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Higher Education Quarterly, 0951–5224 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2273.2012.00516.x Volume 66, No. 2, April 2012, pp 207–217

Negotiating Academic Values, Professorial Responsibilities and Expectations for Accountability in Today’s University hequ_516

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Luanna H. Meyer, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, [email protected]

Abstract This paper argues that it is reasonable to expect the professoriate, including full professors, to balance traditional academic values with external demands for accountability. Today’s universities are characterised by increasing diversity, wider access to higher education, decreasing funding and greater oversight through quality assurance: professors have a particular responsibility to respond to these modern realities and expectations. The essay explores how the role of professors in supporting knowledge development and dissemination through research and teaching can be elaborated and enhanced to ensure that universities contribute to the social good. How well the professoriate responds to contemporary challenges within and beyond traditional academic interests will determine the future of universities, just as previous responses have contributed to their endurance as institutions for more than 900 years.The essay concludes with emphasis on how full professors in particular can promote their special role and responsibilities for supporting the ideal and idea of the university in today’s world. Introduction Universities have historically undergone major changes and endured significant challenges (Sassower, 2000).Today’s university is increasingly challenged to demonstrate its relevance, contributions and accountability to nations and their people. Higher education no longer focuses solely on the interests of the élite but plays a role in educating the majority of a nation’s population. Increased student diversity requires that curricula © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4, 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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be internationalised, multicultural and inclusive of flexible approaches to teaching and learning, including distance learning and information technologies. Public and private funding has declined, while universities are expected to diversify income sources to compensate. Governments throughout the world are demanding accountability and transparency and, in response, universities have adopted quasi-market management and academic audit compliance monitoring models with added administrative compliance costs. The effects of broad societal, government and contextual changes on the university as an institution and on the professoriate at its core merit scholarly examination. Since their origins over 900 years ago, universities have endured as the only publicly and privately supported organisations with the dual purpose of both generating new knowledge through research and disseminating knowledge through teaching.Traditions such as academic freedom, institutional autonomy and shared governance have largely persevered in the university despite major shifts in national boundaries, government regulations, political movements and financial control. Maassen et al. (1999, p. 1) highlighted that the continued survival of universities since the Middle Ages in ‘more or less the same organisational form’ is influenced by perceptions that they add value to society. Yet, dialogue is conflicted regarding the place of universities in a nation’s ‘knowledge economy’ and how the professoriate ought to respond to demands for increased accountability. Coaldrake and Stedman (1999, p. 9) argued that in the face of multiple demands, university managers and individual academics have engaged primarily in ‘accumulation and accretion’ rather than respond to challenges with fundamental reform or adaptation. There is a growing literature on academic work roles, the intensification of academic work and the impact of increasing demands on stress and work–life balance for the professoriate (McInnis, 2000; Winter et al., 2000; Winefield et al., 2003; Jenkins, 2004). Doring (2002) asked what may well be the fundamental question: is today’s academic an agent of change or at risk of becoming a victim of change? This article examines the role of full professors as academic leaders within their universities and internationally and argues that their acceptance of the responsibility to nurture and grow the emerging professoriate is fundamental to the maintenance of academic values. The idea of the university professoriate The university has been variously described as: a place of learning; a community of educated persons; devoted to the pursuit of intellectual © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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truth as an end in itself; and fulfilling of a central and ethical role for society through the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, professors have also been known to refer to the university as ‘a sheltered workshop for people like me’. There is a certain privilege in being part of an institution devoted to lofty and noble aims such as research and teaching; and many who work in universities are there because of their commitment to the idea of a university, even if they bemoan the day-to-day realities of universities as workplaces. Historically, the academic role has emphasised teaching and research and the professoriate was largely empowered to define its role in relationship to an international community of scholars. Universities were seen as loosely coupled associations of scholars, not as institutions accountable for the social good, a knowledge economy and an educated national citizenry. Individual academics have had the freedom to choose which disciplinary contributions to make and select those societal responsibilities they were willing to accept, generally referring to this third aspect of the academic role as ‘service’. More recently, Boyer (1990, 1996) reconceptualised service as the ‘scholarship of