The Contemporary Professoriate: Towards a Diversified or Segmented Profession?

Abstract

On the empirical basis of six national studies (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Denmark, Russia and South Africa), this paper examines the phenomenon of segmentation, defined as the solidification of deep hierarchies with little crossover between categories of institutions or individuals. The massification of higher education has brought about a great diversity of institutions and, concomitantly, stark differences among the professoriate.While the public sector has to some extent been able to protect its academic personnel, the for-profit sector is moving towards an unstable professoriate, poorly paid, hired mostly on a per-hour basis, and for whom sharing in academic governance is a distant dream. Some of this differentiation is emerging also within institutions and a new kind of academic who could be termed 'just-in-time knowledge worker' is on the rise.

Expanding the parameters of academia

“…Despite an extensive literature on academic identity (for instance Becher and Trowler 2001;Henkel 2000;Deem et al 2007; Kogan and Teichler 2007;Enders and de Weert 2009), and on the incorporation of practice-related disciplines into the academy (for instance Stromquist et al 2007;El-Khawas 2008;Gordon and Whitchurch 2010;Rhoades 2007), the implications of academic activity that takes place outwith mainstream spheres of teaching, research and, in some higher education systems, third leg or service activity, have not been fully explored. This paper begins to fill this space by drawing on the narratives of a sub-set of 25 respondents from two studies funded by the UK Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (Whitchurch 2008(Whitchurch , 2009, who had roles with significant academic elements such as teaching and tutoring, programme design, or some form of applied research.…”

Cultivating the next generation of academics in South Africa

“…Moreover, Altbach argues that senior faculties have lost some of their governance power because more decisionmaking functions have been placed in the hands of external bodies and governing boards. Stromquist et al (2007) point out, however, that professors from certain disciplines are in higher demand by industry and have seen conditions improve, while most are in a position that offers less control over university governance and fewer opportunities for mobility.…”

“…Furthermore, the casualisation of academic work, in which higher education systems employ greater numbers of part-time or  xed-contract academic staff, has led to differentiation between those who conduct research and those who teach in higher education systems, where this dichotomy had not existed previously. Kimber (2003) argues that the casualisation of academic labour has resulted in a "tenured core" whose primary responsibility is research, and a "tenuous periphery" of casual academic labourers who teach, and to whom Stromquist et al (2007) refer as the "just-in-time knowledge workers". This bifurcation of academic staff identities has led to an increasingly low morale amongst academic staff on both "sides" of the profession (Bryson 2004).…”

Keyword: International Research on Higher Education

“…Among some of the other issues in higher education governance -notably the role of the professoriate (see Altbach 2003;welch 2005;Locke/teichler 2007;and Stromquist et al 2007) -one has become the subject of particularly extensive international debate: the privatization of higher education. Daniel Levy, in a very well documented "state of the art" piece, observes quite correctly: "the massive global growth of private sectors transforms higher education.…”