Introduction

Abstract

More than 100 scholars from 19 countries all over the world have cooperated over a period of 8 years (from 2004 to 2012) in portraying ‘The Changing Academic Profession (CAP)’ in comparative perspective. To launch this ambitious endeavour, they examined the state of knowledge about the academic profession and made strategic decisions about the directions they would choose for enhancing the state of knowledge. From the outset four thoughts were on their minds:

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1.1 The Scope of the Study

More than 100 scholars from 19 countries all over the world have cooperated over a period of 8 years (from 2004 to 2012) in portraying ‘The Changing Academic Profession (CAP)’ in comparative perspective. To launch this ambitious endeavour, they examined the state of knowledge about the academic profession and made strategic decisions about the directions they would choose for enhancing the state of knowledge. From the outset four thoughts were on their minds:

• First, this project is the second major effort in the history of higher education research to undertake a major comparative survey of the academic profession. Therefore, a look back to the first project of this type was natural in order to understand the typical potentials and problems of such an undertaking with the help of prior experience, to take this as an opportunity to examine changes over time and to identify challenges for the improvement of research on the academic profession.

• Second, the CAP project team, in reviewing the public discourses as well as the state of knowledge of higher education research and science research, noted that the academic profession has not been among the top priority areas in recent decades. Rather themes such as the expansion of higher education and its consequences; the relationship between academic knowledge and innovation; the extent of homogeneity versus diversity of higher education systems; teaching, learning, curricula and competences; the education and training function of higher education; the coexistence of teaching and research; research productivity; teaching, research and possibly other functions of higher education; higher education and graduate employment; and finally governance and management of higher education were in the ‘limelight’. Therefore this project was bound to underscore the argument that more attention needs to be paid to the core ‘workers’ within higher education and their perceptions of changes in their work and workplace.

• Third, even though the academic profession has not been a priority in the public debates and the respective research, the project team from the outset was aware of the fact that the academic profession could be an interesting multifaceted theme in the intellectual discourse and in the research activities on higher education and science. The need was felt to identify the major lines of such analysis both for the purposes of choosing thematic priorities in the questionnaire surveys and of interpreting the findings in the light of the major conceptual frameworks at hand.

• Fourth, the recent developments in higher education and science are often said to be extraordinarily dynamic. Therefore, the scholars collaborating in the CAP project decided to address ‘change’ not only in terms of changes in the views and activities of the academic profession in the most recent two decades but also in terms of paying attention to recent salient changes in the challenges to the academic profession in their external and internal environment. Three thematic areas were eventually pinpointed which ought to be taken into consideration in the new comparative study: the growing expectation that academic work should be relevant, the spreading internationalisation of higher education and academic work and the increasing power of managers in higher education.

1.2 The Predecessor Survey of the Early 1990s

1.2.1 The Carnegie Initiative and the Design of the Study

Entry rates to higher education beyond 10%, some years later beyond 20% and eventually beyond 30% were a reality in the United States of America long before they were realised in other parts of the world. Moreover, the systematic analysis of developments in higher education—that is, higher education research—emerged in the USA earlier on a substantial scale than in other countries. Already in 1969, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching initiated the first survey of the academic profession that addressed the attitudes, values and professional orientations of the professoriate, reviewed the working and employment situation and chronicled its changing demographic profile. In the 1980s, various literature studies, surveys and expert analyses of the Carnegie Foundation, guided by its President Ernest L. Boyer, stirred up enormous debates in the USA about the state of higher education—notably, as these studies made clear, that the public debate often had focused too much on the prestigious research universities and had overlooked the changes of the overall system related to rapid expansion and the changing social functions of higher education.

Underlying the surveys of the academic profession initiated by the Carnegie Foundation was a growing sense of crisis in the academic profession: The expansion of the higher education and research and their growing relevance was neither matched by improving conditions for academic work nor by a status uplift for the academic profession (see Clark 1987; various articles in European Journal of Education 18/1983/3; Finkelstein 1984; Bowen and Schuster 1986; Altbach 1991).

Ernest L. Boyer began the first steps for the preparation of a comparative study in 1990. He was convinced that the US audience would benefit from knowing whether issues of the academic profession were similar across the globe. Some of the major changes in the academy and the issues it faced were perceived to be worldwide, while in other respects, different traditions and different policies were evident. Thus, an international comparison seemed to be of interest. Moreover, the professoriate had developed more and more international communication and collaboration. Colleagues across the countries seemed to benefit from the international exchanges, and these exchanges seemed to enrich the world’s reservoir of knowledge.

The Carnegie Foundation explored possible research partners in different countries of the world, provided funds for partners from middle-income countries to undertake national surveys and volunteered to take the lead for the joint data processing and for the analysis of results. Preparatory meetings were held in 1990 and 1991 in order to develop a conceptual framework and a questionnaire drawing from the most recent US predecessor survey (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 1989; see Boyer 1990) while at the same time covering the key issues and the key conditions faced by a large number of countries.

Thus, in this first international survey of the academic profession, commonly called the Carnegie Survey of the Academic Profession, information was collected about the demographic facts of the profession, the employment and work situation, time spent on various activities, attitudes towards teaching and learning and actual activities in these areas, the governance of academic institutions, and morale. The survey was carried out in 15 countries (more precisely 14 countries and a ‘territory’) from all continents. The questionnaire was mailed in 1992 and 1993 to altogether more than 40,000 persons. Response rates varied from about 70% to less than 30%, and 19,161 respondents provided the information for the comparative analysis (see Altbach and Lewis 1996; Enders and Teichler 1995b, pp. 5–8; cf. the slight variation in the report by Whitelaw 1996).

