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Doing the dirty work of academia? Ancillary staff in higher education

by Marie-Pierre Moreau and Lucie Wheeler

Cleaning, catering and security staff fulfil an important function in maintaining and enhancing the social and material environment of higher education (HE). Yet this group has attracted limited considerations from researchers and policy-makers alike. Two notable exceptions, both in the US context, are Peter Magolda’s (2016) ethnography of cleaners on two university campuses, The Lives of Campus Custodians, and Verónica Caridad Rabelo and Ramaswami Mahalingam’s (2019) article, reporting on a mixed-method study of cleaners conducted in a single institution. Both pieces are concerned with cleaners’ perspectives, and both also comment on the invisibility of cleaners, which, they contend, goes at times hand in hand with their misrecognition.

A 2022 SRHE research award enabled us to conduct what is, to our knowledge, the first UK-wide study of HE-based ‘ancillary staff’ (a term we use to refer to cleaning, security and catering staff while acknowledging that this category is broader). Working in the evening on campus, I (Marie-Pierre) observed how cleaners would enter the building after most academics and professionals had gone home and worked diligently. I was struck by the contrast between the significance of their work and its relative absence from research and policy discourses. This absence is possibly even more surprising once one considers that ‘elementary occupations’ (under which catering, security and cleaning staff fall) represent 12% of the UK HE non-academic workforce (Wolf and Jenkins, 2020) – a percentage which does not take into account those on outsourced contracts who often experience high levels of precarity.

Against this background, our study sought to explore the experiences of ancillary staff working in UK universities and their contribution to the higher education sector. Of particular interest to the research team were the potential injustices faced by this group, Underpinned by a theoretical framework drawing on Nancy Fraser’s (1997) and Kathleen Lynch’s (2010) multi-level theories of social justice, we explored the economic (distributive), cultural (recognitional), political (representational) and affective in/justices experienced by this group.

The fieldwork for this project involved a search of the literature on ancillary staff in HE and other sectors and some observations of the working environment of ancillary staff. It also involved an online survey of UK HE institutions followed by Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. The original survey generated 24 replies in total, while 110 institutions responded to the FoI request. Finally, we conducted 20 interviews with ancillary staff, recruited through a diversity of routes and with a diversity of backgrounds and roles.

A first set of findings from the project relates to how organisational, administrative and scholarly processes work in ways which render this group invisible. On campus, they are rarely seen or heard, although this also varies based on the nature of their role. Cleaners appear particularly prone to invisibility. Many start their shift once academic and professional staff have left the premises. When ancillary staff have a dedicated workspace, it is often hidden from view. They are also often absent from staff directories, university websites and policy documents. Likewise, their exact numbers are often unknown, including, as we found out, to some universities. This invisibility is further compounded by the fact that, among ancillary staff, many are employed by private corporations. Finally, as noted above, this group is strikingly absent from the research literature, with very few exceptions.

Another set of findings relates to how ancillary staff experience the economic, cultural, political and affective in/justices theorised by Fraser and Lynch. In terms of economic or distributive justice, it is well known that cleaning, catering and security roles tend to attract low salaries compared with other categories of staff in the sector. Our study also highlights, inter alia, a lack of opportunities for career development. Interviewees employed in-house and those in catering and security roles were found to be more likely to be satisfied with their pay and working conditions. It was not unusual for outsourced staff in particular to go to work despite being ill due to being eligible for statutory sick pay only.

In terms of what Fraser refers to as cultural justice, some participants felt valued, while others shared feelings of misrecognition. Such feelings were found to be linked to economic justice. Porters, for example, reflected on how they enjoyed similar working conditions (eg paid leave) to other members of staff and were self-aware of the significance of their work in enabling their college or university to operate. They felt valued in ways many cleaning and outsourced staff did not. In comparison, one of the outsourced security staff we talked to explained how he felt like ‘a number’ to the contractor in charge of his placement, arguing that those employed in-house are ‘looked after’ better. While some participants felt respected by other staff and students, some, often cleaners, felt that some staff and students showed contempt for them. One commented on how ‘they [staff] sort of turn their noses up at people like us’ and on how they ‘look at you as if you’re a bit of muck on their shoe’.

