Academic Systems and Professional Conditions in Five European Countries

Abstract

Despite the tendency to create a European Higher Education and Research area, academic systems are still quite different across Europe. We selected five countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway and the UK) to investigate how the differences have an impact on a number of aspects of the working conditions of academic staff. One crucial aspect is the growing diversification of professional activity: reduction of tenured and tenure tracked position, the growing number of fixed-term contracts for both teaching and research, including the growing recruitment of academic staff from external professional fields. These changes are connected with the changing functions of higher education systems and signal the growing openness of higher education institutions to their outside social and economic environment. To understand these trends one has to take into consideration the different degree in which systems distinguish between teaching and research functions. A second aspect has to do with career paths, their regulation, their length and speed. Here, the history of recruitment and career mechanisms in different countries are of particular importance because the different systems went through different periods of change and stability. Also connected to career is the willingness and the opportunity to move from one position to another, both within and outside the academic world. A third aspect deserving attention that is connected to mobility is the professional satisfaction among academic staff in the five systems considered.

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Academic Systems and Professional Conditions in Five European Countries
Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati
European Review / Volume 18 / Supplement S1 / May 2010, pp S35 - S53
DOI: 10.1017/S1062798709990305, Published online: 01 April 2010
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doi:10.1017/S1062798709990305
Academic Systems and Professional
Conditions in Five European Countries
ALESSANDRO CAVALLI
*
and ROBERTO MOSCATI
**
*
University of Pavia, Italy. E-mail: aless_cavalli@hotmail.com;
**
University
of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. E-mail: roberto.moscati@unimib.it
Despite the tendency to create a European Higher Education and Research area,
academic systems are still quite different across Europe. We selected five countries
(Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway and the UK) to investigate how the differences
have an impact on a number of aspects of the working conditions of academic staff.
One crucial aspect is the growing diversification of professional activity: reduction
of tenured and tenure tracked position, the growing number of fixed-term contracts
for both teaching and research, including the growing recruitment of academic staff
from external professional fields. These changes are connected with the changing
functions of higher education systems and signal the growing openness of higher
education institutions to their outside social and economic environment. To
understand these trends one has to take into consideration the different degree in
which systems distinguish between teaching and research functions. A second
aspect has to do with career paths, their regulation, their length and speed. Here, the
history of recruitment and career mechanisms in different countries are of particular
importance because the different systems went through different periods of change
and stability. Also connected to career is the willingness and the opportunity to
move from one position to another, both within and outside the academic world. A
third aspect deserving attention that is connected to mobility is the professional
satisfaction among academic staff in the five systems considered.
Introduction
In 1999 the Bologna Declaration was signed by a large number of Ministers of
Education of European and non-European countries. That year will probably be
considered by future historians of the European Higher Education Systems as an

important turning point. The aim was to create the conditions for the establish-
ment of a European Higher Education Area, to favour student and teacher
mobility, to adopt a common scheme of academic titles, to cooperate in designing
models for quality assessment, etc. Ten years later, 46 countries have joined the
Bologna Process, which therefore can be considered a success. However, it is
hard to predict what the actual outcome of the process will be in the long run,
since the European Higher Education systems developed in different historical
contexts and maintain (and also will maintain in the future) some of the structural
traits of their past. The CAP project offers a unique opportunity to monitor
affinities and differences in how the academic profession is organized in different
countries and how academic staff interpret their role in the present situation. We
selected a restricted number of European countries for which data were available
to do a first tentative comparative exercise of data analysis, and we selected a
restricted number of topics that the literature on higher education indicates as
particularly relevant: gender ratio, timing of the academic career, political and
academic engagement, professional identity and job satisfaction. The countries
selected are: Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway and the UK. The paper presents
some provisional findings that will need to be supplemented by further analysis.
Academic work and gender
Gender distribution according to the academic ranking in our sample reconfirms
a clear dominance of male academics at senior level and the reverse situation at
medium and, more strongly, at junior level (Table 1).
The distribution is reproduced with small differences in all the five systems.
The lowest percentage of females at senior level can be found in the UK (10.1%).
As expected, female academics work more often in soft disciplines (Finland
has the highest percentage with 58.9%), while in hard sciences there is still a
predominance of male academics (Table 2).
Table 1. Academic rank by gender (percentage)
Gender
Male Female Total
Senior 36.0 17.7 29.1
Medium 30.4 33.9 31.7
Junior 31.3 43.8 36.0
Other 2.4 4.6 3.2
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
Count (4517) (2753) (7.270)
S36 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