1.2.2 The Synthesis of Results

A relatively short overview of the results of this first comparative study was published by the Carnegie Foundation in 1994 (Boyer et al. 1994). The major publication, made available 2 years later (Altbach 1996), was a collection of country reports supplemented by a comparative analysis on the part of two US scholars who had not been involved in the comparative project at the time the joint questionnaire had been developed. Scholars involved in the project published various national and comparative data analyses, among them substantial reports on Japan (Arimoto and Ehara 1996) and Germany (Enders and Teichler 1995a, b). Finally, several reports on the project contributed to a major conference of the Academia Europaea held in 1996, and the proceedings were published in the same year (Maassen and van Vught 1996). Also articles were published in a special issue of the journal ‘Higher Education’ in 1997 (Welch 1997).

The 1994 comparative report highlighted a broad range of findings (cf. the summary in Höhle and Teichler 2013). In most countries, the academic profession has remained more strongly male dominated than the USA, and the proportion of youth viewed as well equipped for study in higher education is rated smaller than in the USA. Across countries, scholars feel most closely affiliated to their discipline, but their sense of affiliation to their university varies widely. The role they attribute to research in their overall activities also varies. Across countries, the authors observed a relatively low degree of satisfaction with the prevailing modes of evaluating academic work. Salaries in most countries were viewed as high or acceptable. Overall satisfaction seemed to be high, and the overall academic climate was rated positively. Views varied significantly across countries as regards the assessment of working conditions, and in some countries, many academics considered their work to be a source of personal strain. Across all countries, academics expressed dissatisfaction with the prevailing conditions of governance. In most countries, academics felt academic freedom was sufficiently protected, while the views varied concerning the extent to which academics should play an active role in society. Finally, the majority of academics all over the world believe that international ties are highly important for the academic profession, though the actual incidence of international collaboration and mobility seem to differ strikingly by country. The analysis concludes ‘Scholars everywhere, while maintaining national distinctions, acknowledge common concerns – not just intellectually but professionally as well. And in the century ahead, three critical issues will influence profoundly the shape and vitality of higher learning around the world’ (Boyer et al. 1994, p. 21): student access and the balance of access and excellence, governance (‘How can the university reorganize itself to achieve both efficiency and collegiality?’) as well as the relationships between teaching, research and services (rewards and increased contribution to public good).

In the major publication of the Carnegie study, Altbach and Lewis (1996, pp. 47–48) summarise the findings of the country reports of as follows: ‘One cannot but be struck by the many similarities among the scholars and scientists in the diverse countries. It is with regard to those working conditions most affected by local political and cultural customs and policies that international differences are most apparent.

The professoriate worldwide is committed to teaching and research, and in varying degree to service. While there is a feeling that higher education faces many difficulties and that conditions have deteriorated in recent years, most academics are committed to the profession and to its traditional values of autonomy, academic freedom, and the importance of scholarship, both for its own sake and for societal advancement. Academics are not especially supportive of senior administrators, yet they express remarkable loyalty to the profession and to other academics. They seem prepared to respond to the call that higher education contribute more tangibly to economic development and social well-being. They believe that they have an obligation to apply their knowledge to society’s problems’.

After naming some differences between countries, the authors continue: ‘Resiliency, determination, and a focus on the core functions of higher education characterize the academic profession in these fourteen countries. While the vicissitudes experienced by the profession in recent years have been considerable, the professoriate is by no means demoralized. In all but three countries, 60% or more agree that this is an especially creative and productive time in their fields. Professors are generally satisfied with the courses they teach, and with few exceptions are pleased with the opportunity they have to pursue their own ideas. The intellectual atmosphere is good; faculty do not regret their career choices and are generally happy with their relationships with colleagues.

This portrait of the professoriate depicts a strong, but somewhat unsettled profession. Academics around the world are inspired by the intellectual ferment of the times. The intrinsic pleasures of academic life obviously endure. Academe is facing the future with concern but with surprising optimism’ (ibid, p. 48).

1.2.3 An Additional Interpretation

Some additional aspects are put forward in the overview of the major results presented by Teichler (1996), where he concentrates the analysis on six economically advanced countries and stresses the merits of a breakdown of responses into three groups: university professors, junior academic staff at universities and academics at other institutions of higher education. In summarising the findings of the Carnegie Survey, Teichler (ibid., p. 59) points out, first, that the academic profession ‘is more satisfied with their profession than the prior public debate suggested’. He underscores, though, that satisfaction is higher among university professors than the other two groups, and the areas for which dissatisfaction is expressed vary substantially by country. Second, a clear link between teaching and research has persisted for university professors. ‘Neither is research endangered because of teaching and administrative loads nor is teaching put aside to research-oriented motives and research-oriented assessment’ (ibid, p. 60). However, individual options vary strikingly among university professors, and the link between teaching and research is less obvious for large proportions of junior staff as well as for academics at other higher education institutions.

Third, the author notes surprising commonalities among university professors across disciplines, notably ‘in their value judgments about the university administration, about the role higher education is expected to play and about the views on how higher education is perceived and estimated in the public’ (ibid.). In contrast, the author notes substantial differences on many issues between senior and junior academics at universities as well as between academics at universities and other institutions of higher education.

