Search results

The central place that education has in the strength and well-being of any profession is widely accepted. Australia presents an interesting case study of a country where Library and Information Studies (LIS) education moved from being conducted by practitioners under the guidance of the professional association to being provided in institutions of higher education in 1959. The 50 years (1959–2008) saw substantial changes in Australian LIS education with a rapid proliferation of schools which was later followed by closures, mergers and changes of focus. This chapter charts LIS education during this period focusing on organizational and structural aspects of the placement of LIS education in tertiary institutions, on the academization of LIS educators who had in the early days mainly been drawn from practice, and on the development of LIS educators as academic researchers and authors as represented by their productivity and visibility in national and international databases. In addition to giving an account of these areas of LIS education over the 50 years, the chapter seeks to offer explanations for what has occurred and some views of strategies which may assist the development of LIS education in Australia and in other countries which possess similar characteristics.

Asheim concluded by noting that the need for change was the thread that connected almost all discussions of library education during the decade; change was not just accepted but anticipated, encouraged, and even instigated at an increasing pace. The accompanying effect on professional education was that “… the stress in education … fell upon education-for-change rather than upon the history, the heritage, the tradition.”(1975, p. 178) Wisely, perhaps, Asheim declined to predict whether or not this particular stress on change would continue, but he did raise the possibility of a respite, a period when change would be placed to the side in favor of reaction and retrenchment. Thirty years later his words sound almost wistful:The next few years may be a period of synthesis following the antithesis of the past decade—not a complete return to an earlier and more leisurely past, but not so violent a wrench as was feared by some, and sought by others (1975, p. 178).

Academic integrity in tertiary education is a global concern. This chapter describes academic integrity in Australian universities and proposes an “it takes a village” framework to guide universities toward a re-evaluation of academic integrity education. It takes a village to raise a child – a child needs role models and positive influences from multiple people for healthy growth and development. With regard to academic integrity, the parallel is that the entire university community needs to be involved to foster development of students of integrity. The institution and its community need to provide structures, multiple positive and effective learning experiences, and clear guidelines to support both staff and students. In this chapter, we argue that academic integrity needs to be seen as a complex system, one in which everyone involved has responsibility to develop and maintain a culture of integrity and one which supports a student throughout their academic journey.

Similar to community colleges in the United States, the Israeli tertiary system includes two-year technological colleges, which provide students with a labor-market relevant qualification. Nonetheless, unlike the community colleges, the technological colleges are not considered to be part of the higher education system and their transfer function is irregular and confined. In order to understand these differences, the chapter has two complementary objectives: (a) to describe the emergence and development of technological colleges and (b) to evaluate the implications for social inequality in access to higher education in Israel. We use a mixed-methods research design, including analyzing primary and secondary sources describing the official policy and public discourse around these colleges (qualitative/historical research) and comparing students attending academic institutions to students attending technological colleges and students across different fields of study offered by these colleges (quantitative research). Drawing on Phillip's (2004) model for policy attraction in education, we find that technological colleges in Israel were based on the Dutch HTS model, while the founding of these colleges was initiated by local impulse. The implementation of the technological colleges in the Israeli context was shaped by a cultural logic for higher education that emphasizes research and knowledge production, creating a binary tertiary system. Drawing on sociological literature on diversification and stratification in tertiary education, we find that technological colleges attract more students from disadvantaged groups and more students with relatively low academic ability than academic institutions. In addition, within technological colleges, students from advantaged background and higher academic ability are more likely to study in more prestigious fields of study. These findings suggest that if policy makers in Israel aspire to increase access to higher education, they should rethink policy instruments and cultivate the transfer function of technological colleges. This is among the first studies to examine technological colleges in Israel and we conclude with different directions for further research.

The purpose of the chapter is to elaborate the theory of academic capitalism by focusing on rarely examined forerunners of academic capitalism: namely, business schools.

A research-based essay.

The findings emphasize that there are different forms of academic capitalism. Our example from Dubai context shows how more extreme form of academic capitalism, which we label Acamanic Capitalism, developed as a result of free educational markets.

The chapter provides scholarly value through novel conceptualization. The phenomenon of acamanic capitalism should also be acknowledged in academia and in critical management education.

We are the midst of accelerated change in the academic workforce. Academic roles, being a resilient mixture of research and education, are differentiating. An education-focused academic role, rather than one solely focused on disciplinary research, is gaining credibility and value. With the rise of the education-focused academic roles, questions are being raised about whether this new form of education-focused academic will continue to be overly represented by women in a new form of “women's work.” In the next decade, as academic roles continue to differentiate, care needs to be taken not to repeat the practice of the last 100 years which has seen gender bias continue. We will present four profiles of education-focused women academics, the snakes and ladders in their careers, and the strategies needed to ensure that women progress with equal recognition in these complex but exciting times.