Timing of the academic career
In general terms, academic careers are estimated to be quite slow compared with
careers in the more dynamic industries of the business world. There is however
considerable variability across countries due to the conditions characterizing the
recent history of higher education systems. The data from the CAP survey allow
us to glance at some aspects of the timing of academic careers in five selected
West European countries: Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway and the UK.
The age distribution of the national samples reveals some interesting features.
Comparing age means (see Table 3) shows a 6.5 years difference between the
‘oldest’ (Italy) and the ‘younger’ sample (Finland), whereas age differences
between German, Norwegian and UK respondents are rather minimal. The older
age of Italian respondents can clearly be explained by the reduced rate of
recruitment during the last 10 to 15 years after the great expansion of the number
of teaching staff at universities during the 1970s and 1980s. Recruitment waves
mark different cohorts: times of expansion are frequently followed by times of
restriction, the doors of higher education institutions open up or close according
to the pressure coming from the demand for education by students and their
families and the responding public policies. However, the differences largely
depend on the ways the academic population has been defined in different
Table 2. Discipline of current teaching by gender (percentage)
Gender
Male Female Total
Soft % within Gender 41.2 55.0 46.3
Hard % within Gender 58.8 45.0 53.7
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
Count Count (3678) (2158) (5836)
Table 3. Age by country
Country Mean NStandard deviation
Finland 44.09 1407 11.230
Germany 46.88 1554 11.076
Italy 50.58 1668 10.578
Norway 47.23 1653 10.928
United Kingdom 47.25 1355 9.902
Total 47.32 7637 10.959
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S37

countries for the purposes of this survey. In Italy, for instance, it has proved quite
impossible to include junior teaching and research staff on temporary part-time
appointments in the sample due to the fact that no one knows their number and
distribution; in Finland, conversely, the majority of short-term contracts concern
younger researchers included in the sample as well as all post-graduate students
who are included in the category of academic staff.
The Bologna Process will probably in due course produce a homogenisation of
the length of European study programmes, at least for well performing full-time
students who are headed for the academic profession. The actual population of
academics precedes Bologna, and the age when the first academic degree was
attained is still linked to previous institutional timing regulations. It should not
come as a surprise that UK respondents got their first degree at an earlier age than
their fellows in other countries, since Britain had already introduced a first three-
year degree when elsewhere four to five years was the prevalent rule (Table 4).
Different national regulations probably also account for a higher dispersion
(measured by standard deviation) of figures for Finland and the UK. There are no
major differences according to type of discipline: confronting hard (natural sci-
ences and medicine) and soft (humanities and social sciences), the path to the
first degree in hard sciences lasts only one year more than in soft sciences due to
the fact that, everywhere, medical studies and the training for the medical pro-
fession last longer than for other academic compartments.
Further information is available to investigate the timing of academic careers,
namely the age at which the first full-time job was acquired (Table 5).
It is not surprising to note that, concerning the age of the first full-time
appointment, Germany and Italy are placed at the extreme positions: during
recent decades academic careers in Germany were probably somehow acceler-
ated by the new openings in the Eastern La¨nder and also by traditional structural
arrangements entailing the fairly frequent use of full-time fixed terms (often
renewable) teaching and research contracts at the start and during the first stages
of the academic career; in Italy, on the contrary, besides the slow down of
Table 4. Age at first degree by country
Country Mean NStandard deviation
Finland 25.56 468 5.371
Germany 26.19 1499 2.471
Italy 24.93 1651 2.410
Norway 24.43 952 2.761
United Kingdom 23.92 1167 4.925
Total 25.02 5737 3.535
S38 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

recruitment, which – as has been noted before – accounts also in part for the older
age of the Italian respondents, a full-time position corresponds to a tenured one
because there is no provision for untenured full-time contracts. In the tradition of
the German university system, in principle only temporary full-time appoint-
ments exist between the completion of the doctorate (Promotion) and the
acquisition of a professorship (Professur), whereas in Italy temporary positions
are only part-time and do not guarantee a living to the occupants.
Calculating the number of years between the attainment of the first degree and
of the first full-time employment, it is again the precocious academic insertion
of Germans scholars that appears, compared with the other countries, rather
remarkable (Table 6).
German academics need three to four years less than their colleagues to get a
full-time job after the attainment of the first degree, because there are institutional
opportunities to do so. The same pattern is confirmed, and even strengthened,
when we calculate the number of years between the first degree and the actual
position, although the gap does not increase substantially, shifting from junior to
senior positions. This indicates that German academics accumulate their
advantage during the first stages of their career and keep this advantage when
they progress toward senior positions. The majority of short-term contracts are
Table 5. Age at first full-time academic employment by country
Country Mean NStandard deviation
Finland 32.07 1199 7.657
Germany 29.87 1296 5.091
Italy 32.53 1597 5.809
Norway 30.78 1572 6.139
United Kingdom 31.62 1097 6.842
Total 31.39 6761 6.372
Table 6. Years between first degree and first full-time academic employment by country
Country Mean NStandard deviation
Finland 8.07 407 7.667
Germany 3.75 1389 4.617
Italy 7.68 1603 5.371
Norway 6.34 952 5.240
United Kingdom 7.92 1114 5.944
Total 6.53 5465 5.757
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S39