engagement’. He considered that service as a scholarship of engagement represented the special duty of the university to use its resources to address the social, civic and ethical challenges of the day. In other words, the university can no longer exist as an Ivory Tower. The reality of the university professoriate Sassower (2000) acknowledged that, albeit somewhat grudgingly, society has nevertheless supported the university as a kind of ‘sanctuary’ since the ninth century. Even the continued organisation of universities into faculties or departments that represent academic disciplines or areas of study affirms that professors are privileged in their almost unconditional pursuit of esoteric interests (Meyer and Evans, 2003, p. 153). At the same time, however, universities are increasingly challenged to define graduate attributes comprising a set of skills and understandings beyond disciplinary content knowledge to prepare them as educated citizens who can think critically, problem-solve and add value to their communities. Increasingly, student learning is ‘managed’ across courses and qualifications that are expected to lead to employment in the real world. Economic rationality in an environment of declining funding demands that qualifications pay for themselves. Hence, academic study that does not lead directly to a valued and paid role in society may be sacrificed in favour of training people for particular jobs (with obvious costs for the study of the humanities and a boon for the study of science). Research is © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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also challenged to not just add new knowledge but lead to new sources of income for the university and its funding governments, corporations or foundations. Where research leads to discoveries and inventions, dissemination of new knowledge may be waitlisted for years until patents are approved and ideas translated into profitable business ventures. Clearly, there are downsides to these new demands including the possible erosion of traditional academic values including the academic freedom guarded by universities. On the other hand, the university as an idea and as an institution has endured for centuries. Today’s demands, pressures and expectations of the university and its professoriate are simply no more than contemporary challenges: surely the idea of the university is robust enough for its professoriate to adapt and respond. Bringing the resources and expertise of the university community to bear upon the pressing social, economic and political challenges of the day is nothing more than today’s challenge. This essay is written as a reminder to the professoriate of the responsibilities that accompany privilege: they must ensure that it is not this generation of scholars who shrink from the task of leadership and its challenges. The changing academic profession The role of the professoriate is largely based on custom and practice in teaching, research and service.There are no universally agreed principles or expectations other than rather general frameworks and guidelines for what it is that academics do at different ranks. Hence, the most common ‘standard’ that international referees are asked to apply in writing a letter of reference to support an application for promotion to professor is a rather vague one: referees are asked to comment regarding whether the candidate would be promoted to professor at their own universities. Somehow, the academic community knows what is expected to be promoted through the ranks and academics manage to straddle simultaneous demands for intellectual rigour and public accountability.There is a hierarchy of expectations under broad headings such as publications, research, consultancies, editorial boards and other contributions but these are largely underdeveloped and informal such that it can be almost impossible to compare two promotions objectively even in the same discipline within the same university; much less across disciplines and universities. How then are junior academics to know what’s expected of them? How too does the university community, much less the funding body or the public at large, know whether the professoriate at any given rank is meeting expectations and living up to responsibilities in accordance with that rank? Universities in the UK have collaborated in the © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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design of the Researcher Development Framework (Research Councils UK, 2011) comprising empirically-based characteristics required of excellent researchers; the framework is intended for use in planning and evaluating researcher training programmes as well as providing individual research trainees with a portfolio guide for their development. While this is an excellent example of a systematic and transparent pathway for researcher development, the framework documents are silent with respect to the specific responsibilities of university professors in preparing this next generation of researchers. Coates et al. (2010) reported the results of the Changing Academic Profession (CAP) Survey administered to staff at universities in countries across the world. Interestingly, they reported increased satisfaction with university management at increased levels of seniority: junior academics are those who are least satisfied with the way their university is being managed. Coates et al. commented on growth in the casualisation of staff: academic positions being replaced by casual staff without faculty positions leading to tenure. There are also concerns about the aging professoriate, though this concern appears to be focused primarily on the implications of the loss of expertise when professors (finally) retire. Why might it be that professors are not particularly unhappy while junior academics are? This finding is a concern given the inevitable retirement of today’s professors and the need to replace them with highly qualified new professors. It should be no surprise that senior academics at the rank of professor are mostly happy with their current role and responsibilities within today’s