This is one of the questions which we have considered at length in our new book. As HEPI remind us in their 20th Anniversary Collection, the nature of academic work, roles and identities has changed over time. If the sector is to continue to thrive, we need more inclusive academic career pathways for the benefit of all – staff, students and external stakeholders. This is particularly true for academic staff in local or more geographically dispersed communities.
Some months into writing our book we came across Chris Brink’s The Soul of a University (2018). His question about universities’ social purpose (what universities are good for, in addition to good at) resonated with us and it was something that the recently redesigned academic career frameworks we were looking at – from several UK universities – were striving to address. There was, however, ample scope in many cases for frameworks to be more daring and more inclusive of a variety of academic staff strengths.
Reform of academic careers has been flagged up as a priority by the European University Association ‘vision for 2030’ document (EUA, 2021). EUA’s aspiration for 2030 is that its ~850 members will be ‘responsible, autonomous and free, with different institutional profiles, but united in their missions of learning and teaching, research, innovation and culture in service to society’ (p. 5). This inspired us to go on a reading journey. We followed the thread of academic career redevelopment work in Norway, Denmark, Sweden Finland, the Netherlands, and Austria. We then went further afield to New Zealand, Australia and the US. In some places, we found compelling evidence of cross-institutional collaboration to redesign career pathways. We pondered how collaboration could become the norm – how all universities could be supported to carry out their career redesign work, in service to society and in a principled, evidence-guided way.
