The Worst Academic Profession Career Structures: Our Suggestions for Ranking

Philip G. Altbach must be one of the more prolific authors in all of higher education. Here's another piece, with Christine Musselin, about poorly designed or badly implemented academic career structures and the harm they can do:

A few examples will illustrate how poorly designed or badly implemented academic career structures can have a severely negative impact on the profession—and ultimately on the future of higher education. Many look to the United States as the world's leading university system and to the American professoriate as highly productive. The US "up-or-out" tenure system is seen as a rigorous but effective way of ensuring careful selection while at the same time providing a clear career path. While the system has been criticized for downplaying teaching and sometimes imposing unrealistic time constraints on junior staff, it is widely seen as effective. The problem is that fewer than half of new academic appointments in the United States are made on the traditional "tenure stream"; most new appointments are either part-time or full-time contracts. While the situation is somewhat better at the top institutions, this new arrangement makes an academic career impossible for participants of this new system. While this policy may save money and increase flexibility in the short run, it will have a highly negative impact on the American academic profession. The first increasing difficulty involves attracting the most qualified individuals to academe and constrains young researchers while autonomy should be provided at an age when creativity and innovation are usually at the highest levels.