Fourth, Teichler places a greater emphasis on differences between countries than the other authors. Among others, ‘the English senior academics at universities consider themselves more strongly a profession under pressure than their colleagues in other European countries’ (ibid, p. 61). According to the author, the country differences are striking ‘as regards the role foreign languages and international ­relationships play for their academic life. Sweden belongs to those countries, where a view prevails which I would call ‘internationalise or perish’. Germany belongs, as also Japan, to those countries which I would call ‘two-arena countries’: scholars might opt whether they more strongly prefer national or international involvement and visibility. Actually, the Dutch scholars seemed to be closer on average to their Swedish than to their German colleagues in this respect. Finally, many English scholars, though to a lesser extent than their US-American colleagues, seem to take ‘internationalisation through import’ for granted’ (ibid.).

Fifth, junior academics at universities are more a heterogeneous groups than professors as far as priorities and actual time spent for various functions are concerned. On average, they assess the working conditions favourably but are clearly less satisfied than university professors, though they are similar to them with respect to academic values.

Sixth, not surprisingly, the views and activities of academics at other institutions of higher education are clearly shaped by the dominance of teaching. They tend to be less satisfied with their overall professional situation than academics at universities.

Seventh, the administration is assessed by academics on average neither positively nor negatively. Most academics do not see any significant infringement as regards their academic work though some point out visible restrictions. Eighth and finally, Teichler points out that academics, though in the majority clearly defending the right to pursue research for its own sake, do not think of themselves as an ‘ivory tower profession’. Rather they expect research and teaching will help resolve basic social problems.

Altogether, according to this analysis, the international comparative study undertaken in the early 1990s does not depict the academic profession as suffering from status loss, resource restrictions or adverse administrative conditions. Criticism of the conditions for academic work is by no means infrequent, but the academic profession seems to be in the position to stress activities they favour and to shape their job role themselves in a predominantly satisfactory way.

1.2.4 Follow-Up Thoughts

This does not mean, however, that the Carnegie study was successful in changing the perception of the situation of the academic profession substantially. In depicting the public debate a few years afterwards, Enders—actually a team member of the Carnegie study and thus knowing its results very well—points out that the academic profession continues to be under pressure: rapid loss of status, tighter resources, reduced power of the academic guild and blamed for not providing the services expected. ‘Furthermore, one fears a decline in the faculty morale, disillusionment of their mission, seeing themselves as academic workers who are merely doing routine jobs and who are no longer strongly committed to the traditional norms and values of the profession’ (Enders 2001b, p. 2). Similarly, Altbach (2000b, p. 1) notes a ‘deterioration of the academic estate’. An even wider range of challenges is identified by Welch (2005a, p. 1) for the academic profession ‘in uncertain times’.

Some subsequent analyses have paid more attention to the situation of junior academics. Notably in European countries, the long process of concurrent learning and productive work and the high selectivity of the profession result in a long period of unsecure employment with reduced access to resources (see Altbach 2000a; Enders 2001a; Enders and De Weert 2004; Teichler 2006); apparently, junior academics in other countries such as the USA face similar problems (cf. Schuster and Finkelstein 2006).

In reviewing the state of research and public discourse on the academic profession about a decade after the Carnegie study, Enders (2006, p. 19) ends his overview article for a handbook with the following cryptic sentence: ‘Overall, the fate of the academic profession may lie solely in how it responds to changes that impact on universities and higher education systems worldwide in the coming years’.

The comparative studies on the academic profession thus lead to the following conclusions: The academic profession—possibly more so than in the past—is exposed to substantial expectations and pressures, but these expectations and pressures are not forcing scholars to develop a common view of their situation or of how they should act. Rather while academics believe they have to respond, they feel they have leeway for interpretation and for the selection of various directions of action.

1.3 Diverse Issues to Be Addressed in the Analysis of the Academic Profession

Though the academic profession, as already pointed out, seldom has been in the limelight of the public discourse on higher education as well as of research on higher education and science, we note that a broad range of themes could be on the agenda, if the academic profession was the focus of consideration (cf. the overviews in major handbooks by Altbach 1991; Morey 1992; Enders 2006; cf. also The academic profession (1983); Welch 2005b).

In laying the conceptual foundation for the questionnaire survey, six themes were identified to receive special attention both in the development of the survey questionnaire and for the subsequent analyses.

1.3.1 ‘Academic’

In employing the terms ‘academy’ and ‘academic’, we draw from a long historical tradition. One type of academy was as a formal organisation focused on education beginning with Plato’s school in ancient Athens. The other type of academy was an association for the protection and advancement of knowledge such as the Museum founded by Ptolemy I in the third century BC. From these early origins, academies of both types have been founded first in Western Europe and subsequently around the world; for example, the Arabs established academies in Cordoba and Samarkand.

The popularity of academies seemed to wane in the late medieval ages but again was resurrected in the Renaissance. For example, the Academie Francaise was established in Paris in 1635 and the Royal Society was established in London in 1660. These academies held meetings to discuss new developments in knowledge, published journals and sponsored selected projects.

Many who were welcomed as members in these early academies were independent intellectuals, but over time an increasing proportion had their primary association with a university or college or institute. So on the one hand, those associated with intellectual work looked to the academy as a locus for the validation of their intellectual achievements, and on the other hand, they looked to the formal organisations of higher learning for a worksite and a salary. Over the years, the concept of the academic came to be more firmly associated with those employed in the formal organisations and less associated with the academies. In recent decades, numerous academies have been established as major research centres, notably in the Soviet Union and some of the successor countries as well as in China, while in many other countries, the term academy was predominantly linked to associations of intellectuals.

