The Academic Profession: changing roles, terms and definitions

A critical review of a recent report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England on ‘workforce trends’ from the perspectives of the Changing Academic Profession project

Ranking Universities: Criteria and Consequences

This Supplement to 'Higher Education Digest' Number 59 brings together a number of items addressing the issue of university rankings. The first piece explores some of the background to the debate: the impact of rankings, the main criticisms and broader issues of policy and principle. It arose from an initial review of the literature for current research on university league tables and their impact on institutional behaviour undertaken by CHERI and Hobsons Research, commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). A brief description of the various strands of this research project follows. One of the weightier volumes on university ranking that has emerged recently is editors Sadlak and Lui’s 'The World-Class University and Ranking: Aiming Beyond', and a summary of this collection of papers is also featured in this supplement. Many of this book’s authors are members of the International Rankings Expert Group (IREG) and one of the Group’s key contributions has been to draw up a set of 'Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions', with the explicit aim of evaluating and improving ranking practice. The Principles are included here as one succinct statement of good practice. But many critics question the very principle of creating hierarchies of institutions, and Ulrich Teichler provides a personal reflection on this subject to conclude this Supplement

The Academic Profession in England: Still stratified after all these years?

This chapter focuses on the findings from the initial analysis of the responses to a survey of nearly 1,700 academics from a wide range of higher education institutions (HEIs) throughout the UK which was carried out by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) at The Open University. It includes comparisons with findings from the original survey of the academic profession in England in 1992 as part of the First International Survey of the Academic Profession (Fulton, 1996). Therefore, it concentrates on the responses to the 2007 survey from those employed in English HEIs. The 2007 questionnaire repeated 13 items included in the earlier survey. The report of the 1992 survey sought to investigate institutional diversity and differentiation on the eve of the abolition of the binary divide in the UK between universities on the one hand and polytechnics and major colleges of higher education on the other. As such, this initial report of – what amounts to a fraction of – the UK 2007 survey findings, is of an analysis by institutional type utilising three categories: Pre-1992 Universities, Post-1992 Universities (i.e. Polytechnics at the time of the 1992 survey), and Post-2004 Universities and HE Colleges. These analytical categories are also applied to the responses to a selection of other questions in the survey not included in the 1992 instrument

Introduction

An introduction to the international study of the Changing Academic Profession and the pre-survey reports from twelve of the twenty or so countries participating in the study

Intermediary Bodies in UK Higher Education Governance, with particular reference to Universities UK

This key note paper offers critical reflections on the role, functions, problems and challenges of intermediary bodies in the United Kingdom, and particularly those of Universities UK, which represents the heads of most HEIs. In an increasingly marketised, competitive and globalised higher education system, the roles and functions of intermediary bodies are being questioned and they face serious problems of credibility with both government and institutions. My special focus is on Universities UK: its role, functions, structure and the problems it faces. However, I present the challenges for all intermediary bodies in the UK and, perhaps, beyond. In particular, I argue that they need to reinvent themselves as key players at both national and institutional levels and thereby make a serious contribution to policy-making at a critical time in the realisation of mass higher education in the UK

Do university rankings contribute to transparency?

The paper outlines the findings of research into league tables (university rankings) and their impact on higher education institutions (HEIs) in England. It suggests that league tables fit well with the UK's hierarchy of institutions and the increased marketisation and consumerism of the higher education system. However, university rankings are shown to largely reflect and reinforce reputation and tend to conceal quality, performance, added value, value for money, fitness for purpose etc (in other words, the very information that consumers of HE are looking for). HEIs in the UK are responding to university rankings and the individual indicators featured, but they are obscuring better measures of mission achievement and inducing perverse behaviour. In effect, it is argued, league tables maintain and refine the hierarchy of HEIs, despite the abolition of the binary divide between universities and polytechnics in 1992 and the creation of new, so-called ‘teaching-only’, universities from the larger previously higher education colleges in 2004

The Changing Academic Profession in the UK: Setting the Scene

This research report provides an initial analysis of issues being investigated in a current international study, the Changing Academic Profession, supported by Universities UK and other national higher education bodies. The research is examining the nature and extent of the changes experienced by the academic profession in recent years, the reasons for these changes and their consequences. The report introduces the international and institutional context for the research, including the expansion of higher education, growing demands from government and others, funding constraints, greater global competition and pressures to be more business-like. Academics themselves are becoming more internationalised, entrepreneurial and professionalised and their roles have diversified and often taken them away from their original disciplines towards new forms of identity and loyalty. Against this background, the report outlines current characteristics of the academic profession — ie those who teach and/or research — providing a profile of academics in the UK and describing some of the conditions of academic work. The report focuses on the three main themes being addressed by the study: relevance, internationalisation and management