Abstract
Enterprise bargaining was introduced into the higher education sector in the mid-1990s. This paper examines some of the ways in which it has provided an important mechanism for implementing the government's higher education modernisation agenda. The issue of academic 'autonomy' is focused upon, to explore the changing role of the academic as 'expert' in relation to education modernisation. The paper draws upon the governmentality literature, and in particular the work by Dean (1999), Dean and Hindess (1998), and Barry, Osborne and Rose (1996), which examines the changing basis of 'expert' autonomy in the public sector, from 'welfarist' to 'regulated' autonomy. The paper argues that enterprise bargaining is one means by which academics are being positioned into complicity with the current education modernisation agenda while at the same time being marginalised from effective contestation about its nature and direction.