reported by younger researchers. Furthermore, all post-graduate students funded
by the Finnish Academy of Sciences are included in the category of academic
staff. In Finland, the long period between the first degree and full-time
employment is caused by the large number of short-term academics (‘project
researchers’) working on short-term contracts, which are not considered forms of
regular employment.
To attain a junior position starting from the first degree on average one needs
slightly more than eight years in Germany, ten years in Italy, 12 in Norway, 13 in
Finland and 16 in the UK (Table 7).
As a matter of fact, calculating the average number of years between the first
full-time appointment and the actual position at the time of the survey interview,
the figures show that our German colleagues are in line with their counterparts in
other countries (see Table 8).
Table 7. Years between first degree and actual position by country
Academic Rank Country Mean NStandard deviation
Senior position Finland 22.50 133 7.641
Germany 17.00 549 5.749
Italy 20.10 1005 7.482
Norway 19.39 408 6.953
United Kingdom 25.56 213 6.761
Total 19.88 2308 7.328
Junior/other Finland 13.09 275 9.558
position
Germany 8.18 904 7.376
Italy 10.19 625 5.502
Norway 11.79 479 7.040
United Kingdom 15.78 927 8.382
Total 11.72 3210 8.097
Table 8. Years between first full-time and actual position by country
Country Mean NStandard deviation
Finland 7.32 1124 7.897
Germany 9.09 1349 8.101
Italy 8.83 1587 8.773
Norway 9.64 1481 7.928
United Kingdom 9.93 1112 8.871
Total 8.99 6653 8.368
S40 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

Following a different procedure, we arrive at the same conclusions. Calcu-
lating the average duration in number of years from the attainment of first degree
to the accession at the actual position, it is possible to measure for each national
sample the ratio of respondents below and above the average. Labelling the first
group ‘anticipators’ and the second ‘laggards’, we get the distribution in Table 9.
Germany has the largest share of ‘anticipators’ and the UK of ‘laggards’; Italy,
Norway and Finland are in between the two polar positions (see Table 9). It should
be noted, however, that at German universities (not necessarily in the Fach-
hochschulen) the number of full-time tenured professors is quite limited compared
with the number of research and teaching staff on a fixed terms contract.
1
The availability of an international research team will help in the next steps of
the research project to better interpret the meaning of these findings. In any case,
it is clear that the first stages in the career, the time between the completion of a
doctoral degree and the attainment of a junior position in an institution of higher
education, make for a crucial and delicate transition. It is during this period that a
scientific vocation can get strengthened or weakened and that almost irreversible
professional choices are to be made. At the present stage we are unable to answer
the following questions. Which are the implications of these results for the
functioning of the higher education systems? Which institutional arrangements
can ease or clog the early stages of the academic profession?
Academic and political engagements
In this paper, we consider academic activities to be those tasks that are outside
academic duties toward one’s own higher education institution, meaning mem-
bership in scientific boards of national or international agencies, in editorial
committees, holding executive positions in professional organizations, acting as
peer reviewer for journals and/or research financial bodies and the like. Roughly
40% in our sample do not show any commitment of this sort. The quota of non-
active academics is small in Italy (25%), but high in Finland (almost 50%) and in
Table 9. Speed of the academic career by country (percentage)
Country
Finland Germany Italy Norway UK Total
‘Anticipators’ 46.1 71.2 59.9 56.0 32.6 55.6
‘Laggards’ 53.9 28.8 40.1 44.0 67.4 44.4
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Count (408) (1453) (1630) (887) (1140) (5518)
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S41