Moreover, the term ‘academic’ is often employed for characterising the character of intellectual endeavours: ‘academic’ versus general in characterising college-­preparatory schools in contrast to other secondary schools and ‘academic’ versus professional study programmes in characterising those programmes closely linked to academic disciplines without an explicit preparatory task for a certain professional area.

In the framework of this study, the term ‘academic profession’ is being employed as one of the most neutral terms (similarly scholar or scientist) or as the most neutral term in the English language to cover persons employed at institutions of higher education for the purpose of teaching and/or research. It should be noted, however, that such a comparative study enforces the participants to free themselves from the specific historical connotations within individual countries in order to recognise the smallest common denominators. This might be illustrated for Japan and Germany—two countries represented by the authors of this publication. The book Henbô suru nihon no daigakukyôjushoku (Arimoto 2008) might be literally translated as ‘Transformation of the profession of the Japanese university professor’, but it is translated on the book cover into English as ‘The Changing Academic Profession in Japan’. And the German authors created a specific term ‘Hochschullehrerberuf’ (literally translated ‘The profession of the higher education teacher’), because there are formally separate terms in Germany for professors and junior academics and because the most suitable term in the German language, that is, ‘Wissenschaftler’, covers both scholars active at higher education institutions and at institutions or units in charge of research.

The third and fourth themes touch upon the work of the academic profession: What are the core functions of higher education and the core tasks of academics and the interrelationships of these tasks? And how are the configuration of these tasks and actual activities determined?

Across those specific themes, a cross-cutting theme is how similar and varied is the academic profession, and what have been the drivers for similarities in certain aspects across countries? Finally, it is important to address various issues of academic careers.

1.3.2 ‘Profession’

The term ‘profession’ is appropriate in the framework of this study, because the persons surveyed make their living with academic work and as a rule are ‘employed’ with a contract that guarantees money in exchange for regular work under specified work and employment conditions. A comparative project, however, faces the problem that the terms chosen in the individual countries have different connotations and the use of English as a lingua franca in an international project often creates the misunderstanding that the specific connotations of the term ‘profession’ in the United States and the United Kingdom also apply to other countries in the project.

In the United Kingdom and United States, we note—in contrast to many other countries participating in this project—a polarised terminology. The word ‘profession’ is employed only for a minority of occupations, which are characterised by specialised knowledge and training, by a certain degree of self-control, and possibly by strict rules of admission to this occupational group. In other countries, the terms might have completely different connotations: For example, the German ‘Beruf’ comprises all occupations, the university professor and the cleaning personnel, and can be literally translated as a ‘calling’.

In the framework of a study on the academic profession, it is certainly important to understand the extent to which scholars employed at institutions of higher education consider themselves jointly belonging to an occupation characterised both by a specific institutional home and the functions of these institutions. Four issues are frequently discussed suggesting that such a common understanding of an academic profession cannot be taken for granted.

First, many academics consider themselves to be affiliated more clearly to an academic discipline than to any institutional type. The relevance of disciplines is visible in higher education by the fact that some institutions concentrate on certain disciplines or disciplinary groups (e.g. colleges of fine arts) and that many universities have established organisational subunits (faculties, schools, departments, etc.) along disciplinary lines. Moreover, a mathematician might consider any other scholar specialised in mathematics as a ‘colleague’—irrespective of whether the other mathematician works at his institution of higher education, another institution of education, a research institute or possibly an R&D unit of the company. There might be multiple senses of affiliation, but an institution of higher education cannot take for granted that the pro­fessional loyalty of their academic employee rests primarily with their institution.

Second, the professor can be viewed as being at the apex of a ladder in a certain professional area. University professors can be understood as exemplars of the ‘key profession’ (Perkins 1969), that is, as having the highest expertise in particular professional areas which are instrumental in enhancing the professional competence in these areas beyond academia. The university professor of engineering is not only at the top of his academic discipline within engineering, but she or he is also the top knowledgeable expert of his or her engineering profession. The element of the key profession, in reverse, plays a role in Latin American countries, where many regular university professors are primarily professionals in their respective areas of practice (e.g. lawyers), yet they spend a substantial proportion of their overall work time as university professors, thus in their double role being permanent two-way transmitters of knowledge.

Third, the conditions for the different status groups of persons undertaking teaching and research activities might be so distinct that no common affiliation to a single occupational category is likely. The strong emphasis placed on titles, for example, ‘professor’, points in this direction. In Germany, for example, the Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that academic freedom in the strict sense applies only to university professors, and, as already pointed out, different occupational terms are employed for professors and other academic staff.

Fourth, diversity in higher education is so pervasive in some countries that those employed in certain sectors of the higher education system do not feel they are part of the same occupational category as their counterparts in other sectors. It might be questionable, whether the ‘Harvard’ scholar has as much institutional loyalty as the ‘Mitsubishi’ employee. However, institutional types can be interpreted in some countries certainly as a ‘watershed’. A senior academic at another higher education institution in the Netherlands or in Finland—countries where a doctorate is not viewed as being the normally required entry qualification for senior academic positions at those institutions—might be viewed as having hardly anything in common with a university professor.