university. For one thing, they are likely to have tenure at universities and in nations where there is no mandatory retirement age. Furthermore, their job security and salary are largely unaffected by levels of productivity. In contrast, junior academics at significantly lower salary levels are required to demonstrate productivity for years before they have job security. Professors receive significantly higher salary and benefit levels in comparison to junior academics, who not only receive lower salaries but are raising young families and perhaps even struggling with the complications of maintaining two academic careers. At times of worldwide recession when people are living longer and costs increasing beyond original retirement planning, there may be considerable incentive to hang onto positions. In addition, professors teach less and are more likely to win research grants releasing them from teaching based on past productivity and connections. They also have the political clout to avoid university tasks they do not like and the higher status of professorial rank affords respect within and across the university. No wonder © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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then, when a colleague in his late sixties was asked when he might retire, he replied: ‘Not anytime soon as I love what I’m doing!’ This colleague was in a field in which new academic positions are rarely advertised and his own university is unlikely to advertise a new position in the area unless and until he retires. Without mandatory retirement and with almost unconditional tenure, such as in US and Canadian institutions, professors can stay on indefinitely, doing only those things they like best. Funding cuts to universities and support for university research limit career opportunities and pathways for professors in ways that are likely to have a negative impact on the university, the disciplines and the development of future scholars (June, 2011). Professors can become part of the problem in not making way for new positions for young academics and those junior academics who do succeed in winning academic appointments increasingly may be expected to take on more onerous tasks to prove themselves. If an entrenched professoriate continues to promote ongoing research programmes at the expense of research by new and emerging researchers, they ignore the salutary message in ‘A memo from Machiavelli’: The new idea you worked so hard to establish will, in time, be dull and old . . . the last step, then, is the most ruthless of all: kill your own project when it has outlived its usefulness.” ( Julius et al., 1999, p. 129)

Research performance assessment The rise of performance-based research funding accompanied by formal evaluation of research activity across the university can have a salutary or detrimental effect, depending on how such schemes are designed. In a performance-based research funding scheme, at least some portion of the university’s funding will be dependent on research performance including objective measures of productivity and impact. The adoption of such schemes has occurred in various countries over the past two decades, including the UK, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia. One approach allows universities to select academic staff whose research portfolios are put forward for evaluation: this has been how the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise operated historically. One potential negative consequence of selective evaluations can be that the university highlights only a selection of its academics. The contingencies operating upon the university ensure that whatever resources exist within the university will go to support the productivity and recognition of its ‘stars’, with obvious consequences for research support for others. Those not selected for review are subsequently at risk as there is no institutional incentive to support their research or even their positions. Over time, the university © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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may be tempted to support only a few selected professors and other academic appointments may disappear altogether and be replaced by a combination of casual, teaching-only and research-only staff whose major responsibilities involve support for the élite research-active professoriate. It does not take a crystal ball to see where this pattern may lead through the destruction of incentives for young people to choose an academic career given the erosion of academic pathways and positions within a relatively short period of time. In contrast, a system that requires that all academic staff be part of the evaluation exercise requires that the university provide ongoing support for all academic staff to be research active. New Zealand’s Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) requires virtually all academic staff to be part of the evaluation on a six-year cycle and there are financial consequences to tertiary institutions for non-research-active academic staff.The university is thus motivated to support research at all levels of the professoriate. Furthermore, the PBRF structure incorporates an individual evaluation of each academic’s research portfolio that comprises three major sections: research outputs; peer esteem; and contributions to the research environment. Standards and exemplars are well-developed for each of these three categories so that individual ‘evidence portfolios’ can be graded reliably by national expert peer review panels. Individual academics are scored not only for how much they publish and the quality of those publications, they are also rated for the impact of their work nationally and internationally (peer esteem) and whether they contribute to research development (contributions to the research environment). Senior academics such as professors will not attain a top score based on research outputs alone but must also show evidence that they are providing research support to others through activities such as postgraduate student research supervision, mentoring junior colleagues and establishing research