In relation to political justice, the study generated two main findings. First, membership of unions and other professional organisations was rare. Many participants lacked awareness of unions (‘I’ve never heard of a union for the cleaning industry’, stated one). Others held negative views of unions. One participant explained how ‘I would never be a member of a union’, due to having seen them ‘use and abuse’ their power, while also stating, somewhat paradoxically, that they are ‘absolutely useless’. Second, also linked to political justice, the ancillary staff we talked to appeared to have limited input in decision-making at institutional level. Instead, they felt they had to comply with oft changing policies. One shared how they were told: ‘You don’t make decisions, you only follow process’.

Last, the research points to several injustices related to care relationships and what Lynch calls affective equality. In particular, the research shows that ancillary work can be, but is not always, compatible with caring responsibilities. For some, the ability to combine paid and care work had been a key factor in choosing their current job. One of the cleaning supervisors we spoke to, for example, explained how his early start enabled him to be back home in time to take his children to school. For some, their position had been made attractive by predictable working times (for example, one staff in a catering role would work from 7.30 to 3.30pm and then spend time with family). While security staff were overall more satisfied with other aspects of their work, this was different when it came to being able to combine paid work with caring responsibilities, with comments that ‘Security is not good hours, it’s too long’ or that ‘nights are hard’, and some describing their work-life balance as ‘pretty much non-existent’. In some cases, low salary meant that staff did not have any alternative but to work extra hours, which in turn led to limited work-life balance (‘it’s work-sleep-work-sleep basically’). The highest levels of work-life balance were found among those in catering role employed by the students’ union (so outsourced but with very different contractual conditions compared with staff outsourced via a private firm, with the former benefiting from a work timetable built around their teaching timetable). Also related to affective justice, interviews all highly valued collegiality among staff. This was often mentioned spontaneously by interviewees, in contrast with the research we have conducted on other categories of staff in the HE sector, including as part of a previous SRHE award (Moreau and Robertson, 2017, 2019).

Based on the findings from this project, the research report makes a number of recommendations for institutions, national stakeholders and researchers.  We hope that findings from this pilot project will raise awareness of this group, of the injustices they face and of their contribution to the sector.  

References (additional to those hyperlinked)

Fraser, N (1997) ‘After the family wage: A post-industrial thought experiment’ in Fraser, N (ed) Justice interruptus: critical reflections on the ‘post-socialist’ conditions New York: Routledge

Magolda, P (2016) The lives of campus’ custodians: Insights into corporatization and civic disengagement in the academy Sterling, VA: Stylus

Marie-Pierre Moreau is Professor in Sociology of Education, Work and Inequalities and Director of the Centre for Education Research on Identities and Inequalities at Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom. She blogs here.

Lucie Wheeler is a Research Assistant in education. They are both based in the School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, at Anglia Ruskin University, UK.


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The post-pandemic panopticon? Critical questions for facial recognition technology in higher education

by Stefanie Demetriades, Jillian Kwong, Ali Rachel Pearl, Noy Thrupkaew, Colin Maclay and Jef Pearlman

  • Stefanie Demetriades
  • Ali Rachel Pearl

This is one of a series of position statements developed following a conference on ‘Building the Post-Pandemic University’, organised on 15 September 2020 by SRHE member Mark Carrigan (Cambridge) and colleagues. The position statements are being posted as blogs by SRHE but can also be found on The Post-Pandemic University’s excellent and ever-expanding website. The authors’ statement can be found here.

The COVID-19 pandemic is vastly accelerating technology adoption in higher education as universities scramble to adapt to the sudden upheaval of academic life. With the tidal shift to online learning and increased pressure to control physical movement on campus, the use of surveillance technology for campus security and classroom monitoring may be particularly appealing. Surveillance methods of varying technological sophistication have long been implemented and normalized in educational settings, from hallway monitors and students IDs to CCTV and automated attendance and exam proctoring. Facial recognition (FR) technology, however, represents a fundamentally new frontier with regard to its capacity for mass surveillance. These increasingly sophisticated tools offer a veneer of control and efficiency in their promise to pluck individuals out of a mass of data and assign categories of identity, behaviour, and risk. 

As these systems continue to expand rapidly into new realms and unanticipated applications, however, critical questions of impact, risk, security, and efficacy are often left under-examined by administrators and key decision-makers, even as there is growing pressure from activists, lawmakers, and corporations to evaluate and regulate FR. Not only are there well-documented concerns related to accuracy, efficacy, and privacy, most alarmingly, these FR “solutions” largely come at the expense of historically marginalized members of the campus community, particularly Black and Indigenous people and other people of colour who already disproportionately bear the greatest risks and burdens of surveillance. 