Germany (48%) (Table 10). We do not note any variability according to soft and
hard sciences. The differences by country can quite easily be explained by the
composition of the national samples, since in both the Finnish and the German
samples the share of temporary appointments is quite substantial, whereas these
academic activities are more likely performed by tenured academics.
On the other hand, political activities (membership in political parties, trade
unions, voluntary associations, participation in community actions, etc) attract
only slightly more than 25% of the interviewed academics, more in the two
Nordic countries (nearly 40% in Finland and Norway) and slightly less in the
UK, Italy and Germany (Table 11). Hard scientists are slightly less involved than
scholars in the soft sciences.
Understandably, academic activities are carried out more at the senior level of
the academic career: 86.1% of senior academics perform at least one or more of
this kind of activities. In the UK, almost all academic staff are involved in these
tasks (97.7%), while senior scholars in Germany (81.0%) are less frequently
involved. Again, the involvement in political activities is much lower: it com-
prises 30.5% of the senior members, with Finland (59.7%), Norway (36.2%) and
UK (35.9%) in the highest positions. Senior academics in soft and hard sciences
are equally involved in academic activities (86.0%) while as far as political
Table 10. Academic activities by country (percentage)
Country
Finland Germany Italy Norway UK Total
No 49.9 48.3 25.5 36.5 44.8 40.7
Yes 50.1 51.7 74.6 63.5 55.3 59.2
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Count (1471) (1759) (1701) (1760) (1667) (8358)
Table 11. Political activities by country (percentage)
Country
Finland Germany Italy Norway UK Total
No 59.1 83.2 78.9 63.8 76.6 72.7
Yes 40.9 16.8 21.0 36.2 23.4 27.3
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Count (1471) (1759) (1701) (1760) (1667) (8358)
S42 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

activities are concerned those in soft sciences (32.9%) are slightly more involved
than their colleagues in hard sciences (27.7%).
Since seniority and tenure are obviously highly connected, tenured academics are
more involved (and in a way compelled to do so) in academic activities (72.5%)
than those without a permanent contract (36.3%). This is particularly true in the UK
where 78.4% of tenured are involved in one or more academic activities. Germany
follows with 76.6%, then Norway (70.2%) and Finland (62.2%).
2
Political activ-
ities, in contrast, are more popular in Finland (51.3%) and Norway (38.8%), with
the UK (32.0%) and Germany (20.4%) in the last positions.
Members of soft and hard sciences are equally involved in academic activities.
A tiny difference in favour of the soft sciences can be detected as far as political
activities are concerned (34.1% versus 28.5%). The same holds true for political
activities that involve more the permanent employed than those who are not
guaranteed permanent employment.
Among the countries discussed, Finland shows a relatively higher level of
involvement, not only among tenured academics but also among the other cate-
gories of guaranteed and non-guaranteed staff members. There may be two reasons
to explain this high participation rate. First, practically all Finnish university staff
belong to an academic trade union; among professors this figure is lowest, but it is
as high as 80%. However, in Nordic countries, membership in a trade union is not
normally regarded as a form of political participation, it is rather a practical matter,
as it offers protection against unemployment. Furthermore, there is only one aca-
demic trade union for each academic group (professors, lecturers and researchers).
This means that trade unions are not organised according to political cleavages but
according to professions.
3
Second, perhaps participation in different civil society
activities (voluntary associations) is quite popular among academics of Nordic
countries. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this assumption.
To sum up, the general picture shows a substantial involvement of academics
in different academic activities and less engagement in the political domain.
Academic business is particularly relevant at the top of the academic career. Full-
time tenured senior members are much more involved in all higher education
systems for a number of (understandable) reasons: visibility (if not scientific
prestige) makes them points of reference for all kind of roles. Still, comparing the
five European systems, a different degree of involvement in academic activities
puts British senior academics clearly in the first place. As is well known, UK
peer review activities are very popular and the number of scientific journals or
editorial committees is much larger than everywhere else. Instead, political
activities – even if at a lower level – are more on the professional ‘agenda’ of
academic staff in the Nordic countries, particularly in Finland. In those countries,
political involvement is a cultural habit and opportunities to become member of
voluntary associations devoted to all kind of community activities are manifold.
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S43

