1

Can we speak of ‘teaching’ and ‘research’ any more, and what does this mean for academic work?’

William Locke

Centre for Higher Education Studies

3

Outline: four linked arguments

• Teaching and research are now largely separate activities as a result of policy and operational decisions to distinguish the way these activities are funded, managed, assessed and rewarded

• Even including ‘service’, these terms no longer adequately describe what HEIs, academics and professional support staff do

• Nevertheless, the processes that have led to this are creating new opportunities for linking knowledge creation, exchange and acquisition in all its forms

• However, for these opportunities to be fully realised will require a reconceptualisation and reconfiguration of academic work, roles, careers, divisions of labour and a transformation of the HE ‘workforce’.

Robbins report

‘There is no borderline between teaching and research; they are complementary and overlapping activities. A teacher who is advancing his general knowledge of his subject is both improving himself as a teacher and laying foundations for his research. The researcher often finds that his personal work provides him with fresh and apt illustration which helps him set a subject in a new light when he turns to prepare a lecture.’

(Committee on Higher Education, 1963)

Key factors in the T-R relationship

Teaching•Teaching Quality Assessment/ Subject Review /Institutional Audit &Review•Expansion (including postgraduate taught provision)•Validation by universities of awards at non-degree awarding institutions•Franchising provision to further education colleges•Trebling of undergraduate fees (twice)•Changes to the criteria for university title (the creation of teaching-only universities)•Growing influence of performance indicators (DLHE, NSS, etc)•Funding reductions, targeted funding•Proposal to give degree awarding powers to non-teaching bodies (e.g. examination bodies)

General•End of tenure for academic staff•‘Casualisation’ of teaching staff•End of binary divide between universities & polytechnics•Introduction of UG tuition fees•Teaching-only/research-only contracts•Use of graduate teaching assistants•HE predominantly perceived as a private good rather than a public benefit•Knowledge Exchange/ ‘Third Stream’ funding•Tying HE to the goal of national economic development•Encouragement to private providers

Research

•Research Assessment Exercises •QR (quality research) funding•Selectivity: funding concentrated in fewer institutions & departments•Dual Support (from funding councils & research councils•Prominence & prestige of research•Contract research(ers)•Intellectual property rights applied to research outputs•Reduced research council funding

The third dimension?

Teaching, Research and...

Service

Administration

Academic citizenship

Engagement

Public intellectuals

Knowledge exchange

Third stream/leg

Collaboration with business & the community

Enterprise

Consultancy

Scholarship of application...

The disintegration of teaching and research 1• Impact of research assessment and funding on both research and teaching• Funding, management, QA and recognition of both research and teaching

do not incentivise their integration• Initiatives to raise the status of teaching to achieve parity with research

tend to employ the language of research ‘excellence’ and attempt to restore the central place of teaching in a ‘world class’ university

• Efforts to identify indicators of teaching quality and include these in online data facilities (eg KIS/Unistats, U-Multirank)

• Attempts to identify ‘dimensions of quality’• Paradoxically, these further emphasise the separation of teaching and

research…and the hegemony of research

7

The disintegration of teaching and research 2• The centrality of ‘classroom-based instruction’ in HE pedagogy is in

question, despite the national preoccupation with ‘contact hours’• Variety of forms, modes and locations of learning, and the

requirements of graduates entering a range of employment and further training

• The changing nature of knowledge and its production• Widening participation and facilitating progression: changing the nature

of curriculum and pedagogy• Strategic, institution-wide use of ICTs and open educational resources• Multi-skilled teams of academics, professional support staff and ‘para-

academics’

8

The disintegration of teaching and research 3• Broadening the spectrum of research as the range of government,

corporate and social bodies interested in its outputs has extended• Shifts in modes of knowledge production to include applied, collaborative

and interdisciplinary research has impacted on research activity• Telling the ‘impact’ story: moving from an afterthought to a key aspect of

the research design process• Fragmentation of roles: basic research, data analysis, project

management, preparation of research proposals, reporting, ‘public engagement’ with findings

• ‘Professionalisation’ of the research proposal process, increasingly run by separate units to maximise success rates

9

“Even though there is a spoken acknowledgement that all three (teaching, research, and service) are important, every academic knows there is a hierarchy, with research sitting at the top … I think academic institutions forget that we need a blended balance of strong teachers and strong researchers in order to make the university viable and profitable – and we can’t expect that we’ll get both out of one person who has any sort of work-life balance!”

