Problematising the ‘Career Academic’ in UK construction and engineering education: does the system want what the system gets?

Abstract

'Career Academics' are principally research-led, entering academia with limited or no industrial or practical experience. UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) welcome them for their potential to attain research grant funding and publish world-leading journal papers, ultimately enhancing institutional reputation. This polemical paper problematizes the Career Academic around three areas: their institutional appeal; their impact on the student experience, team dynamics and broader academic functions and; current strategic policy to employ them. We also argue recent UK government teaching-focused initiatives will not address needs to employ practical academics, or 'Pracademics' in predominantly vocational Construction and Engineering Education. We generate questions for policy makers, institutions, and those implementing strategy. We argue research is key, but partial rebalancing will achieve a diverse academic skill base to achieve contextualised construction and engineering education. In wider European contexts, the paper resonates with issues of academic 'drift' and provides reflection for others on the UK context.

Role requirements in academic recruitment for Construction and Engineering

“…Yet to aspire for excellence in teaching, it may be anticipated the significance of 'administration' and 'innovative teaching matter' attributes would be reversed, and that there would a greater role for Sotl and professional and industry experience to encourage a linking of theory and practice in the classroom. Indeed, as stakeholders in HE, students are known to value real word examples (Collins and Davies 2009;Tennant et al 2015;Forster et al 2017;Pilcher et al 2017); inspirational teaching methods (Sue and Wood 2012): and that staff have received training in how to teach and possess professional / industry expertise (Buckley, Soilemetzidis, and Hillman 2015). Whilst the majority of HE academic staff are expected to complete a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (Gosling 2010;Cui, French, and O'Leary 2019), such training cannot give them key professional / industry experience.…”

“…Indeed, the person specification for research performance is routinely designated 'essential', (Hayward and Ongaro 2016) whereas professional membership such as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), or professional experience; is routinely judged 'desirable'. This 'research' first policy has championed the advent of the career academic (Pilcher et al 2017;Tennant et al 2015). To counter industry inexperience within faculty, some have argued academics should undertake industrial placement both prior to, and during their employment (Chan 2018).…”

“…Despite such a requirement however, the ramifications for recruitment practice is that individuals with industry experience seeking employment opportunities in the HE sector will be overlooked in favour of candidates with PhDs and the potential to secure research funding through grant income or REF assigned block funding based on high-quality journal papers (Tennant et al 2015). It is not our aim to denigrate such qualifications as, having a PhD and a PGCAP or a PGCert can help in understanding non-subjectspecific pedagogy of Teaching and Learning, but neither helps in contextualising learning with real world examples in the way industry experience does (Pilcher et al 2017;Forster et al 2017;Murray et al 2017). It was with a specific goal of addressing the disproportionate bias towards research and away from teaching created by this researchfocused policy, that the UK government introduced the Teaching Excellence Framework in 2016 (BIS 2016;cf.…”

Industrial work placement in higher education

“…Pressure on universities to operate across a diverse range of performance metrics has arguably loosened traditional industry / academia ties (Christensen and Erno-Kjolhede, 2011). Industrialists and academics alike have repeatedly expressed disquiet at the ongoing fragmentation of this key bilateral academic / industry accord (Snell, 1996, Barr, 2008, Whitelaw, 2016, Pilcher et al, 2017. A sentiment endorsed by award winning structural engineer Chris Wise (Whitelaw, 2016 p.48); "we need much greater industrial involvement in the education process, not just as visitors but in a way that allows significant involvement in curriculum development.…”

Civil Engineering 4 Real (CE4R): co-curricular learning for undergraduates

“…However, further research is required to establish the cognitive legacy that students gain from attending CE4R. There is also a need to explore the industrial experience within the UK higher education landscape (Tennant et al, 2015; Foster et al, 2017;Pilcher et al, 2017) and anecdotal evidence suggests that this can compromise the authenticity of the learning and assessment regime within an engineering curriculum.Academic role models tend to display research identities rather than the industrial disciplinary identities that would assist students to learn through mirroring "real-life situations and require the practising of the ways of thinking and problem solving employed by actual experts in relevant fields" (Kreber, 2013, p.19).In light of these issues, the current paper is organised as follows. In the next section, we examine the call for HE to recognise the value of co-curricular/extra-curricular learning and the concept of hybrid problem-based learning (PBL).…”