There, senior academics are the most often involved as well, perhaps in part
because their tenured position gives them a more secure and protected attitude.
Interestingly enough, no system shows a significant difference between people
operating in soft or hard sciences as regards academic activities, while political
activities seem to be more frequent among academics in soft than those in hard
sciences. According to a well-known stereotype, people in hard sciences do not
havethetimetobecomeinterestedinsocial and political issues, while those in soft
sciences have a natural inclination toward those issues. Instead, our data show that,
with the partial exceptions of the Nordic countries, involvement in political domain
is rather limited even among academics operating in soft sciences.
Identity and sense of belonging
One of the major aspects of the diversification of the academic profession
depends on the tendency to differentiate between institutions primarily oriented
toward research and institutions almost exclusively concerned with teaching. In
the US system, only a few hundreds of the more than 3000 institutions of higher
education are classified as research universities. This probably is an unavoidable
trend in mass higher education. A rather large variety of institutional arrange-
ments exists to combine research and teaching and of course there is strong
resistance to abandon the old Humboldtian model of close relationship between
teaching and research. Whereas the existence of pure research institutions is
almost universally accepted, the idea is quite widespread, particularly in con-
tinental Europe, that teaching should always be combined with research.
Our data suggest that this is still true in general terms, however not to the same
extent in every country. Let us take together those respondents who combine
teaching and research in different proportions. A low figure can be taken as a proxy
measure of the degree of acceptance of institutional differentiation while a high
figure means scarce acceptance. The data should be taken with caution since they are
not yet weighted and therefore are not reliable to be used in comparisons. In any
case, it makes sense that the distribution ranges from the minimum of Norway
(52.5% both active in teaching and research) to the maximum of Italy (85.9%), with
Finland, Germany and the UK occupying the intermediate positions.
It is worth noting that there are no significant differences according to type of
discipline: soft and hard scientists show almost the same preferences concerning
the separation/combination of teaching and research. In general terms, those
defining themselves more as researchers than as teachers make up the majority in
each country. As shown in Table 12, the case of Norway is particularly clear in
this respect. This can be explained by the fact that at least one third of the
Norwegian sample consists of full-time researchers who do not have any
teaching obligations.
S44 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

An analogous picture emerges when we explore another dimension of pro-
fessional identity that traditionally is relevant in the literature.
4–6
Do academics
feel they belong more to their disciplinary community than to their department or
the institution they are working in? These identification poles are of course not
mutually exclusive: what is significant is their relative intensity. In fact, there is a
connection and a certain coherence between the leaning toward research (as
opposed to teaching) and the sense of belonging to one’s own disciplinary
community more than to one’s institutional affiliation. Respondents were asked
to rank discipline, department and institution from 1 (very important) to 4 (not
important at all). Not surprisingly, the ranking is homogeneous in every country:
the discipline or field of study is ranked everywhere between important and very
important, whereas department and institution are on average less important. We
can speak of the existence of a common cross-cultural academic culture, the traits
of which show variable intensity according to different national historical con-
ditions. The orientation toward one’s own discipline is stronger in Norway,
Finland and Germany and somewhat weaker in the UK and Italy. Departmental
affiliation is more important in the Nordic countries, and institutional affiliation
seems to be stronger in Finland and in Italy, but the differences are not very large.
Interestingly enough, there are no significant differences between soft and hard
scientists in the relative importance accorded to the different affiliations (Table 13).
Image of the academic profession and job satisfaction
European academics hold different views about the present conditions of their
profession, but their average view is rather problematic and critical. We asked our
respondents to evaluate the working conditions in higher education and in
research institutions from the time they entered the profession to the present on a
five-steps scale, ranging from ‘very much improved’ to ‘very much deteriorated’.
A mean value above three indicates a prevalence of a rather pessimistic image.
As shown in Table 14, ‘pessimism’ prevails in every country. However, as one
Table 12. Prime interest in teaching or research by country (percentage)
Country
Finland Germany Italy Norway UK Total
Teaching 34.7 28.4 23.3 11.4 33.2 25.4
Research 65.3 71.6 76.7 88.6 66.8 74.6
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Count (1428) (1655) (1681) (1682) (1124) (7570)
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S45

could expect, academic and research institutions in Nordic countries are in a
better shape in the views of those working in them, whereas Italy, Germany and
the UK receive a more critical evaluation. Since these evaluations reflect sub-
jective feelings and opinions, they depend heavily upon the level of aspiration
respondents have now or had when they started their careers. With the exception
Table 13. Sense of affiliation to one’s academic discipline, department and institution
(mean)
Country
My academic
discipline/field
My department
(at this institution) My institution
Finland 1.63 2.08 2.12
Count (1407) (1398) (1407)
Germany 1.56 2.56 2.58
Count (1643) (1605) (1637)
Italy 1.82 2.36 2.38
Count (1673) (1670) (1674)
Norway 1.37 2.11 2.44
Count (1683) (1661) (1672)
United Kingdom 1.79 2.51 2.83
Count (1125) (1125) (1124)
Total 1.62 2.32 2.45
Count (7531) (7459) (7514)
Table 14. Perceived change of working conditions in higher education and in research
institutes by country (mean*)
Country
Working conditions
in higher education
Working conditions
in research institutes
Finland Mean 3.08 3.02
Count (1403) (869)
Germany Mean 3.64 3.06
Count (1491) (1150)
Italy Mean 3.60 3.74
Count (1693) (973)
Norway Mean 3.37 3.15
Count (1407) (1237)
United Kingdom Mean 3.73 3.42
Count (1120) (568)
Total Mean 3.48 3.26
Count (7114) (4797)
*On a scale from 1 5‘very much improved’ to 5 5‘very much deteriorated’.
S46 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