The relevance of those segmentations, possibly pointed out on the basis of conceptual frameworks, is by no means trivial for a comparative study. In some countries, the average number of publications produced by a person defined in this project as belonging to the academic profession might be considered to be an interesting piece of information. In other countries, this information might be considered as irrelevant as the average temperature across days and night across the whole year, while information about average summer temperature or average winter temperature might be viewed as relevant. For example, the German study on the findings of the Carnegie study (Enders and Teichler 1995b, pp. 50–51) reports that university professors had 19 publications on average in the most recent 3 years, junior staff at universities 9 publications and academics at other institutions 6 publications, but it does not provide an aggregation of the number of publication of the average academic (employed at any higher education institution) in Germany.

1.3.3 Academic Work and the Functions of Higher Education

Higher education is generally viewed to be responsible for the generation, preservation and dissemination of systematic knowledge. In transferring functions into the tasks of the core personnel of higher education institutions, teaching and research are generally named, while terms and concepts vary regarding other functions of higher education and other tasks of the academic profession, for example, ‘service’ being often named in recent years.

Historical accounts of higher education point out that teaching and research have not always been named as the key functions. Nevertheless experts agree that most higher education institutions at the apex of the national higher education systems all over the world have been influenced by the ‘idee’ of the university formulated in the early nineteenth century by Wilhelm von Humboldt, that is, the ‘unity of research and teaching’. High-quality universities all over the world are based on the belief that the close interaction of research and teaching within a higher education institution is mutually beneficial for both functions. Academics’ involvement in research can ensure that teaching is based on the cutting edge of new knowledge, and academics’ involvement in teaching can turn out to be creative for generating new ideas for research as well as for including the next generation of scholars early on in creative research activities.

However, the linkages between research and teaching are not always as close as the widely shared view about the pervasive influence of the idea the ‘unity of research and teaching’ suggests. First, a close link between research and teaching seems to apply only for parts of the overall higher education and research system. On the one hand, statistics on funding of higher education and research as well as on higher education and research staff show that only the minority of the research activities in all major economically advanced countries are accommodated within higher education; the major bulk of research takes place within industry (often called ‘research and development’) or in research institutes outside higher education—though to a varying degree by country. Only ‘basic research’ seems to be predominantly located within universities, but this privilege seems to be losing its momentum in recent decades with the increasing societal expectation for research to be visibly relevant, as often underscored in recent years with terms such as the ‘knowledge society’, the ‘knowledge economy’, ‘targeted research’ and ‘mode 2 research’. On the other hand, the growth of enrolment in higher education has led to an increasing diversification of higher education institutions, whereby sizeable proportions of the institutions of higher education systems are expected to concentrate exclusively or predominantly on teaching. While in some countries, a clear divide of institutional types has been established, the mix of functions varies from one institution to the next in other countries. In Europe, the term ‘university’ is reserved in most countries for those institutions that strive for a balance of research and teaching; in the United States and some other countries, terms such as the ‘research university’ are employed in order to underscore that not all of the institutions of higher education that call themselves ‘universities’ pursue the ideal of a balance of research and teaching.

Second, the ‘unity of research and teaching’ often is not consistently reinforced even in those institutions striving for a balance of research and teaching. At some institutions, the teaching load or expected contact hours with students might be more or less the same for all professors, while at other institutions, the teaching assignment might differ widely between professors. At some institutions, junior academics are expected to teach and to undertake loads similar to senior academics, while at other institutions, they may have lower teaching loads than senior staff. At some institutions again, some of the junior staff have predominantly research tasks, while at others they may largely have teaching tasks. Institutions of higher education might vary in the extent to which they evidence concern for the proper training for teaching as well as for proper research training or the extent to which they leave this to the academics themselves. Also they may vary on the extent to which competences in these various tasks are taken into consideration in personnel policies. As a rule, teaching tasks are more highly regulated and supervised within higher education institutions than are research tasks, while research tasks are often strongly affected by external grants, reputations built up for the external world, etc. Moreover, higher education policies and the general public climate change over time in putting the emphasis for some period on accommodating large numbers of student, in raising the quality or raising the relevance on teaching, in increasing resources for research, in underscoring the quality of research, in emphasising the relevance of research, etc.

Third, even under these changing conditions favouring a balance or putting more emphasis on one of these two major tasks, the situation is vulnerable as regards the efforts of the individual academics to strike a balance between teaching and research. The enormous freedom of shaping the schedules of academic work for the academics themselves does not only imply a chance for them to find individually a suitable linkage between research and teaching, but they might be overwhelmed by the acute regulations and pressures for taking care of teaching so much that they do not find time and energy to protect the less regulated research tasks or they might be driven so much by the resources, incentives and conditions for achieving a reputation in the area of research that the teaching tasks are not paid appropriate attention.

1.3.4 The Issue of ‘Academic Freedom’

The academic profession generally is viewed as a profession with enormous leeway for the individual academics to shape their work by themselves. This highly appreciated opportunity is often called ‘academic freedom’.

‘Academic freedom’ can be defined as ‘a situation in which individual academics might act without consequences that can do damage to their status, their tenure as members of academic institutions, or their civil conditions’ (Shils 1991, p. 5). It might be specified further: ‘Academic freedom is a situation in which academics might choose what they assert in their teaching, in their choice of subjects for research, and in their publications. Academic freedom is a situation in which the individual academic chooses a particular path or position of intellectual action. Academic freedom arises from a situation in which authority … cannot prevent the academic from following the academic path that his intellectual interest and capacity proposes’ (ibid., pp. 5–6).

