Christine Musselin

Towards a European academic labour market? Some lessons drawn from empirical studies on academic mobility

In Europe, academic mobility has a long tradition which began with the birth of the European universities in the middle ages. Recently, European policies were strongly oriented towards the promotion of student and academic mobility and the creation of research networks and projects within Europe. Nevertheless, academic labour markets in Europe remain highly national and many obstacles hinder the development of European careers and the europeanisation/internationalisation of academic recruitments. Two different perspectives will be developed in this paper. First we will document the strong divergences among the national recruitment and careers processes within Europe and the problems raised by this situation. Second, we will draw on two empirical studies we conducted on academic mobility, the first one, led in 1995 in France, Germany and the UK and the second this year in France. Both studies show that most post-docs conceived their foreign experience as a personal strategy and aimed at improving their chances for recruitment in their own country. Within Europe, foreign country careers still are an exception due to “accidental” opportunities.

European integration and the governance of higher education and research

List of Contributors. Preface ALBERTO AMARAL AND PETER MAASSEN. INTRODUCTION. European Integration and the Europeanisation of Higher Education PETER MAASSEN AND CHRISTINE MUSSELIN. PART I - THE MANY FACES AND LEVELS OF HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY MAKING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION. The Bologna Process as Alpha or Omega, Or, On Interpreting History and Context as Inputs to Bologna, Prague, Berlin and Beyond GUY NEAVE. Process, Persistence and Pragmatism: Reconstructing the Creation of the European University Institute and the Erasmus Programme, 1955-89 ANN CORBETT. Boomerangs and Trojan Horses: The Unintended Consequences of Internationalising Education Policy Through the EU and the OECD KERSTIN MARTENS AND KLAUS DIETER WOLF. Networking Administration in Areas of National Sensitivity: The Commission and European Higher Education ASE GORNITZKA. Policy Implementation Tools and European Governance AMELIA VEIGA AND ALBERTO AMARAL. The Mission Impossible of the European University: Institutional Confusion and Institutional Diversity JURGEN ENDERS AND HARRY DE BOER. PART II - BENEATH THE ARROW: THE RESPONSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEMS AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL. The Side Effects of the Bologna Process on National Institutional Settings: The Case of France CHRISTINE MUSSELIN. The Implementation of the Bologna Process in Italy ROBERTO MOSCATI. Europeanisation of Higher Education Governance in the Post-communist Context: The Case of the Czech Republic PETR PABIAN. Parallel Universes and Common Themes: Reforms of Curricular Governance in the Bologna Context JOHANNA WITTE. CONCLUSIONS. On Bologna, Weasels and Creeping Competence ALBERTO AMARAL AND GUY NEAVE.

The Side Effects of the Bologna Process on National Institutional Settings: The Case of France

The successive declarations which punctuated the Bologna process since 1998 promote large ambitious goals – among them, competitiveness, quality, mobility, etc. – and rely on two main objectives to attain these goals. The first one has already been achieved in almost all signing countries and consists in the generalisation of a two-tier structure (bachelor and master) for all European curricula, most of them corresponding to a three year + two year cycle, even if variations are still to be found from one country to another or from one institutional sector to another in the same country (see, for instance, Witte 2006).

European Integration and the Europeanisation of Higher Education

European higher education is going through an important transformation. While during the first decades after the Second World War the sector experienced a period of relative stability in its basic national and institutional organisation and governance structures, more recently it has undergone far-reaching changes. Overall, the recent change dynamics represent a shift from internal to external control, consisting, amongst other things, of the introduction of externally initiated evaluation mechanisms, the professionalisation of institutional management functions and the growing pressure to be accountable to society. In addition, a change from central governmental planning and regulation of higher education to a growing reliance on a market-like competition in the steering of individual higher education institutions can be observed.

Les marchés du travail universitaires, comme économie de la qualité

Christine Musselin : Die Universitatsarbeitsmarkte als Wirtschaft der Qualitat. Der vorliegende Aufsatz will den Universitatsarbeitsmarkt untersuchen und genauer gesagt die Anpassungsmechanismen zwischen Angebot und Nachfrage zur Besetzung von freien Posten. Er stutzt sich dabei auf das Konzept der « Wirtschaft der Qualitat », das L. Karpik fur den Arbeitsmarkt der Rechtsanwalte entwickelt hat. Der Artikel zeigt zunachst auf, inwieweit die Universitatsmarkte ebenfalls Urteilsmarkte sind und untersucht die Abweichungen zwischen Rechtsanwalten und Hochschullehrern in drei Richtungen : Netzwerk der personlichen Beziehungen, Behandlung der Qualitatszwiespaltigkeiten und Festlegung des Preises.