of Italy, research institutions performs slightly better than higher education
institutions in providing viable working conditions. Soft scientists are more
critical than hard scientists, younger scholars less critical than aged academics.
The overall picture, however, conveys a creeping pessimism that is confirmed by
other indicators (Table 14).
We also asked our respondents to express agreement or disagreement, again on
a five steps scale (ranging from 1 ‘strongly agree’ to 5 ‘strongly disagree’), on a
series of statements (see Tables 15–17).
The data show a slight prevalence of critical attitudes concerning young people
entering the profession now (Table 15) and a perception of personal strain on the
job. Despite these attitudes, the large majority of respondents (68.7%) are satisfied
with the professional choice they made (Table 16). As we shall see, the idea and the
intention to change jobs is connected with the level of job satisfaction.
In comparing the views by country we observe a more comprehensive
negative attitude among academics in the UK. Reasons for this are several and
not unknown. For decades now the growing of mass higher education has
reduced the faculty’s political standing together with a decline of salary level and
a parallel increase of the workload (Table 17). Already in 1997, over 30% of
Table 15. ‘This is a poor time for any young person to begin an academic career in
my field’
Count Percent Cumulative percent
Strongly agree (1815) 24.2 24.2
2 (1493) 19.9 44.0
3 (1505) 20.0 64.1
4 (1508) 20.1 84.2
Strongly disagree (1189) 15.8 100.0
Total (7510) 100.0
Table 16. ‘If I had it to do over again, I would not become an academic’
Count Percent Cumulative Percent
Strongly agree (478) 6.4 6.4
2 (663) 8.8 15.2
3 (1216) 16.2 31.3
4 (1859) 24.7 56.0
Strongly disagree (3309) 44.0 100.0
Total (7525) 100.0
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S47

academic staff under the age of 35 indicated the likelihood of their leaving the
profession (as mentioned in the Dearing Report). More than for the salary
reduction, academics in the UK (but elsewhere too) care for internal status and
career recognition. In this respect, the growing number of part-time teaching staff
together with the vanishing of the tenure system has created more anxiety about
the professional future.
7
In addition, traditional academic autonomy has been
endangered by the increasing role of national government in establishing sets of
research priorities. In this way, autonomy – considered a key component of the
academic identity – has been substantially affected (Table 18).
8
On the basis of the three indicators listed above we tried to calculate a
cumulative synthetic index of job satisfaction. A first finding indicates that
scholars in the humanities and social sciences show a slightly (but significantly)
lower level of satisfaction than their colleagues in the natural sciences, medicine
and engineering. It is quite frequent in European universities to find colleagues in
the humanities complaining about the processes of marginalization of which they
perceive themselves to be the victims. One can formulate the hypothesis that they
Table 17. ‘My job is a source of considerable personal strain’
Count Percent Cumulative Percent
Strongly agree (1079) 14.3 14.3
2 (1943) 25.8 40.2
3 (1852) 24.6 64.8
4 (1557) 20.7 85.5
Strongly disagree (1091) 14.5 100.0
Total (7522) 100.0
Table 18. Attitude toward academic career by country (percentage*)
Finland Norway UK Germany Italy
This is a poor time for any young
person to begin an academic career in
my field
43 19 51 35 74
If I had it to do over again, I would not
become an academic
15 16 23 14 11
My job is a source of considerable
personal strain
46 33 58 41 30
Total 1422 1703 1131 1640 1692
S48 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

feel underprivileged in the distribution of resources and threatened first of all by
the social scientists perceived as main competitors. The analysis of our data
conducted so far does not allow us to test a hypothesis of this kind.
The cross-national comparison indicates that the UK respondents are the least
satisfied and the Norwegians (followed by the Germans) are the most satisfied. In
Finland it seems that the growing number of temporary employments and their
inherent insecurity is one of the causes for stress among the fixed-term employed,
while tenured academics complain about the lack of resources. In Norway,
scholars complain about the lack of time to carry out research, while in Germany
the excessive length of the academic career is underlined. In addition, in all
countries (and with special emphasis in some scientific fields) the low salary in
the first stage of the academic career is mentioned as a reason for being tempted
to choose other professional paths (Table 19).
To tackle a dimension very likely connected with satisfaction, we asked
respondents whether they had ever considered the idea of changing jobs. More
than half of the respondents did in fact think about a major change in job activity,
both inside and outside higher education institutions. Only half of them, how-
ever, took concrete actions to realize the project. Not surprisingly, the temptation
to look for a job outside higher education is much stronger among hard scientists
than among scholars in social sciences and the humanities. The disposition to
look for jobs outside the higher education system signals a positive attitude
toward mobility between different professional sectors (i.e. a form of horizontal
circulation) but also the sheer existence of such opportunities. The willingness to
change is a precondition, but the absence of available opportunities will likely
have an impact on this disposition (Table 20).
If we consider the willingness to change as an indicator of poor job satis-
faction, the highest satisfaction is in Italy and the least in the UK. In fact, as we
have just seen, scholars in the UK display the highest level of dissatisfaction.
However, the scarce willingness of Italian academics to look for other jobs
Table 19. Satisfaction index by country (percentage)
Country
Finland Germany Italy Norway UK Total
Dissatisfied 23.2 18.4 21.7 13.6 35.4 21.5
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied 58.8 48.1 58.4 43.5 49.7 51.6
Satisfied 18.1 33.5 19.9 42.8 15.0 26.9
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Count (1382) (1616) (1655) (1665) (1117) (7435)
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S49