Academic freedom is advocated—not merely by the academics themselves for serving their interest—in order to ensure that academic activities are not limited by conventional wisdom. Research is more likely to be innovative and creative, and graduates from higher education are more likely to cope with unforeseen and indeterminate work tasks and undertake superior problem-solving on the job. Critical thinking may also challenge the status quo of knowledge in its search for completely new insights.

Two different discourses on academic freedom should be identified. First, the extent of the right and opportunity of academics to decide about the nature or organisation of academic work is at stake: Do those in power—laws and orders, governments, boards, university and faculty managers and administrator, etc.—instruct the academics what to do and not to do? To which extent do they control and supervise academic work? Moreover, do incentives and sanctions, resources, etc. restrict the opportunities of following the academic paths the academics might choose?

Views vary whether the second issue should be considered to be in the domain of ‘academic freedom’ or not: the extent to which academics can choose their academic activities freely according to the rationales of the knowledge system and the extent to which they ‘pursue knowledge for its own sake’ or, in reverse, the extent to which they are expected—or even held accountable—to take into consideration in their academic work the practical value of their academic work for culture, society, economy and technology.

It is generally assumed that academic freedom cannot be unlimited in terms of the right of proclaiming any ‘knowledge’ which cannot be viewed as ‘true’ according the minimum consensus of academic endeavour or in terms of a right to refuse any cooperation necessary to shape jointly a study programme. But beyond these generally accepted views about misuse, we note an extraordinarily broad range of views about acceptable instruction, controls, incentives and pressures to conform to the presumed standards of quality, to do academic work effectively and to undertake presumably relevant academic work.

As will be discussed below, the CAP team has decided in the initial phase to pay attention notably to three issues where most experts assume substantial change in recent years, whereby two are closely linked to the issue of ‘academic freedom’: the increasing power of university management as well as the increasing expectations to undertake visibly relevant academic work.

1.3.5 Specific Models of the University and Global Trends

Higher education systems in the various countries of the world are influenced both by worldwide common challenges and approaches as well as by specific characteristics typical of particular regions, countries and institutions. On the one hand, higher education undoubtedly is shaped by the universalistic elements of the various disciplines, by worldwide discourses about the best possible solutions, by international cooperation and by global competition for academic success. On the other hand, we note striking differences between higher education systems all over the world. Variations between countries might reflect the different extent to which certain ‘models’ of higher education have taken root within the respective countries; they might be the results of national traditions and rules, for example, regarding the occupational system for which study programmes prepare students, and they might mirror the political approaches currently prevailing in the respective countries.

As regards ‘models’, many historians point out that the concepts of the modern university, which became dominant at the beginning of the nineteenth century, remained highly relevant up to today (see, e.g. Perkins 1991). For example, the Humboldtian model emerging in Germany seem to have had on the one hand a worldwide influence in terms of an appreciation of a close link between teaching and research but on the other hand served as a specific model in seeing the university professor as a person primarily devoted to research, whereby the research-­related knowledge transmission and the academic discourse between the scholars and the students ensure the students’ intellectual enhancements without any strong emphasis on professional skills of teaching and the logic of the teaching and learning process. In contrast, efforts to foster deliberate mechanisms of teaching and learning and to qualify the scholars explicitly for teaching played a strong role in the English tradition, whereby education was viewed as playing a substantial role in the cultural enhancement and personality development of the learners. Over the years, research began to play an increasing role but not in the Humboldtian tradition of subordinating the logic of teaching and learning to the rational of research-type inquiry. Finally, the Napoleonic model spread from France to many countries of the world, with its strong emphasis on an intellectually demanding professional training.

Experts agree that higher education in the United States has absorbed various components of the German and the English ‘model’ and eventually developed various indigenous characteristics which had a strong impact on higher education worldwide in the twentieth century (see Ben-David 1977). Three elements are most frequently noted in this respect: first, the establishment of graduate schools to synthesise learning through research and deliberate educational efforts at competence enhancement; second, the strong power of university management as a mechanism of striking a balance between the need for ‘academic freedom’ and the quest for societal relevance through close communication between those in power and the academic profession; and third, the enabling of an early and pervasive process of expansion of higher education and research through a flexible system of vertical and horizontal diversity (see Trow 1974, 2006). These features turned out to be highly influential all over the world after World War II (see Ben-David 1977; Rüegg 2011).

Many experts point out that pressures have increased in recent years to follow a global model of successful higher education, and the room for diverse models or national patterns of higher education is clearly on the decline. Recommendations originating from the World Bank to middle-income and low-income countries as well as the normative components underlying the most popular international ‘rankings’ of ‘world-class universities’ are widely viewed as incarnations of the new ‘global’ model (cf. the debates on ranking and world-class universities in Sadlak and Liu 2007; Shin et al. 2011).

1.3.6 Academic Careers

Academic careers are characterised—in comparison to other occupations held by university graduates—by a relatively late start, by a very long initial phase and, correspondingly, by a late consolidation.

• While entry to the legal, medical or engineering occupations, for example, is in most countries largely predetermined by the choice of the field at entry to higher education or soon afterwards, entry to the academic profession remains open in most cases up to the award of a master or equivalent degree. This is due to the fact discussed above that the academic profession is not a professional specialisation along others but rather is the key profession, that is, the intellectual apex for all professions.