Towards a Sociology of Academic Work

Different factors push for the inscription of the sociology of academic work on the research agenda. A first one stems from the fact it is still a relatively under-covered perspective in the study of the academic profession and thus can renew the existing approaches. But, fundamentally, the need to develop such a perspective is first of all that it is increasingly relevant at a time when in many countries universities are becoming more autonomous, more managed, more assessed, more responsible and more accountable. This evolution, combined with the massification experienced by this sector, is leading to a form of industrialisation of academic activities and to the progressive transformation of the higher education sector into a kind of industry (Gumport 2000). The impact of this major change on academic work has to be studied. This shift in the nature of the higher education sector is better noticeable in countries like the United Kingdom where reforms informed by the new public management narratives (Ferlie et al. 1996; Ferlie and Musselin 2008) and managerialist rhetoric were implemented. In the comparative work led in the late 1990s by Marianne, Ivar Bleiklie, Mary Henkel and Maurice Kogan on Norway, Sweden and United Kingdom (Bauer et al. 1999; Bleiklie et al. 2000; Kogan et al. 2000), this last country clearly appears as the one where national public policies on the one hand (Kogan and Hanney 2000) and the internal governance of the higher education institutions on the other, have been the more radically and deeply transformed. Within this collective project, it is the originality of Mary Henkels research and book (Henkel 2000) to aim at looking at the impact of this evolution on British academics from an innovative perspective. Building on the notion of community, she decided to shed light on the interplay between institutional and professional constraints. Thus, stating that academics are simultaneously affiliated to an institution and to a discipline, Mary Henkel decided to question the impact of the institutional changes on academics by looking at their identities and beliefs but also at their activities and practices.

Structures formelles et capacités d'intégration dans les universités françaises et allemandes

Christine Musselin : Formate Strukturen und Integrationsfahigkeit in den franzosischen und deutschen Universitaten. Dieser Aufsatz geht von einer empirischen Untersuchung aus, in der die Funktionsweisen von zwei franzosischen und zwei deutschen Universitaten verglichen werden, sowie von der Feststellung, wonach eine nur geringe funktionelle gegenseitige Abhaugigkeit zwischen den Aktoren dieser Art Organisation vorliegt. Er analysiert auf dieser Grundlage den jeweiligen Integrationsmodus, der innerhalb der Strukturen einer Federation von kleinen Produktionszellen pedagogischer und wissenschaftlicher Aktivitaten auftreten kann. Obwohl in dieser Art Organisation nur eine geringe funktionelle Integration vorliegt, wird hier aufgezeigt, dass die formellen Strukturen eine zwar ungewohnliche, jedoch unverzichtbare Rolle spielen beim Entstehen von Formen der sozialen Integration oder der Institutionalisierung, die die Entscheidungsfindung gunstig beeinflussen.

Les réformes des universités en Europe : des orientations comparables, mais des déclinaisons nationales

Quand on compare l’esprit et les objectifs des reformes universitaires que nous connaissons actuellement en France avec les orientations suivies par les politiques d’enseignement superieur et de recherche menees dans les autres pays europeens, on ne peut qu’etre frappe par la convergence que l’on peut y lire. Les memes objectifs et les memes registres de solution sont observables dans les reformes conduites depuis une petite trentaine d’annees. Pour autant, cette apparente homogeneite disparait des que l’on s’interesse, comme on le fera avec le cas francais, aux declinaisons concretes, et finalement profondement nationales, de ces grandes orientations.

The Recent Evolution of French Universities

The French agency for the modernisation of universities1 (Agence de Modernisation des Universites et des Etablissements, AMUE) was created in June 1997 as an expansion of a former structure called GIGUE (Groupement pour l’Informatique de Gestion des Universites et des Etablissements). It is in charge of disseminating university management software and offering services to universities in order to improve their management and internal practices. Shortly after its creation, this new agency commissioned a number of research studies aimed at obtaining knowledge of the current state of the French university system. One of these research areas was ‘university government’ and our centre, the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations was chosen to conduct this study. The study involved two large fieldwork projects. In 1998, a qualitative study based on 250 interviews was conducted in four universities with the help of graduate students from Sciences-Po Paris. A comparative report was written (Mignot-Gerard and Musselin 1999) for the AMUE. Drawing on the results of this first study, we designed a questionnaire that was sent to individuals associated with 37 universities in 1999. We received 1660 responses (from 5000 questionnaires sent), about 1100 from academics and 560 from members of the administrative staff (see the methodological appendix at the end of the paper). A second report was written in 2000 and delivered to the AMUE (Mignot-Gerard and Musselin 2000).

Research issues and institutional prospects for higher education studies

This paper explores two new perspectives for the research on higher education. Building on the case of Europe with a special focus on France, it first addresses the trend toward more competition and more differentiation that can be observed in countries that traditionally were more egalitarian and the strong implication of European states in reshaping their higher education and research systems. It also questions the social role of higher education while knowledge economies are engaged in a competitive race. Finally, it looks at the capacity of higher education studies to address such issues and critically questions how should this domain further develop.