Alice Bennion

The Early Career Paths and Employment Conditions of the Academic Profession in 17 Countries

The expansion of higher education systems, new demands on institutions and growing pressures on resources have become common trends across most developed countries. They bring increased expectations of academic staff and appear to lead to greater differentiation in their work roles and activities. At the same time, the backgrounds of some academics are changing and they are developing new specialisms and interdisciplinary collaborations, becoming more mobile domestically and internationally and, for some, the profession is becoming increasingly insecure. The Changing Academic Profession study has produced a rich set of data on the preparation of academics for their roles and the individual circumstances of their working lives, among other aspects of the profession. Respondents to the survey reported on the degrees they have attained, the countries in which they studied for them, the age at which they qualified and the nature of the doctoral training they received. This paper explores the early career paths of academics, makes initial comparisons between different higher education systems and begins to explore how some of these national systems interrelate with each other through academic mobility. Respondents also reported on the disciplines they studied and now teach, the number of institutions worked in and their contractual conditions and income. These data give an indication of the various degrees of flexibility and mobility required of – or chosen by – academics in the early and later stages of their careers and the stability, or perhaps rigidity, of different higher education systems and national career patterns. The data also supplement other evidence of the employment conditions and remuneration of scholars in an increasingly globalised academic labour market. 1 , 2 The conditions of academic work are explored through analysis of the views of survey respondents on the facilities, resources and personnel needed to support it and the degree of research collaboration undertaken. Academics from the 17 countries in the study seem more content with the physical and technical resources provided by their institutions than the personnel and funds available to support teaching and research. Finally, it is suggested that the propensity for collaborative or individual research may be partially related to national differences in academics’ mobility during their training for the profession.

The United Kingdom: Academic Retreat or Professional Renewal?

In this chapter, we report a range of findings from the UK CAP survey that are relevant to the governance and management of HEIs and seek to interpret them within the context of UK higher education, the drivers that are influencing institutions and the changes occurring within the academic profession itself. We find that academics’ views on the governance and management of their institutions are differentiated by institution type in particular, but also by age, length of time in the profession, and gender. These distinctions bring into question the dominant discourse of change in the academy as one of loss, alienation, and retreat. Our analysis suggests that a more nuanced and differentiated approach is required if institutions and academics themselves are to achieve and sustain professional renewal. In particular, institutions seeking to differentiate themselves in the market will need to develop forms of governance and management that suit their particular mission and circumstances, rather than comply with government diktats.

Satisfaction in Stages: The Academic Profession in the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth

Academic staff are often presented in analysis as though they are a homogenous entity, but little could be further from the truth. In this chapter, we argue that academics differ in their responses to the changes and new influences in higher education and that this might be partly explained by differences in status within academic and institutional hierarchies, subject characteristics and generational differences. The academic staff population has been divided into three groups: a ‘young’ group of respondents under the age of 40 that entered academia via traditional pathways; a ‘mature, recent’ group of academics who are over the age of 40 and have entered the profession within the last 10 years; and an ‘older, established’ group. To provide a point of comparison, the UK respondents have been compared with equivalent age groups from the British Commonwealth countries comprising Australia, Canada and South Africa.