Governance and the Academic Profession

The CRP EUROAC aims to establish how the academic profession in various European countries itself perceives, interprets and "digests" changes in its societal environment and in the organisational fabric of the higher education systems. Within the CRP Austria, the UK and Romania will collaborate closely in the thematic area of the interaction between governance, management and evaluation and the academic profession. The Austrian IP will focus on "chair system" versus "department/faculty system" (also considering junior careers models). Specific IP aims and objectives of the IP Austria In Austria, the new "UG 2002 (Universitätsgesetz 2002)" may be interpreted as a "hybrid" governance and academic profession model. From the U.S., it took the governance principles (strong management and external governing boards). However, the UG 2002 kept the structure of different "academic estates" and did not implement a tenure-track logic. Contracts below the full-professor level are temporally limited. To advance from the mid- level to a higher-level academic faculty status requires that the individual academic applies successfully for an announced professorship position and is appointed. This system is being accompanied by frictions and tensions between the academic estates. A key challenge for the Austrian IP will be: How to design a modern and reform-orientated tenure-track career model for the whole academic faculty (based on performance and quality). Specific research questions include a) the career trajectory for academics; standard steps of qualification and promotion, b) the relationship between different academic status groups and c) options of combining (simultaneously) an academic with a non-academic (academically related) career. The IP will cover three geographic areas: a) Austria: the Austrian IP plans to conduct for Austria a CAP ("The Changing Academic Profession") or equivalent survey; b) Europe: The main emphasis will concentrate on a comparison of the European HE systems, where the Austrian and other European university systems are integrated in a comparative framework of analysis. The matrix of the whole project structure of all IPs allows us to consider the research questions in a European context in greater detail. A special consideration will be placed on the UK and Romania, representing interesting examples of different HE systems; c) the global context: the analysis of the Austrian IP ("chair system" vs ."department/faculty system") will also be framed in a global context, juxtaposing the European and North American (U.S., Canada) university systems, including Australia and others. Methodologies / experiments a) CAP ("The Changing Academic Profession") survey: The Austrian IP will design and carry out a CAP or CAP- equivalent survey (web-based electronic questionnaire) that should cover the Austrian academic profession (university system, HE sector) in a representative way. The aim is to achieve a minimum response of 800 completed questionnaires that are representative of the Austrian academic profession; b) semi-structured interviews (face-to-face or by telephone) with members of the academic faculty in Austria will reflect all thematic topics of the nine IPs. For every interview a "standardized minimum report" will be produced in English and made available to all IPs; c) Semi-structured interviews with identified experts from Europe and some non-European HE systems (e.g. the U.S. and Canada) on background matters of governance, management and evaluation, elaborating in more detail the key research question of the "chair system" versus "department/faculty system"; d) cooperation with the IPs of the UK and Romania on the procedures for meta-analysis of the quantitative data and qualitative information on governance, management and evaluation in the nine IP countries.

EUROAC is an international comparison of academics work situation at European universities and other higher education institutions relying on quantitative and qualitative research. Based on the views of European academics, EUROAC provides information on academic working conditions, activities and professional advancement in different stages of the academic career as well as perceptions of governance changes in an international perspective. The project was conducted as a collaboration of eight research teams in the following European countries: Germany, Ireland, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Croatia and Romania. Each of those teams took a closer look at specific topics. The Austrian team focused on academic career paths, employment conditions and salaries as well as academics perception of the impact of changing governance structures and quality management. In recent years, major shifts in the internal governance of universities occurred as a corollary of NPM inspired reforms. Whereas the academic profession traditionally had a strong role in the internal steering of their institution, academic self-governance has been replaced by more top-down management practices in many Higher Education systems. A comparative look across Europe shows interesting variations, and Austria, particularly, emerges as a country with among the highest perceptions of top-down management at universities but simultaneously low levels of competition and performance orientation. Another result: a fair quality assurance system may not be constrained by too strong hierarchies. Academic career paths are still linked to varying national contexts. Nevertheless, in most European countries, the road to permanent employment at a university is rocky. Young academics are faced with increasingly competitive environments as many aspiring academics compete for few available posts. In general, the PhD is the first requirement to enter an academic career. The postdoctoral phase emerges as the most difficult and critical phase of an academic career: a double bottleneck in most of the EUROAC countries: at the stage of entering it after the PhD in trying to obtain a postdoctoral position and at the stage of leaving it by securing permanent, tenured employment. Recent attempts to introduce a more clearly defined career pathway, such as the tenure-track, were discussed.The relationship between senior and junior academics and its influence on the latters career advancement were also analysed. On the one hand, academics favour a formalised, more egalitarian senior-junior relationship over a traditionally hierarchical one. On the other hand, increasing self-responsibility of young researchers is appreciated as long as mentoring still maintains its central importance in the relationship between senior and junior academics. EUROAC is one of four collaboration projects in the EuroHESC Network (the others being TRUE, CINHEKS and RHESI), which devote themselves to comparative studies of university research. The Austrian contribution to EUROAC was financed by FWF. INCHER-Kassel, Germany, conducted the international overall management of EUROAC.