I historically compare changes in institutional frameworks creating academic positions linked to temporary employment by analyzing university employment statistics in Chile, Colombia, Germany, and the USA. I find that temporary academic positions were institutionalized through the creation of previously inexistent academic categories called a contrata in Chile, de cátedra in Colombia, “junior professor” without tenure in Germany and “postdoc” in the USA; used in higher education and employment laws since 1989, 1992, 2002, and 1974, respectively. Under institutional frameworks demanding the maximization of students and research, universities have increasingly contracted academics through temporary contracts under rationales that differ between regions. In Colombia and Chile, public university leaders and owners of private universities contract such teaching positions to expand student numbers through lowering costs. In Germany and the USA, employment insecurity is mostly driven by temporary scientific positions under a main rationale of scientific expansion. The share of temporary positions has increased exponentially in Colombia and Germany in recent decades, whereas in the USA there has only been an increase since 2012. Moreover, in Chile, the share of permanent positions has decreased since 2012. The common trend is one of isomorphism of vertical academic structures sharing a pyramidal form, with a wide base of academics working under conditions of contractual insecurity. Such trends follow a rationale for maximization of student numbers as well as administration, and scientific production that is in tension with prioritizing wellbeing and improvement of academics’ working conditions. Yet, in these environments, the institution of tenure in the USA and recent Chilean regulations on accreditation represent mechanisms counteracting precarious employment.

Within the last two decades, entrepreneurship education has become institutionalized in Germany. It is offered as a stand-alone program or as part of a business degree, combining academic knowledge, practical skills, and personal development to enhance the entrepreneurial success of university graduates. While entrepreneurship education has experienced similar growth worldwide, its emergence in Germany is closely tied to the country’s political and economic developments. The significance of entrepreneurship education for a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem and contemporary economic policy has been instrumental in advancing its academic recognition. This chapter provides a historical analysis of the academization of entrepreneurship in Germany. It explores the recursive and often idiosyncratic processes involving state and financial institutions, companies, and universities that have created, respecified, and mutually reinforced a subdiscipline and field of study. Academic entrepreneurship knowledge successively not only became relevant for starting a business but also for employment within the entrepreneurial infrastructure and beyond. This chapter follows a chronological order, highlighting three key stages in the academization of entrepreneurship education. First, the academic, financial, and political roots (I) of entrepreneurship up until the 1970s. Second, it explores the transformation (II) of entrepreneurship into a viable policy alternative and the challenges faced in establishing complementary research and education in higher education institutions during the 1980s. Finally, it sketches the institutionalization (III) of entrepreneurship as a central driver of government economic policy, allowing for the late bloom of entrepreneurship education and research at universities around the turn of the millennium.

Although universities have been decentralized for academic freedom and autonomy, resources are being increasingly centralized, and the role of central administration is growing for efficiency and excellence reasons. At the same time, a division of labor is progressing by assigning specific tasks to professionals. The professionals are also centrally managed. Educational development was introduced by central administration to cope with the massification and quality assurance of higher education. Although it played a great part in promoting educational reform, it also suffered from the rejection of academics and the lack of methodology. Unlike ITC service and student service, educational development touches the autonomy of academics and is always torn between the central administration and academics. This chapter analyzes the structural and cultural difficulty of educational development in Japan by tracing its historical development and by comparing to other countries.

In recent years, the academic profession has received increased interest as an object of study. Higher education systems all over the world have submitted to deep and structural changes with implications for this professional group. Two relevant international projects have been developed to analyze changes in the academic profession in a comparative way: “The Changing Academic Profession” (CAP) and “Academic Profession in Europe: Responses to Societal Challenges” (EUROAC). The aim of this chapter is to analyze the major results of these projects, reflecting on the way they have incorporated theories in the field of sociology of professions, and, simultaneously, to reflect on the contributions the empirical results of these studies have brought to the theoretical framework in this specific field of study. Data analysis reveals that, even if academics do not engage in an in-depth discussion about academics as a professional group, it is possible to classify them as the ‘producers of producers’, or as a meta-profession. Simultaneously, analysis of current changes in the academic profession demonstrates the existence of an increasing internal diversification and fragmentation (based on such dimensions as changes in academics’ roles, employment and working conditions, internationalization processes, autonomy, gender, and age). These results suggest the need to include professional internal diversity in the current debates on changes in professions in contemporaneous societies.