Appendix 2
Responses from non-Anglo countries to the challenge of current university staffing, and the proposed solutions
| Cameroon | Nigeria | Spain 1 | Spain 2 | Romania | |
| Is there a divide between academic and professional staff and, if so, does that divide impact on the function and culture of the university? | Yes, there is a divide between academic and professional staff. This divide impacts on the function and culture of the university. The university is increasingly unable to innovate and even efficiently perform current missions because of the limited collaboration between these two groups, which is critical. Instead of collaboration, they are also almost always suspicious of each other. This mutual suspicion has serious implications on performance. | Yes. The workforce comprises academic and non-teaching professional staff. The core function of the former is to conduct academic research and engage in teaching while the latter are more or less bureaucrats who perform mainly administrative and technical duties. In some way, the structural distribution of roles has affected the culture of the university in Nigeria. For example, it is generally perceived in the Nigerian university system that academic staff are | The academic–professional division is deeply rooted in Spanish universities. Professionals are responsible for the administration and management of services; they are rarely involved in educational or research projects. Some professors (the associates) are professionals hired on an hourly basis and do not participate in government tasks. Few tenured professors make their academic tasks compatible with professional practice. All of this has a negative impact on the social function of universities. | In Spain, the divide between academic staff and administration staff is very strong and very often both groups undervalue each other. Academics feel that administrative staff do not provide the things they need for their job (either teaching or research) which forces them to assume a lot of bureaucratic burden that academics should not do. Administration staff see academics as empowered people that work at their own rhythm and that do not appreciate the labour of administration. | |
| The limited interaction between academics and professionals means that the university is trapped in a ‘frozen culture’ considered safe by those who primarily make decisions, albeit being at odds with the current context. | superior to non-teaching professional staff in terms of their status and social relevance. Interestingly, this perception extends beyond the university environment into the larger Nigerian society. Academic staff are, therefore, more respected in both the university system and society. | ||||
| Do you have issues of casualisation (where academic staff are employed on short-term contracts with little job security) and, if so, how are you addressing this, if at all? | Yes. Entry-level academic and part-time lecturers fall in this group. These categories are employed on short-term contracts and enjoy very little job security. Part-time lecturers especially can see their contract (though very short term) very easily terminated. These two groups, however, do a greater share of the work. | Yes, but not exactly the form it takes in Western universities. There is no casualisation among academic staff in Nigeria. However, some forms of contract employment exist. First, when an academic member of staff or a higher-level non-academic member of staff retires, he/she may be given contract employment for two years and is subject to renewal for another two years after which the contract ends. This form of contract is being phased out as a result of the recent National Universities Commission’s | The problem of temporary contracts in junior academics is serious, although a large majority have no problems with the renewal of their contracts and their promotion to higher levels, subject to an assessment of their merits. Their access to tenure tends to be excessively delayed. | We do have issues of casualisation, usually under the figure called ‘profesor asociado’ (not to be translated as the ‘associated professor’ of UK and USA universities). This profesor asociado is defined in our law as someone who is a prestigious professional outside the university and collaborates with it by giving some hours of lectures (not well-paid, more as a service or for his/her CV). As a consequence of economic difficulties, especially after the economic crisis, this figure has been used to hire (young) people willing | Short-term contracts do exist and are usually employed when hiring practitioners (usually the term we use to refer to people with no PhD, but extensive knowledge of their field, who may, on occasion, give classes based on their professional experience). However, employing practitioners is considered rather an exception from the rule (with the rule being that only PhDs would teach – or those being doctoral students). |
| directive that abrogates it. Second, someone working outside of the university system, either in the private sector or the public bureaucracy and has retired from his/her previous employment, may be hired as a contract staff. The contract is renewable every year and may be terminated by the university at short notice. | to pursue an academic career, that are paid very low (by hours) and have to employ themselves as autonomous (therefore paying part of their own social security) in order to fulfil the legal requirements of the position. They have become known as the ‘fake asociados’ and universities are designing plans to promote them. | ||||
| Does tenure – or something equivalent – exist in your jurisdiction and, if so, is it creating the type of perverse behaviour described in the draft text? | Yes, tenure creates such behaviour. The reason is that senior staff in this category (associate professors and professors) have a sense of entitlement and some see themselves as ‘untouchable’. This means they seem not to bother about productivity or the consequences of their actions. | No. In the Nigerian university system, once an academic member of staff is employed and confirmed, he/she enjoys tenureship until retirement at the age of 65 or 70, if the staff attains professorship before 65. In other words, tenureship is automatic for all academic staff. Consequently, the kind of perverse behaviour experienced in the West does not exist in the Nigerian university system. | In public universities (not private ones) in Spain, most of the permanent teaching staff are civil servants. Their conditions are not regulated by the university but by the State. After passing the entrance exams, they occupy a position from which they cannot be removed, except in exceptional cases; this facilitates some of the negative behaviour described in the text, since the subsequent economic incentives are only linked to evaluations of their research activities. | In the Spanish system, permanent positions are most often public servants, therefore almost impossible to remove. We have two categories: Profesor Titular and Catedrático. Since 2007, there is also the position of Profesor Contratado Doctor, that is a permanent position under a labour contract. But it is seen as an intermediate step towards the public servant ones. A problem that we encounter is that the average age of these figures is very high (almost 50 for Profesor Titular and 58 for Catedrático). | Permanent positions in Romanian academia represent the rule. Tenure is associated with all positions (assistant professor, lecturer, senior lecturer and professor) and is linked to the university where one teaches (for example I am currently a senior lecturer in Bucharest; if I want to become a professor, I need to search a vacant position in any university and participate in a public competition. |