should probably be interpreted more in terms of the lack or scarcity of oppor-
tunities than in terms of high levels of job satisfaction. Both in Finland and
Norway, the increase of temporary positions and the non-competitive level of
salaries compared with other professions seem to make the choice for the aca-
demic career ever more difficult for young scholars.
Concluding remarks
Academics in the UK are more often involved in academic activities than
scholars in any other country, and they are the less satisfied. In Nordic countries,
academics are more inclined towards political activities, mainly because all staff
are enrolled in professional unions: Norwegian and Finnish scholars are rela-
tively more satisfied than the scholars in other countries: for the former, the
income is relevant, for the latter, the impact of the (more modest) income is less
significant. Different career speed and different academic environments at a local
level might be related to these correlations and should be investigated. In all
systems the first steps of the career are long and uncertain. Many kinds of fixed-
term employment are spreading out. First salaries are modest, both for scholars
involved in project contracts and academics who eventually are inserted in tenure
tracks. Underpayment and an uncertain future make the academic profession less
appealing when compared with other professions in almost every country. Of
course, there are differences: some scientific fields have more appealing external
competitors at the level of the national and local economy than other disciplines.
In addition, the amount of academic duties has been growing in all systems
(especially due to the increasing number of students and the growing adminis-
trative duties). Therefore, the impression is that the number of dissatisfied aca-
demics is increasing and the younger are less satisfied than the older. The
academic career is changing everywhere in relation to the new links between
university and society. Administrative duties are increasing and the relationship
Table 20. Having considered a major change of your job by country (percentage)
Country
Finland Germany Italy Norway UK Total
Not considered 41.5 41.1 56.8 41.2 27.7 42.9
Inside HE 16.9 32.1 24.3 22.2 30.4 25.2
Outside HE 41.6 26.8 18.9 36.6 41.8 31.9
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Count (1347) (1740) (1670) (1582) (1006) (7345)
S50 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

between teaching and research is more and more under question. Research seems
to remain central in the self-definition of academic identity (especially in Nor-
way, but in other systems as well). In fact, the main complaint related the fact that
new duties claim time that otherwise could be devoted to research activities. The
debate on the separation or combination of basic activities remains central and
open. Looking back a few decades, one can detect the changing of a profession
that used to be characterised by little evaluation, wide autonomy and freedom:
now, it is affected by competition, evaluation and accountability. The decline of
full-time job opportunities (due to the rise of the university private sector, inter
alia) has increased competition. Research evaluation and the new pattern of
managerial control, both trends spreading out at different pace in various higher
education systems, point in the same direction. Their impact on the professoriate
can be detected more easily in some systems than in others.
9
In our case, it seems
possible to detect this impact by looking at the deterioration of the academic
morale, strongly affecting academics in the UK but also visible in other coun-
tries, with Italy at the end of the line. It might also be wise to add that the impact
of these changes affects the academy in different ways as regards the disciplines
and the ranking of university institutions. Consequently, more detailed analyses
will be useful for a better understanding of the process.
Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge the support of the Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo.
References and Notes
1. R. Kreckel (ed.) (2008) Zwischen Promotion und Professur (Leipzig:
Akademische Verlagsanstalt).
2. Italy is not considered in this case because the question related to contract
duration was not included in the Italian questionnaire.
3. J. Va¨ limaa (2001) The changing nature of academic employment in Finnish
higher education. In: Academic Staff in Europe: Changing Contexts and
Conditions, edited by J. Enders (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group),
pp. 67–90.
4. T. Becher (1989) Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Inquiry and
the Cultures of the Disciplines (Buckingham: SRHE and the Open
University Press).
5. M. Trow (1975) The public and private lives of higher education.
Daedalus,104(1–II), 113–127.
6. B. R. Clark (1987) The Academic Life: Small Worlds, Different Worlds
(Princeton: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching)
and B. R. Clark (1987) (ed.) The Academic Profession (Berkeley:
University of California Press).
7. M. Shattock (2000) The academic profession in Britain: a study in the
failure to adapt to change. In: The Changing Academic Workplace:
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S51