• The period of learning and maturation for eventually being considered a fully fledged member of the academic profession is enormously long. While in other occupational areas university graduates might be considered to be fully competent professionals 1–3 years after graduation, the ‘formative years’ of academics (Teichler 2006) might comprise a period of 10–15 years after graduation in which they are assumed both to do productive academic work and enhance the competences considered necessary to be a full-fledged member of the academic community.

• In many countries of the world, academics eventually reach a consolidated professional status and position at a comparatively advanced age. Often, the transition from a provisional and partial learner status to a full-fledged member of the academic professional with all the academics right and a solid employment situation takes place at the age of about 40 years on average.

Additionally, the formative career stage of the academic profession is highly selective in many countries. While in most other profession the majority of those entering the profession will persist, unless they want to change or the profession experiences an overall shrinkage, only a minority—in some countries as low as one tenth—of those opting for the initial steps of academic work will end up in a consolidated position within the higher education and research system.

Moreover, the academic career might be characterised by a discrepancy of reputation and remuneration. Academic employment and work is viewed in most countries as highly prestigious and respected. And academics tend to have strong intrinsic motivation and a strong affiliation with their academic role. Yet, remuneration does not match in most countries the degree of selectivity and reputation; in various countries, remuneration of academics does not surpass substantially the average income of university-trained persons.

1.4 Recent Major Changes Affecting the Academic Profession

An analysis of the academic profession cannot merely address those features of the academic environment, the academic work and the academic careers that have persisted for decades. Rather, the academics’ situation and activities are in constant flux. Therefore, special attention has to be paid to recent changes. In the starting phase of the project ‘The Changing Academic Profession’ (CAP), the scholars initiating the new project were convinced that three ‘key challenges’ have gained prominence recently: a higher expectation of relevance, a growing internationalisation and a substantially increased managerial power in higher education (see Kogan and Teichler 2007b; Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University 2006; cf. the more detailed explanations in Cummings 2006; Brennan 2007). To quote Kogan and Teichler extensively:

1.4.1 Relevance

‘Whereas the highest goal of the traditional academy was to create fundamental knowledge, what has been described as the ‘scholarship of discovery’, the new emphasis of the knowledge society is on useful knowledge or the ‘scholarship of application’. This scholarship often involves the pooling and melding of insights from several disciplines and tends to focus on outcomes that have a direct impact on everyday life. One consequence is that many future scholars, though trained in the disciplines, will work in applied fields and may have options of employment in these fields outside of the academy. This provides new opportunities for more boundaryless forms of academic career and knowledge transfer while it may also create recruitment difficulties in some places, and especially in fields such as science, technology and engineering.

There are strong interdependencies between the goals of higher education, the rules for distributing resources, and the nature of academic work. The changes associated with movement from the ‘traditional academy’ with its stress on basic research and disciplinary teaching to the ‘relevant academy’ are largely uncharted and are likely to have unanticipated consequences. The task of the project is therefore to understand how these changes influence academic value systems and work practices and affect the nature and locus of control and power in academe’ (ibid., p. 10).

1.4.2 Internationalisation

‘National traditions and socio-economic circumstances continue to play an important role in shaping academic life and have a major impact on the attractiveness of jobs in the profession. Yet today’s global trends, with their emphasis on knowledge production and information flow, play an increasingly important role in the push towards the internationalisation of higher education. The international mobility of students and staff has grown, new technologies connect scholarly communities around the world, and English has become the new lingua franca of the international community.

The economic and political power of a country, its size and geographic location, its dominant culture, the quality of its higher education system and the language it uses for academic discourse and publications are factors that bring with them different approaches to internationalisation. Local and regional differences in approach are also to be found. Therefore, questions are raised about the functions of international networks, the implications of differential access to them and the role of new communication technologies in internationalising the profession’ (ibid., pp. 10–11).

1.4.3 Management

‘In academic teaching and research, where professional values are traditionally firmly woven into the very fabric of knowledge production and dissemination, attempts to introduce change are sometimes received with scepticism and opposition. At the same time, a greater professionalization of higher education management is regarded as necessary to enable higher education to respond effectively to a rapidly changing external environment. The control and management of academic work will help to define the nature of academic roles—including the division of labour in the academy, with a growth of newly professionalised ‘support’ roles and a possible breakdown of the traditional teaching/research nexus. New systemic and institutional processes such as quality assurance have been introduced which also change traditional distributions of power and values within academe and may be a force for change in academic practice. The project will examine both the rhetoric and the realities of academics’ responses to such managerial practices in higher education.

A number of views can be discerned about recent attempts at the management of change in higher education and the responses of academics to such changes. One view would see a victory of managerial values over professional ones with academics losing control over both the overall goals of their work practices and their ­technical tasks. Another view would see the survival of traditional academic values against the managerial approach. This does not imply that academic roles fail to change, but that change does not automatically mean that interests and values are weakened. A third view would see a ‘marriage’ between professionalism and managerialism with academics losing some control over the goals and social purposes of their work but retaining considerable autonomy over their practical and technical tasks. The desirability of these three different positions is also subject to a range of different views’ (ibid., p. 11).

1.5 The Second Comparative Survey of the Academic Profession

In 2004, William Cummings, professor at George Washington University (Washington DC, USA), invited higher education researchers from various countries to collaborate in a new comparative study on the academic profession and to raise funds from their respective national sources. In the framework of five meetings held from 2004 to 2006 in Paris (France), London (United Kingdom), Stockholm (Sweden), Hiroshima (Japan) and Kassel (Germany), the state of research on the academic profession was carefully analysed, the conceptual base of the new project was developed, the methodological approach was specified and the questionnaire was formulated (see the documentation of the key contributions to the preparatory workshops in Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University 2006; Kogan and Teichler 2007a; Locke and Teichler 2007).