Drawing on a range of scholarship, journalism, technology and policy sources, this project identifies known issues and key categories of concern related to the use and impact of FR and its adjacencies. We offer an overview of their contours with the aim of supporting university administrators and other decision-makers to better understand the potential implications for their communities and conduct a robust exploration of the associated policy and technology considerations before them now and over time.

Extending beyond their educational mandate, universities bear significant power to influence our collective future through the students they prepare, the insights they generate, and the way they behave. In light of this unique dual role of both academic and civic leadership, we must begin by recognizing the reality of deeply rooted systemic racism and injustice that are exacerbated by surveillance technologies like FR. Even in seemingly straightforward interventions using stable technologies, adoption interacts with existing systems, policies, communities, cultures and more to generate complexities and unintended consequences. 

In the case of facial recognition, algorithmic bias is well documented, with significant consequences for racial injustice in particular. Facial recognition as a tool perpetuates long-existing systems of racial inequality and state-sanctioned violence against Black and Indigenous people and other people of color, who are historically over-surveilled, over-policed, and over-criminalized. Other marginalized and vulnerable communities, including migrants and refugees, are also put at risk in highly surveilled spaces. Notably, facial recognition algorithms are primarily trained on and programmed by white men, and consequently have five to ten times higher misidentification rates for the faces of Black women (and other racially minoritized groups) than white men. The dangers of such inaccuracies are epitomized in recent examples of black men in Detroit being wrongfully arrested as a result of misidentification through FR algorithms.

With such substantial concerns around racial and social justice weighing heavily, the question then arises: Do the assumed or promised benefits of FR for universities warrant its use? We recognize that universities have legitimate interests and responsibilities to protect the safety of their students and community, ensure secure access to resources, and facilitate equitable academic assessment. Certainly, FR tools are aggressively marketed to universities as offering automated solutions to these challenges. Empirical evidence for these claims, however, proves insufficient or murky – and indeed, often indicates that the use of FR may ultimately contradict or undermine the very goals and interests that universities may be pursuing in its implementation.

With regard to security, for instance, the efficacy of FR technology remains largely untested and unproven. Even as private companies push facial recognition as a means to prevent major crises such as school shootings, there is little evidence that such systems could have prevented past incidents. Studies of other video surveillance systems, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), have also found little effect on campus safety, and extensive research on school security measures more broadly likewise challenges assumptions that increased surveillance materially improves safety.

As to FR’s advantages for monitoring learning and assessment, researchers have found that an overreliance on standardized visual cues of engagement—precisely the kinds of indicators FR depends on—can be ineffective or even detrimental, and there is further evidence that excessive surveillance can erode the environment of trust and cooperation that is crucial to healthy learning environments and positive student outcomes.

Significantly, the adoption of these technologies is unfolding in a context in which institutional capacity to manage digital security risks and privacy concerns is already strained. Indeed, the recent shift to online learning with COVID-19 exposed many of these vulnerabilities and shortfalls in both planning and capacity, as in, for instance, the unanticipated phenomenon of Zoombombing and widespread privacy and security concerns with the platform. In the case of FR, the high level of technical complexity and rapid pace of development make it all the more challenging for security measures and privacy policies to keep pace with the latest applications, risks, and potential liabilities. Furthermore, the systems and processes underlying FR technologies are extraordinarily opaque and complex, and administrations may not have the sufficient information to make informed decisions, particularly when relying on third party vendors whose data policies may be unclear, unstable, or insufficient.

The pandemic has ruptured the business-as-usual experience of campus life. In doing so, it impels a painful but necessary moment of reflection about the systems we are adopting into our educational landscape in the name of security and efficiency. In this moment of crisis, higher education has a collective opportunity – and, we argue, civic responsibility – to challenge the historical injustice and inherent inequalities that underlie the implementation of facial recognition in university spaces and build a more just post-pandemic university. 

Stefanie Demetriades (PhD, USC Annenberg) studies media, culture, and society, with a focus on cultural processes of meaning making around complex social problems.

Jillian Kwong is a PhD Candidate at the USC Annenberg School for Communication studying the evolving complexities tied to the ethical use, collection, and treatment of personal data in the workplace.

Ali Rachel Pearl teaches writing, literature, and cultural studies as a Postdoctoral Fellow in USC’s Dornsife Undergraduate Honors Program.

Noy Thrupkaew is an independent journalist who writes for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Reveal Radio.

Colin Maclay is a research professor of Communication and executive director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC.

Jef Pearlman is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Intellectual Property & Technology Law Clinic at USC.