network opportunities within and across universities in their discipline area (Tertiary Education Commission, 2010). New mandates: are they a bad thing? If universities are to continue to be perceived as adding value in educating the next generation and the scholars who will create and transmit new knowledge, academics have to engage with public demands for accountability. While not all areas of the university relate practically to addressing real-world problems, some do and these engagements make for better thinkers or citizens. Universities can no longer be satisfied with simply selecting talent based on existing skills and expertise but must © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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create talent and opportunity. New developments and challenges for the university are commendable not regrettable, reflecting that today’s university has a social responsibility and supports enhanced access to knowledge (Meyer and Evans, 2005). It is fair to expect universities to generate a public good with broad goals and purposes, going beyond their historical commitment to higher education as a private good or élite refuge for a privileged few. The role of the university to develop capacity and human capital can also be viewed as an appropriate response to new productivity expectations and functions for knowledge and talent flow across boundaries, whether national or disciplinary in nature. These new mandates inevitably require re-examination of the roles and responsibilities of professors as well as those of senior academic managers and all academic staff within the university community. There is merit in every member of the professoriate accepting the mandate to address public questions about the value of their discipline or areas of study. Should universities support all disciplines and the academic interests and pursuits of all academics? Even if the answer to these questions is a resounding ‘Yes!’, university academic staff must be prepared to engage with such questions and to explain their commitments. Are some fields more relevant than others and are some fields no longer relevant at all; if so, which ones and why? The professoriate needs to be able to explain how research and teaching in higher education in any field or area of scholarship has the potential to add value to society. Even if government were willing to fund all areas of study indefinitely, students may no longer engage in areas that do not interest them. Where interest is declining in particular areas, they should take notice and investigate how and why such fields should be of interest. If professors are to assert the value of fields of study that have historically existed in universities, can they persuade others of their value? If not, universities should not be surprised if public support ends. The special responsibilities of professors It is professors who are in the best position to be charged with new roles and responsibilities to ensure the viability of higher education. Concern regarding the increased managerialism in today’s universities highlights an artificial divide between senior academic managers (most often professors themselves) and the professoriate, who as professors should be actively engaged in shared governance (Meyer, 2007). Perhaps what is needed is a final career stage for those who attain the rank of full professor, whereby responsibilities associated with the role shift from demonstrating individual scholarship to mentoring the emerging profes© 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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soriate while nurturing the university’s commitment to research, teaching and the scholarship of engagement (Boyer, 1990, 1996). Kogan (1999, p. 10) noted that the official literature lacks an effective statement of the role and identity of the academic. He argued that leadership should be an essential requirement for professors who must ‘have a concern for the advancement of the skills and reputation of their more junior colleagues’. Junior academics need advice and support from professors in each of the following: • • • • • • •

mentoring on the rules of the game; how to strategise research priorities; how to write grants and help to do so; how to publish and help to do so; how to respond to reviews; offers of and referrals for opportunities; support for when to say ‘no’.

Those who aspire to become professors should not have to discover the secrets of doing so on their own: they have a right to expect that these rights of passage will be clarified by professors who facilitate rather than gate-keep. Raynor et al. (2010) concluded that research is needed on the professorial role as academic leader, as opposed to viewing the rank of professor as primarily a promotion marking the pinnacle of one’s academic career. They highlight the ‘notable silence on the range of issues that should surely surround recruitment, appointment, productivity, value and succession planning for the role, engagement, operation and work of the professor and the professoriate’ (Raynor et al. 2010, p. 620). Tight (2002) also commented on how little research exists about professors, noting that most of the literature on academic roles actually addresses what is expected of those at the ranks of lecturer and senior lecturer (in Commonwealth nations) or assistant or associate professor (in the USA), not full professors. The status of emeritus professor is an existing rank that is generally awarded to a professor after retirement based on exceptional contributions across their academic career. Thody (2011) found that many emeritus professors develop what Freedman (2008) referred to as ‘encore careers’ after formal retirement: she critiques the absence of university action to establish meaningful criteria for passage to emeritus status or utilise the contributions of emeritus professors to mentor their junior peers. What might be useful in today’s world and tomorrow’s university is to co-opt the role of emeritus professor as a final promotion © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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stage, available