Comparative Perspectives, edited by J. Enders (Boston: Boston College),
pp. 51–74.
8. M. Henkel (2000) Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher
Education (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers).
9. P. G. Altbach (2004) The deteriorating guru: the crisis of the professoriate.
International Higher Education,36(Summer), 2–3.
Further Reading
P. G. Altbach (ed.) (2000) The Changing Academic Workplace: Comparative
Perspectives (Boston: Boston College).
R. Barnett and R. Middlehurst (1993) The lost profession. Higher Education in Europe,
2, pp. 110–128.
B. R. Clark (1977) Academic Power in Italy: Bureaucracy and Oligarchy in a National
University System (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
J. Enders (ed.) (2000) Academic Staff in Europe: Changing Contexts and Conditions
(Westport: Greenwood).
J. Enders (2006) The academic profession. In: International Handbook of Higher
Education, Vol. 1, edited by J. F. Forest and P. G. Altbach (Dordrecht: Springer),
pp. 5–22.
J. Enders and E. de Weert (2004) The International Attractiveness of the Academic
Workplace in Europe (Frankfurt am Main: GEW).
J. Enders and C. Musselin (2008) Back to the future? The academic professions in the
21st century. In: Higher Education to 2030, Vol. 1: Demography (Paris: UNESCO).
A. H. Halsey (1992) Decline of Donnish Dominion: The British Academic Profession in
the Twenty Century (Oxford: Claredon Press).
M. Henkel (2005) Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment.
Higher Education,49(1–2), pp. 155–176.
M. Kogan, I. Moses and E. El-Khawas (eds) (1994) Staffing higher Education: Meeting
New Challenges (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers).
M. Kogan and U. Teichler (eds) (2007) Key Challenges to the Academic Profession
(Kassel and Paris: INCHER-Kassel and Unesco Forum on Higher Education, Research
and Innovation).
W. Locke and U. Teichler (eds) (2007) The Changing Conditions for Academic Work and
Careers in Select Countries (Kassel: INCHER-Kassel).
P. M. Maassen and F. A. van Vught (eds) (1996) Inside Academia: New Challenges for
the Academic Profession (Utrecht: De Tijdstroom).
R. K. Merton (1976) Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays (New York: The Free
Press).
G. Neave and G. Rhoades (1987) The academic estate in Western Europe. In: The
Academic Profession, edited by B. R. Clark (Berkeley: University of California Press),
pp. 211–270.
About the Authors
Alessandro Cavalli is former Professor of Sociology at the University of Pavia,
President of CIRSIS (Center for Research on Higher Education Systems) of the
same university, President of the Scientific Council of the IARD Institute and
S52 Alessandro Cavalli and Roberto Moscati

Member of the Council of Fondazione per la Scuola. His research focuses mainly
on the history of social thought between the 19th and the 20th century, collective
memory, youth and education. He has been a member of several evaluation
committees in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Portugal. He is editor of Mundus,a
journal on history teaching. His recent publications include Giovani a scuola
(Young People at School; with G. Argentin. Bologna: Il Mulino 2007) and Deux
Pays, deux Jeunesses? (Two countries, two Youths?; with V. Cicchelli and
O. Galland. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008).
Roberto Moscati is Professor of Sociology of Education at the Department of
Sociology and Social Research of the University of Milano-Bicocca. His main
interests are related to the comparative analysis of higher education systems,
education policy, teaching and learning activities, student life, student education
and development, civic culture and national identity. He is Member of the
Evaluation Committee at IULM University and at the University of Milano-
Bicocca, and Member of the Italian ‘Bologna Promoters’. His most recent
publications include L’universita` di fronte al cambiamento (The University
Facing Transformation; edited with M. Vaira. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008),
Gouverner les universite´s en France et en Italie (Managing the University
in France and in Italy; with S. Boffo and P. Dubois. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008),
Dentro e fuori la scuola (Inside/Outside the School; with E. Nigris and
S. Tramma. Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2008) and ‘Transforming a Centralised
System of Higher Education: Reform and Academic Resistance in Italy’
(in: A. Amaral, I. Bleiklie, C. Musselin (eds) (2008), From Governance to Identity:
A Festschrift for Mary Henkel. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 131–140).
Academic Systems and Professional Conditions S53