| That means that people do not get a tenure (nor permanent) position until they are in their 40s, which is a big problem. | If I win, then I become a professor in that particular university where the position was vacated). | ||||
| Would the introduction of an expanded and dominant cohort of third space professionals break down the academic–professional staff dualism in your jurisdiction? | I think that an expanded and dominant cohort of third space professionals will break down the academic–professional staff dualism in my university. It is, however, not possible to imagine this happening in the near future as this will be a very ‘radical’ change, given the current situation. | Yes. The superiority status enjoyed by academic staff in relation to the non-teaching staff and its associated social identities and some discriminatory practices will naturally break down. | The massive introduction of professionals from the third space would largely break the professional–academic dualism in Spanish universities. | Certainly, these third space professionals do exist already (invisible by now) and their formal recognition and development could be interesting. In many meetings, we mention the need of a hybrid profile: not a pure academic nor a pure administrative but both of them. Probably, this is also forced by the bureaucracy that takes many hours of academic staff and also the technification of some support administrative positions (project managers, managers of research labs, quality assessments and evaluation). | |
| Would the introduction of UON Academy-type function/department help to address the issues around the casualisation of academic staff and to reset the psychological contact? | The University of Newcastle approach can help address the issues around casualisation and reset the psychological contract. The main challenge is that it, however, will appear too radical for the university to consider implementing such now. | Not really, since about 98% of academic staff are on full-time employment and also enjoy tenureship. | Specific programmes to support the integration of temporary staff and their ‘psychological contract’ with the university would be very beneficial. | I do not see it right now in Spain. | |
| Would the ending of tenure for senior academics – and the introduction of tenure for junior academics – be a viable solution for the management of academic careers? | This can be a solution. It will, however, require that the conditions that have made casualisation an option in UON or similar are met. This is because I think very few academics are able to function in this way in developing countries such as Cameroon. The reason is that skill levels and individual objectives for a good number mean they would not be competitive or, worse, will be redundant if such a change occurred today. Introduction of tenure for junior academics is easy to achieve and will be a good solution. | This currently does not apply in Nigeria. All academic staff enjoy automatic tenureship as noted above. | The extension of the periods of stability proposed in the text for young teachers would be very positive. On the other hand, it does not seem feasible in Spanish public universities to end the tenure of senior academics. It would require major legislative reforms, as tenured professors and lecturers are civil servants, and it would be necessary to count on the opposition of these who govern the universities. | I do think that tenure should be introduced for junior academics (although a good point is how early should they be ‘forced’ to stay some years of postdoc or not?). As I pointed out before, in Spain, tenure arrives, nowadays, too late, which is what makes an ‘academic career’ not very attractive among the young. But I do not agree with the idea of ending tenure for senior academics and, legally, it would be impossible right now (since we are public servants). But also, in my experience, senior professors either are active in research and they continue with their regular tenure life or they become | |
| more involved in administration, falling, in a natural way, into the category of the third space. Ending tenure for seniors in Spain will be unthinkable and, in my opinion, socially regrettable and will make academic careers less attractive. I do not see the point of it. Probably, it is easier to make more flexible the bridges between universities and enterprises or shared positions between two universities. | |||||
| Would the explicit acceptance of a ‘gig academic’ model address some of the challenges currently faced by universities in your jurisdiction? | The explicit acceptance of this model will address some of the challenges faced by universities in my jurisdiction. The lack of compensation of some form of security for academics on short-term contracts and the near absence of collaboration between third space professionals and academics, in particular, will be addressed. These two issues will be very relevant in improving the academic performance in my jurisdiction. | No, since both junior and senior academics enjoy tenureship. | The ‘gig academic’ model could only be partially applied in our universities because the Spanish university system is quite closed and has little room for the mobility of interuniversity teaching and research groups. In particular, there are still many difficulties and limitations to the autonomous recruitment of foreign academics. | No. I do not see that. Probably I do not understand enough the concept of gig-academic. If it can be seen as a ‘star’ among academics that goes from one place to another giving lectures, I do not see it as a real alternative for a significant part of the senior academic staff. I would rather go in the direction of making more common the shared positions I already mentioned above. |
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