to those professors who demonstrate the highest achievements of all, passing on their commitments, expertise and scholarship to the next generation of the professoriate.Their final challenge would be to extend beyond individual accomplishments to demonstrate evidence of contributions to the advancement of knowledge in growing the next generation of scholars. The university as an institution and as an idea matters. Universities are not museums, nor are they businesses. Universities are about building on the past and the present to enhance the future. Someone once commented that research is not a butterfly collection meant to be stored under glass, gathering dust with only the occasional glimpse from others interested in (dead) butterflies. Research should be alive and shared, it should lead to something. Publishing research outputs in scholarly journals will continue to have value if these outputs add to our knowledge and thereby move the field ahead. Professors are in the best position to help explain why the research and scholarship carried out in universities matter to our communities and society. Rather than relying on published works as the final evidence of impact, professors should be challenged to develop agency for passing on what they know to the next generation of scholars. As Macfarlane (2011) emphasised, professorial leadership could make a significant contribution to the life of the university and the development of the next generation of scholars. Even if a special role for professor-as-mentor does not yet exist, the professoriate must fulfil this crucial responsibility. Each professor should be able to name the young academics whom they have supported directly to become the new professoriate: this is a small price to pay for the extraordinary opportunity to be part of a university and develop scholarship. If they fail to do this, they risk being part of the generation responsible for the erosion of the university as idea and ideal translated into reality. Acknowledgement An earlier version of this paper was presented as an invited keynote address at the Fourth International CETL Conference, University of Oxford, UK, April 2011. References Boyer, E. L. (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Boyer, E. L. (1996) The Scholarship of Engagement. Journal of Public Service and Outreach, 1 (1), pp. 11–20. © 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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Coaldrake, P. and Stedman, L. (1999) AcademicWork in the Twenty-First Century: Changing Roles and Policies. Occasional Paper Series. Canberra, Australia: Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Coates, H., Dobson, I. R., Goedegebuure, L. and Meek, L. (2010) Across the Great Divide: What Do Australian Academics Think of University Leadership? Advice from the CAP Survey. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 32 (4), pp. 379–387. Doring, A. (2002) Challenges to the Academic Role of Change Agent. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 26, pp. 139–148. Freedman, M. (2008) Encore: FindingWork That Matters in the Second Half of Life. NewYork: Public Affairs, Perseus Books Group. Jenkins, A. (2004) A Guide to the Research Evidence on Teaching-Research Relations. http:// www.heacademy.ac.uk, last accessed 13 February 2012. Julius, D., Baldridge, J. and Pfeffer, J. (1999) A Memo from Machiavelli. The Journal of Higher Education, 70 (2), pp. 113–133. June, A.W. (2011) Fewer Paths for Faculty. The Chronicle of Higher Education, LVIII (4), p. A1. A3–4. Kogan, M. (1999) Academic and Institutional Leadership. Paper presented at a National Conference of University Professors with the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals, London, U.K. Maassen, P., Neave, G. and Jongbloed, B. (1999) Introduction: Organisational Adaptation in Higher Education. In B. Jongbloed, P. Maassen and G. Neave (eds.), From the Eye of the Storm: Higher Education’s Changing Institution. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 1–11. Macfarlane, B. (2011) Professors as Intellectual Leaders: Formation, Identity and Role. Studies in Higher Education, 36 (1), pp. 57–73. McInnis, C. (2000) Changing Academic Work Roles: the Everyday Realities Challenging Quality Teaching. Quality in Higher Education, 6, pp. 143–152. Meyer, L. H. (2007) Collegial Participation in University Governance: a Case Study of Institutional Change. Studies in Higher Education, 32 (2), pp. 225–235. Meyer, L. H. and Evans, I. M. (2003) Motivating the Professoriate:Why Sticks and Carrots are Only for Donkeys. Higher Education Management and Policy, 15, pp. 151–167. Meyer, L. H. and Evans, I. M. (2005) Supporting Academic Staff: Meeting New Expectations in Higher Education Without Compromising Traditional Faculty Values. Higher Education Policy, 18, pp. 243–255. Raynor, S., Fuller, M., McEwen, L. and Roberts, H. (2010) Managing Leadership in the UK University: a Case for Researching the Missing Professoriate? Studies in Higher Education, 35 (6), pp. 617–631. Research Councils UK (2011) Vitae: Researcher Development Framework. http://www.vitae. ac.uk/rdf, last accessed 31 October 2011. Sassower, R. (2000) A Sanctuary of Their Own: Intellectual Refugees in the Academy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Tertiary Education Commission (2010) Performance-Based Research Fund Quality Evaluation Guidelines 2012. Wellington: Tertiary Education Commission. Thody, A. (2011) Emeritus Professors of an English University: How Is the Wisdom of the Aged Used? Studies in Higher Education, 36 (6), pp. 637–653. Tight, M. (2002) What Does it Mean to be a Professor? Higher Education Review, 34, pp. 15–31. Winefield, A., Gillespie, N., Stough, C., Dua, J., Hapuarachchi, J. and Boyd, C. (2003) Occupational Stress in Australian University Staff: Results from a National Survey. International Journal of Stress Management, 10 (1), pp. 51–63. Winter, R., Taylor, T. and Sarros, J. (2000) Trouble at Mill: Quality of Academic Worklife Issues within a Comprehensive Australian University. Studies in Higher Education, 25, pp. 279–294.

© 2012 The Author. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.