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Professorial Pathways

Academic Careers in a Global Perspective

edited by Martin J. Finkelstein and Glen A. Jones

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What makes a professor? The answer depends on where in the world you are.

Winner of the CIHE Award for Significant Research on International Higher Education by the Association for the Study of Higher Education

In the twenty-first century, universities worldwide have found themselves thrust into a great "brain race" as nations, both developed and developing, seek to enhance their place in the global knowledge economy. As the concept of the de-localized university—one that has radically expanded, perhaps even beyond national borders—grows, competing nations have begun reshaping aspects of their...

What makes a professor? The answer depends on where in the world you are.

Winner of the CIHE Award for Significant Research on International Higher Education by the Association for the Study of Higher Education

In the twenty-first century, universities worldwide have found themselves thrust into a great "brain race" as nations, both developed and developing, seek to enhance their place in the global knowledge economy. As the concept of the de-localized university—one that has radically expanded, perhaps even beyond national borders—grows, competing nations have begun reshaping aspects of their national systems to accommodate global standards and metrics.

In Professorial Pathways, Martin J. Finkelstein and Glen A. Jones consider how academic careers vary in countries that are fundamentally different in their organization and dynamics. Building on 25 years of scholarship, the book confronts major questions: What can we learn from the experience of other nations as they seek to balance the seemingly contradictory imperatives of expanding access and ensuring global competitiveness? What are the implications of this rapidly changing policy environment for the health of the academic professions on which university teaching and scholarship depends? And how can we advance the comparative study of higher education and, in particular, of the academic profession?

The volume brings together detailed case studies of the latest—and ever-changing—educational developments in ten countries across Europe (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia), Asia (China, India, Japan), North America (United States, Canada), and South America (Brazil). Essays written by respected scholars in the field identify the major structural features of national higher education systems and academic markets that directly shape academic work and careers. Professorial Pathways will be of interest to anyone who toils in the vineyards of comparative and international higher education.

Contributors: Elizabeth Balbachevsky, Martin J. Finkelstein, N. Jayaram, Glen A. Jones, Barbara M. Kehm, Dan Mao, Christine Musselin, Peter Scott, Fengqiao Yan, Akiyoshi Yonezawa, Maria Yudkevich

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Reviews

What makes this well-written and very readable book unique is that it shows clearly how the crucial issues at stake are not only the subjective factors, such as where it is "better or worse" to work as an academic, but the ways in which structural imbalances increasingly shape the sector globally and reach well beyond the traditional boundaries of academia, thereby impacting on so many other aspects of the lives of individuals working in the field and beyond.

We often forget about the academic profession and the changing academic workplace in contemporary discussions of higher education. Professorial Pathways provides a well-researched global perspective on the academic profession. It shows how academe is changing in ten key countries and permits us to understand the key to university success everywhere—the professoriate.

Finkelstein and Jones have brought together a highly distinguished panel of scholars from around the world. Their comparisons and analyses, based on a vast reservoir of data, give us a new and valuable vista on academic careers.

These case studies from the larger higher-education countries, together with the concluding chapter by the editors of this beautifully presented book, provide a state-of-the-art summary of the worldwide academic professions, deeply variant at the national level yet subject to common and growing pressures.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
312
ISBN
9781421428734
Illustration Description
8 graphs
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Academic Profession Enters a New Global Era
Martin J. Finkelstein and Glen A. Jones
Chapter 2. Germany: Unpredictable Career Progression but Security at the

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Academic Profession Enters a New Global Era
Martin J. Finkelstein and Glen A. Jones
Chapter 2. Germany: Unpredictable Career Progression but Security at the Top
Barbara M. Kehm
Chapter 3. France: Marginal Formal Changes but Noticeable Evolutions
Christine Musselin
Chapter 4. United Kingdom: Institutional Autonomy and National Regulation, Academic Freedom and Managerial Authority
Peter Scott
Chapter 5. Russia: Higher Education, between Survival and Innovation
Maria Yudkevich
Chapter 6. Brazil: An Emerging Academic Market in Transition
Elizabeth Balbachevsky
Chapter 7. India: The Challenge of Change
N. Jayaram
Chapter 8. China: The Changing Relationship between Academics, Institutions, and the State
Fengqiao Yan and Dan Mao
Chapter 9. Japan: Opening Up the Academic Labor Market
Akiyoshi Yonezawa
Chapter 10. United States: A Story of Marketization, Professional Fragmentation (Stratification), and Declining Opportunity
Martin J. Finkelstein
Chapter 11. Canada: Decentralization, Unionization, and the Evolution of Academic Career Pathways
Glen A. Jones
Chapter 12. Looking across Systems: Implications for Comparative, International Studies of Academic Work
Glen A. Jones and Martin J. Finkelstein
List of Contributors
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Glen A. Jones

Glen A. Jones is a professor of higher education and the dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He is a coauthor of Governance of Higher Education: Global Perspectives, Theories, and Practices.
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