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B9780080970868030014 PDF
B9780080970868030014 PDF
Hans Pechar, Institute of Science Communication and Higher Education Research, Alpen Adria Universitt, Vienna, Austria
Lesley Andres, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract
In this article, we focus, from a comparative perspective, on the traditional academic career within a university setting. We
commence by describing the various facets relevant to academic careers, including academic training, employment contracts,
hierarchies, and the case for and against tenure. We conclude with a discussion of current reforms and policy debates.
Academic Training
An academic career is characterized by an extended training
period. Increasingly, the PhD is the entrance requirement for
permanent teaching positions, research positions, or both and
is now standard at most research universities in OECD countries. However, there is signicant variation among academic
systems regarding how the training period is conceptualized
and interconnected with paid employment.
The range of doctoral training models is dened primarily
in terms of the nature of the relationship and the related
degree of dependence between the student and her or his
research supervisory committee and the degree to which
programs are structured. Doctoral programs fall on a
continuum ranging from almost complete independence (i.e.,
reading for a degree) where the student works independently
with minimal contact and input from a research supervisor and
committee and without a prescribed set of courses, to those
that are highly structured, in terms of programs of study, and
close surveillance by the research supervisory committee
(Kehm, 2006). Most doctoral students are required to produce
a dissertation that is original theoretically, conceptually, and/
or empirically. However, the nature and extent to which the
dissertation is assessed that is, whether examiners external to
the supervisory committee, department, and university varies
from program to program (Usher, 2002).
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International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.03001-4
Employment Contracts
Employment contracts can be either permanent or xed term.
Senior academics typically have permanent positions.
However, the dividing line between junior and senior
academics and the criteria that dene senior academics vary
among academic systems.
In many countries, senior academics have tenure which
guarantees higher job protection than does a regular permanent position (Finkin, 1996; Horn, 1999b). Because the case
for and against tenure is complex and controversial, we devote
a separate section to this topic. Types of tenure vary.
Academics in most European countries are civil servants who
can be terminated only under special circumstances; hence,
they are accorded high job protection. However, in most
instances only those holding a Professorship and Chair
benet from such protection. Academic tenure in North
America is different in that even in the public universities of
the United States and Canada, academics are not civil servants
but rather employees of the university. Academic tenure in
North America is the outcome of a long probation period
followed by rigorous peer review. This review involves peer
review both within ones university (usually at the departmental, faculty, and university-wide levels) and externally by
seeking expert opinions from academics from other universities. (In some countries, tenure status is not awarded
to academics. For example, in the UK, tenure was abolished
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Hierarchies
Academic systems are highly stratied with respect to reputation, salaries, and the working conditions of academics. In the
past, small elite systems that had preceded massication of
higher education were indeed stratied. However, subsequent
expansion has increased the functional differentiation of
academic work signicantly, and as a result has increased the
degree of stratication. During the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, most higher education systems adopted, in
one way or another, the Humboldtian ideal of unity of teaching
and research (although as Kezar (2013) rightly points out,
historically the academic profession has been one of continuous change). Massication of higher education, commencing
in the second half of the twentieth century, has partly reversed
this trend by creating sectors and segments that are devoted
primarily to teaching (e.g., the community college sector in
North America, the former polytechnics in UK, and Fachhochschulen in Germany). The research function is the most
important criterion for the stratication of reputation, income,
and working conditions. Typically, research universities have
higher reputations than teaching institutions. However, some
countries have elite teaching sectors, such as the private liberal
arts colleges in the United States or the grand coles in France.
The former are undergraduate institutions and the latter are
professional specialized schools that constitute the elite
segment of higher education and have a more esteemed reputation than research universities in France.
Mass higher education systems of today embody different
kinds of functional differentiation and reputational stratication. As a rule, national systems that are strongly steered by
governmental intervention are differentiated into different
sectors. In such systems, reputation, salaries, and working
conditions are usually quite different among sectors; however,
within each sector, little stratication exists. In most European
countries, public research universities are treated equally by
governments, irrespective of informal reputational hierarchies
(as expressed in rankings). As such, working conditions for
academics in each of the sectors are fairly equitable. In countries with more market-oriented systems such as the UK or the
United States, the research university sector is highly stratied
in terms of, for example, reputation, wealth, faculty access to
resources, working conditions, and composition of the student
body. Stratication among universities in the United States has
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