without external funding

The Academic Profession in Europe: Reponses to Societal Challenges (EUROAC)



Abstract
The EUROAC project aimed at establishing how the academic profession perceives, interprets and “digests” recent changes in its societal environment and the organizational fabric of higher education systems. As regards the former, attention was paid notably to the growing relevance of knowledge, diversification and internationalization. For the latter, groups of Individual and Associated Projects in eight countries explored the impact of changes in government, management and evaluation, changing academic career settings, and professionalization. This is both within academic roles and through modes of interaction and division of labor between new higher education professionals and the academic profession. Research questions were: Relevance of knowledge: How do academics perceive and interpret the strive for knowledge in higher education? What challenges do they note to the (re-)definition of their own status, role and career? Diversification: What do the growing variety of functions expected to be taken up by higher education and the increasingly diverse spread of institutional responses mean for the individual (national) project? Do these trends foster new divisions of work, segmented career paths and professional identities? Internationalization: How do academics deal with growing international cooperation and competition? How does the individual (national) project see itself being affected by these changes beyond a mere increase in international activities? Governance: Is there a weakening of academic self-regulation and decision-making powers through strengthened leadership and external stakeholder guidance? Methods: The study consisted of two broad surveys: a quantitative online-survey and semi-structured interviews which used the results of the preceding study and focused on special topics in depth. Employees, researchers, teachers working at research institutions (universities, universities of applied sciences as well as non-university research organizations) have been interviewed. A quantitative survey that explored the academic profession was first launched in 1992, the „Carnegie Survey of the Academic profession”. In 2007 the topic was re-launched, enhanced by a more complex structure and more current topics: the ”Changing Academic Profession” Survey (CAP). The EUROAC study was a follow-up project, focusing on European aspects. It consists of two broad surveys: a quantitative online-survey and semi-structured interviews European data of the CAP-study (DE, FI, IT, NO, PT, GB participating) together with further 7 European countries (RO, AT, CH, IE, HR, PL, FI) brought out the EUROAC dataset, a large 12-country European data set with a high number of respondents. This was the largest and most systematic European dataset on the academic profession. The topics were: A – Career and Professional Situation, B – General Work Situation and Activities, C – Teaching, D – Research, E – Management. Semi-structured interviews scrutinized these topics more closely. In addition, each national project extended one of the topics and focused e.g. on Managerialism, Civic Mission, New professionals or Academic markets and careers.


Research Areas

Last updated on 2022-20-04 at 14:02