Scholars from 19 countries (more precisely, 18 countries and 1 territory) succeeded in raising funds to participate in the survey predominantly in the years 2007 and 2008. About half of them had participated in the Carnegie study and thus provided the basis for a sub-analysis of the extent to which the situation and the views of the academic profession had changed over time.

The major financial supporters for the CAP study have been in Argentina, Agencia National de Promoción de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ANPYCT), Ministerio de la Ciencia y la Tecnología de la Nación as well as Programa de Promoción de la Universidad Argentina (PPUA), Secretaria de Políticas Universitarias, Ministerio de Educación; in Australia, Centre for Higher Education Management and Policy (CHEMP), University of New England as well as LH Martin Institute, University of Melbourne; in Brazil, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP); in Canada, Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and Training (CHET) and Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia as well as Ontario Research Chair in Postsecondary Education Policy and Measurement, University of Toronto; in China, Ford Foundation—China Office; in Finland: Ministry of Education and Culture; in Germany, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung as well as International Centre for Higher Education Research, University of Kassel (INCHER-Kassel); in Hong Kong, Research Grants Council of the University Grants Committee, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China; in Italy, Compagnia di San Paolo; in Japan, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS); in Korea, National Research Foundation of Korea; in Malaysia, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia as well as Universiti Sains Malaysia; in Mexico, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Fondo para la Consolidación de Universidades Públicas Estatales y con Apoya Solidario, Dirección General de Educación Superior, Secretaría de Educación Pública as well as Programa Intergral de Fortalecimiento Institucional; in the Netherlands, Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (Min. OC&W); in Norway: Research Council of Norway as well as Committee for Mainstreaming—Women in Science; in Portugal, Centro de Investigação de Políticas do Ensino Superior (CIPES); in South Africa, Ford Foundation; in the United Kingdom, Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Universities UK, GuildHE, the Higher Education Academy as well as University and College Union; and in the United States of America, George Washington University and Seton Hall University.

The project ‘The Changing Academic Profession (CAP)’ has been coordinated by William Cummings. Major decisions were taken by a concepts commission chaired by John Brennan (Centre for Higher Education Research and Information of the Open University, located in London, United Kingdom) and by a methods commission chaired by Martin J. Finkelstein (Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, USA). The data coordination was undertaken by Ulrich Teichler (International Centre for Higher Education Research, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany).

Team members wrote analyses on select themes on the occasion of about a dozen joint conferences held from 2007 to 2012 in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway and the United States. Some results were published in conference proceedings (Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University 2008, 2009, 2010; Diversification of Higher Education and the Academic Profession 2010; Fernández Lamarra and Marquina 2012), and national studies of the academic profession in comparative perspective were published in some countries (Coates et al. 2009; Aarrevaara and Pekkola 2010; Bentley et al. 2010; Jacob and Teichler 2011; Rostan 2011; Cummings and Finkelstein 2012). The major results of the study, however, are expected to be published in comparative perspective from 2011 to 2013 in the book series ‘The Changing Academy—The Changing Academic Profession in Comparative Perspective’ published by Springer. The first two volumes of this type were published in 2011 and 2102 (Locke et al. 2011; Bentley et al. 2013). In addition to a general overview in this book, further volumes are envisaged on academic biographies and careers, job satisfaction and its determinants, the internationalisation of the academic profession, teaching and research as well as on the academic profession in emerging countries.

It might be added finally that the CAP study triggered two subsequent comparative studies on the academic profession. First, the coordinator of the German CAP study initiated a research consortium comprising a larger number of European countries. In the study ‘The Academic Profession in Europe: Responses to Societal Change’ (EUROAC), funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and national research promotion agencies, scholars from six additional European countries (Austria, Croatia, Ireland, Poland, Romania and Switzerland) undertook a questionnaire survey in 2010 which in most parts is identical to the CAP questionnaire. Through a merger of these data with those of the European countries of the CAP survey, a comparison can be undertaken of 12 European countries (cf. Kehm and Teichler 2013; Teichler and Höhle 2013). Second, the Japanese researchers involved in the CAP project invited scholars from other Asian countries in 2011 to join a new project on the academic profession in Asia.

The emergence of these new studies suggests that the comparative analysis of the academic profession does not remain anymore an only occasionally addressed theme of higher education research. Also, as the number of countries grows, the quality of systematic information on the academic professions tends to increase.

1.6 This Volume

This volume intends to provide an overview on the major findings of the CAP project. It covers more or less all themes addressed in the common questionnaire. Thus, a comprehensive presentation is put forward without in-depth discussion of the prior state of knowledge and without a detailed interpretation of the findings—tasks to be left to the thematic volumes.

Three authors have contributed to this volume—actually those members of the international research team who played major coordination roles: Akira Arimoto, William K. Cumming and Ulrich Teichler. Chapter 1 was written by all three authors, Chaps. 2 and 3 by William K. Cummings and Ulrich Teichler, Chap. 4 by Ulrich Teichler, Chap. 5 by Akira Arimoto and Chap. 6 by William K. Cummings.

The authors wish to express their gratitude for substantial editorial support to Ester Ava Höhle, Christiane Rittgerott and Dagmar Mann (all staff members of the International Centre for Higher Education Research, University of Kassel, Germany).