2003).

The main findings outlined above were echoed in Fiona Cownie’s (2004) study. Law as a discipline is in a state of constant change, which inevitably creates tensions that might not exist elsewhere in the university. Each discipline has its own features, which influence the way the discipline is studied, taught and researched and the pressures and space created for those working professionally within it. Law has been particularly affected by massification, being the subject area with the highest number of UCAS applications in 2005 (BBC, 2005). The number of law lecturers has not increased commensurately (Harris & Beinart, 2005), resulting in high SSRs and a more depersonalised relationship with students. In many law schools the physical space available has equally not increased, resulting in more crowded educational and social space. The growth of a complaints, even litigious (Times Higher, 2005a; 2005c), culture identified by some writers (Morley, 2003; Times Higher, 2005i) might be expected to impact particularly on law schools, given the nature of the discipline and the values and skills it inculcates.

As with all aspects of higher education, constant change is the order of the day. The recent survey by Phil Harris and Sarah Beinart (2005) suggests that the number of law degree places is fast matching the number of applicants, which may yet intensify competition between law schools for students, although this has to be seen in the context of a discipline which has little difficulty in attracting applicants. Indeed, it might be suggested that law has moved from being an elite discipline in an elite system to being a mass discipline in a mass system. If this is correct, than a fundamental challenge lies in how the subject will develop, not least in accommodating those who, notwithstanding possession of entry qualifications, are not, at the point of entry and for some way beyond that, attuned to the requirements of higher education, let alone those of a discipline such as law.

To return to a point made earlier, we have moved from a situation where certain assumptions could be made collectively and individually about law students. These former certainties have gone and have not been replaced by any new assumptions, other than that there are no assumptions that can be made (Barnett,1997a) – it is almost the postmodern condition personified.

Conclusions

Any conclusions must necessarily be tentative, especially with regard to legal education. Many of the individual studies quoted above may be criticised methodologically, not least in that many of them depend on respondents reporting their experiences rather than on matters that are objectively verifiable. However, the cumulative picture is remarkably consistent in pointing to the direction working in higher education appears to be heading.

The experience of anyone working in a law school will differ according to the impact of a range of variables. It is suggested that the analysis above supports the conclusion that the three key variables are the nature of the institution, the nature of the premises and, most significantly, it is suggested, the managerial regime. Looking at structures only provides a limited view. It is how those structures play out in the lives of the individuals concerned that really determines the nature of the working life of any given individual (Morley, 2005), and the effects on their well being and, ultimately, their health. To return to the question posed in the title, the evidence would appear to suggest an answer of “potentially”, and in some cases “actually”.

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Biography of Graeme Broadbent

Graeme joined Kingston Law School in 2002. He previously worked at a number of law schools in the UK and abroad. Teaching and research interests lie in public law, criminal law, social work law and legal education.

Last Modified: 12 July 2010