The Academic Career
The academic profession is often portrayed as composed of persons strongly driven by intrinsic motives who concentrate primarily on the substance of teaching and research. They are said to be willing to devote much time to their work and often to forego t
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The Academic Career
4.1
Introduction
The academic profession is often portrayed as composed of persons strongly driven by intrinsic motives who concentrate primarily on the substance of teaching and research. They are said to be willing to devote much time to their work and often to forego the conveniences of life outside academia in favour of their interesting and demanding academic work. They are described as isolated from the real world and even absent-minded. Given this portrayal, it can be argued that the employment conditions for academics are less important than for the work of most other occupations. However, we also note contrasting arguments claiming that the details of biography, employment and work are of outmost importance for the proper functioning of academic work. Some journalists have questioned the propriety of professors spending long periods gliding across oceans on their yachts. Some experts claim that the academic productivity of young researchers is undermined by job insecurity, while others consider their instable employment situation as an incentive mechanism for stimulating high academic achievement. Moreover, the academics themselves seem to be more prone than the majority of professions to pay attention to the rites and symbols associated with their work, for example, titles or memberships in selective academies, and to embark on heated debates on minute distinctions related to academic employment and working conditions (cf. various articles in Enders 2001; Enders and De Weert 2004). In general, the academic profession is viewed as a highly attractive profession in terms of challenging tasks and leeway to shape one’s own work. And in many countries, it is a fairly prestigious profession. However, salaries for academics often are viewed as not matching the demanding job requirements and the high occupational prestige. Moreover, there are obvious hardships in the early career stages before academics attain stable appointments: (a) long periods of concurrent learning and productive work, (b) often accompanied only by part-time employment, short-term contract and relatively limited income, as well as (c) a high degree of selectivity U. Teichler et al., The Changing Academic Profession, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 1, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6155-1_4, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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The Academic Career
which forces many scholars to move to other occupational areas usually at an age when moves between sectors tend to be rare (Teichler and Schomburg 2008). Most descriptions of the academic profession focus on the situation in economically advanced countries. There are relatively few reports focusing on low-income and middle-income countries or on countries in an emerging state as far as the maturity of the higher education and research system is concerned. The available studies indicate an enormous diversity in the employment and work situations of the academic profession across countries. The w
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