A career in academia: One size fits all?
Diverse
career paths, with the possibility of transitions between them, are best for
both the educational institutions and the employees. Also the lecturers.
"A
clear teaching career must be the career path of the skilled professionals and
at the same time contribute to more mobility between working life and
academia." writes the leader of the Researchers' Association, Guro
Elisabeth Lind.
This
week, Universitetsavisa published a report on the report "A comprehensive
job structure in academia", which is currently out for consultation.
Lecturer Carl Fredrik Dons is among those who support the committee's majority
position and want one common top position in academia. We in the Researchers'
Association does not support this solution but instead wants to further develop
the current three career paths (lecturer, researcher, and professor) to ensure
diversity, breadth, and flexibility. Universitetsavisa writes that "everyone
except the Researchers' Association has agreed on the proposed solutions".
It is sloppy wording because we agree on most things in the Job Structure
Committee's report, including the problem descriptions and the desire to solve
the problems in a good way. We only disagree on two individual points, and one
of them concerns the lecturer's race. Let me explain why.
When
one experiences the prestige and career opportunities as better for the
professors, it is very understandable that lecturers want to enter a common
professorship. However, it is not the case that everyone will have the same
conditions as today's professors if we create a common race. No more money will
be added so that everyone can have the same amount of time and resources for
research and development work. One will therefore either have to keep the
current distribution of R&D resources or abolish the principle that some
positions have roughly equal time for research and teaching. In that case, the
distribution of teaching time and research resources will be entirely up to the
employer's right to control. The Researchers' Association does not want that.
If
everyone is to be able to become a professor, regardless of whether they mainly
conduct dissemination, teaching, innovation, business development, or research,
it will have some consequences for how they arrange and assess employment and
promotion. The research qualification requirement for a professor must then be
lowered, with the unfortunate consequences it will have for quality and trust
internationally. Alternatively, many who are currently associate professors,
and who mainly conduct teaching and professional development, will never have
an opportunity to qualify for a top position. The Researchers' Association does
not want that either.
The current situation is due to the fact that the sector is diverse and that
vocational education, in particular, is far closer to practice and is not
funded in the same way for research as the traditional discipline subjects at
the universities. The associate professor and lecturer race has therefore been
an opportunity to recruit good professional workers for education and
professional development. The controversy over an "academicization"
of these educations and the strong need they constantly have for practice
supervisors and being connected closely to the professional field outside,
underlines a tension between different academic ideals. By setting requirements
for a doctoral degree to get career development and lock everyone into a common a race where research will be dominant, we fear that there will be less room for
skilled professionals from outside and that the practical teaching profession
will be downgraded and lose further status. The goals of increased study
quality and lifelong learning for employees means that we will need more good
teachers in the future. Then we must take better care of the good teachers. A
clear teaching career must be the career path of the skilled professionals and
at the same time contribute to more mobility between working life and academia.
Today's
three career races with three top positions with promotion schemes between the
levels, and the possibility of transition between the races, will be most
future-oriented in that it safeguards the breadth of the universities and
colleges' tasks. With increasing externally funded research and an increasing volume of continuing and further education, there is a need for diversity. It
speaks in favor of retaining distinct and good career paths, but with
opportunities to move between them for people who have the competence and
ambitions to do so.
What
Dons and other lecturers mainly seem to be dissatisfied with today's poor and
unclear standards for promotion in the lecturer race and the status one has as
a lecturer. The first thing you can, as we suggest, do something about by
setting clear and national requirements for promotion as associate professor
and lecturer. The time is ripe to get this in place. The status of the research
and any precedence, we will probably not come to life with a name change and a
common race. A "teaching professor" will probably not achieve a higher
status among colleagues than a lecturer does today. Our common task must rather
be to make the lecture tour clear, attractive - and not least as valued as it
is important! Diversity in academia is good - one size does not fit all.