From Bexley et al, 2011

10

New opportunities for linking knowledge creation, exchange and acquisition?

• Integrating undergraduate students into departmental research cultures• Student-driven (pedagogic?) research into improving their own learning

experiences• Open access research outputs• Open innovation models of networking between universities and business

These are only just beginning to be explored, let alone investigated and understood – but research into this should be a priority

Significant obstacles to taking advantage of these lie at the heart of the academic profession (and the HE workforce) and the way it is currently conceived and configured

11

“The traditional model of academic work evolved to serve the knowledge generation and knowledge dissemination needs of a student body and a society different to those it serves today. The unbundling of academic work is an evolutionary stage in the way in which universities are organized to fulfil their social mission. This process will not be successful if a diverse range of contributions are not placed on equal footing within the policies and cultures of universities.”

Bexley et al, 2011: xv

12

A differentiated profession• In different types of institution• Full- and part-time• Permanent and fixed-term contracts• Teaching & research, teaching-only and research-only contracts• Senior (professors and senior lecturers/researchers) & junior

grades• In different academic disciplines• Academics and ‘para-academics’

14

Trends in the HE ‘workforce’

• Slow-down (but not a reduction) in academic recruitment• Increase in teaching-only contracts (roles?)• Decrease in numbers of professional and support staff• Professional support staff taking on more academic functions• Redundancies/severance and changes to reward packages and terms and conditions in order

to increase flexibility and manage expenditure on staff• Intensification of performance management and metrics, workload allocation, a ‘hardening’ of

the HR function, use of shared services and outsourcing• Increasing pressure on middle managers who may not be well equipped to face these

challenges• All (not just front-line) staff are being required to become more ‘customer-focused’• Changing staff expectations, especially younger, professional and international entrants to the

academy

15

Staff in UK HE institutions 2004/05 to 2012/13

HESA 2006-2014

Academic employment function

16HESA 2014

Academic employment function by mode of employment 2012/13

17 HESA 2014

Terms of academic employment

18HESA 2010-2014

19

Impact of marketisation on the workforce• New methods of calculating course costs and surpluses

• Efforts to improve staff:students ratios

• Reconsideration of the balance between permanent, temporary and hourly-paid staff

• Workforce planning: increasingly, a direct link is being drawn between staff and student numbers

• Process reviews in order to streamline student support functions: the administrative function is being more closely aligned with student support and the student experience

• Specialist academic labour markets: e.g. research stars, academics from the professions, enterpreneurs/managers, institutional leaders

• Those HEIs that are more successful in the market, may try to attract high-performing teaching staff from other institutions

“Achieving success in the rapidly changing environment … requires, above all, a very clear strategy. Everyone, from the senior team down, needs a very clear understanding of what you are about. What makes your university the destination of choice for a certain group of students, staff and business partners?  How can you differentiate yourself from competitors, including further education colleges and private providers? And in some cases it is going to require some judicious pruning to concentrate on real strengths…

We’re seeing a substantial shift in our business model. It’s rapid. The results are uncertain. But there will be more continuity than change. Indeed continuity will be one of the features of the success stories.”

20

Eric Thomas, President, UUK & VC, University of Bristol (2012)

“Our major challenge is taking the whole academic body on the next phase of the journey, where the skill set, skill mix and working requirements will be very different from those in the past. Some won’t be able to make the journey.”

21

PA Consulting (2010) Escaping the Red Queen Effect

In conclusion: some questions• How do we optimise the synergies between these (now) loosely

coupled activities?• How can we develop a more equitable and nuanced approach to the

diversity of academic and related activity in our institutions?• How do we handle different individuals’ motivations, expectations and

career ambitions?• What are the prospects for recruiting the next generation of academics,

academic managers and academic leaders?• What are the implications for institutional, faculty and departmental

management, and for policy makers, funders and regulators?

22

23

Thank you for listening.Questions or comments?William Locke

Co-Director

Centre for Higher Education Studies

Email: w.locke@ioe.ac.uk

@wdlocke

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/william-locke/3b/341/234

Institute of EducationUniversity of London20 Bedford WayLondon WC1H 0AL

Tel +44 (0)20 7612 6000Fax +44 (0)20 7612 6126Email info@ioe.ac.ukWeb www.ioe.ac.uk