Despite the tendency to create a European Higher Education and Research area, academic systems are still quite different across Europe. We selected five countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway and the UK) to investigate how the differences have an impact on a number of aspects of the working conditions of academic staff. One crucial aspect is the growing diversification of professional activity: reduction of tenured and tenure tracked position, the growing number of fixed-term contracts for both teaching and research, including the growing recruitment of academic staff from external professional fields. These changes are connected with the changing functions of higher education systems and signal the growing openness of higher education institutions to their outside social and economic environment. To understand these trends one has to take into consideration the different degree in which systems distinguish between teaching and research functions. A second aspect has to do with career paths, their regulation, their length and speed. Here, the history of recruitment and career mechanisms in different countries are of particular importance because the different systems went through different periods of change and stability. Also connected to career is the willingness and the opportunity to move from one position to another, both within and outside the academic world. A third aspect deserving attention that is connected to mobility is the professional satisfaction among academic staff in the five systems considered.
The Italian higher education system was characterised from the outset (when the country was unified in 1861) until a few years ago by a single study cycle which followed on from senior high school. This cycle, which lasted four years (five in the case of engineering, and six in the case of medicine) led to the award of a legally recognised qualification known as a laurea.However, the Italian university system has changed over the years, partly in accordance with the trend towards studying for vocational qualifications, and it is now structured in three levels: a) the`short cycle' or university diploma course (lauree brevi or diplomi universitari); b) the degree course (corsi di laurea); c) research doctorates and specialist diploma courses (dottorati di ricerca e scuole di specializzazione).Degree courses, organised into faculties, are the main component of the university system (there are now 88 different types). In 1995±96, there were 417 faculties in Italy in some 65 universities, with 80 campuses. Some university diploma courses (physical education, statistics, primary school supervision, palaeography and musical philology, history of music and music teaching) were already operational in the 1970s. In 1982,`special-purpose colleges' were instituted to train social workers, ophthalmology assistants, rehabilitation therapists, etc. These courses were converted into two-or threeyear diploma courses in 1990. In 1992, many new diploma courses (usually accepting a fixed number of applicants) were instituted, thus increasing the supply of first-level university education.Diversifying the supply of higher education also led to the creation of postgraduate doctorate courses in addition to the existing specialisation colleges and advanced courses. The success of the first and third levels is still fairly modest, partly because of the difficulties encountered by holders of these qualifications on the labour market, where professional figures precisely matching their qualifications have not yet been established.The fact that the types of higher education offered are still insufficient is seen in the development of a non-university sector of post-graduate training leading to the award of a master's degree. Although this degree is not legally recognised in
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