Keynote Address SRHE International Conference on Research into Higher Education, 5 December 2018

1. Social Stratification in Higher Education:What It Means at the Micro-Level of Individual Academics Keynote Address SRHE International Conference on Research into Higher Education, 5 December 2018 Celtic Manor, UK Professor Marek Kwiek Director, Center for Public Policy Studies UNESCO Chair in Institutional Research and HE Policy, University of Poznan, Poznan, Poland kwiekm@amu.edu.pl; www.cpp.amu.edu.pl

2. I. Introduction (1/3) • Academic profession: massified. • Double-massification process= more public scrutiny. • The stratification-related changes in HE: intensification. • This research: the micro-level of individual academics. • Empirical background to theoretical concerns: 17,000+ returned surveys from academics, 500 interviews, 11 European countries.

3. I. Introduction (2/3) • Academics:deeply stratified, sharply graded. • Large-scale, quantitative, and international empirical material. • Multi-country, multi-level research. • Notions: competition, verticaldifferentiation, and the attractiveness of the academic profession. • View of research: a powerful academic game – not inclusive, not democratic, not egalitarian… • Prestige-driven, ruthlessly competitive. • At the heart of academic reward systems. • Teaching equally valued – but not the principal focus here.

4. I. Introduction (3/3) • Students, local communities, social mobility, social reproduction… plus individual struggles foracademic recognition. • Mission overload, overburdening (individual level). • Structure of this speech.

5. II. The context: massification of the academic profession (1/1) • Massification of HE= massification of the academic profession. • Critical dynamics: as massification progresses, stratification follows. • Vertical differentiation: different contributions to knowledge – expected from different segments of national systems. • Differential access to opportunities in research vs. academic careers.

6. III. Three types of social stratification in HE (1/1) • Three types explored: • Academic performance stratification(research output: high-low). • Academic salary stratification(income: high-low). • International research stratification(international collaboration: yes-no). • Social stratification in HE refers directly to individual academics. • Operationalized, rigorously measured and compared cross-nationally.

7. IV. Data and methods (1/2) • The data: the largest comparative research into academic scientists in Europe (CAP and EuroAC projects). • 11 European countries studied: • Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, and the UK (England). • Cleaned, weighted and integrated into a single European dataset by the University of Kassel team (Ulrich Teichler). • The total number of returned surveys: 17,211(400 variables). • A micro-level (individual)approach – not systems. • The individual academicas the unit of analysis.

8. IV. Data and methods (2/2) • Sample: both teaching and research involved, from the university sector (only). • The three (internationally) under-researchedclasses of academics: • Highly (research) productive academics. • Highly internationalized academics. • Highly paid academics. • Who they are, how they work, what is their working time distribution, and their academic role orientation. • International comparative academic profession studies.

9. V. Academic performance stratification (1/3) • Inherent ‘undemocracy’shown (as in Price 1963; Xie 2014). • The distribution of research productivity: strongly skewed. • Huge numbers of low publishers – small numbers of high publishers across Europe. • Top performers (upper 10%) in the 11 countries : • 53.4% of peer-reviewed articles. • 45.6% of publications in English. • 50.2% of internationally co-authored publications. • The class of top performers – not explored in international comparative studies.

11. V. Academic performance stratification (2/3) • Common features of top performers found: • male, middle-aged (mean age 47), full professors, • international in scope or orientation, • collaborate more often both nationally and internationally, • publish abroad more often,basic and theoretical research. • Longer total working hours, more time spent on research. • But also: more time on teaching, service, and administration, in contrast to the expected teaching-research trade-off (Fox 1992; Dillon and Marsh 1981). • Much more research-oriented. • Powerful implications for academic careers: what do do, what not to do.

12. V. Academic performance stratification (3/3) • Academic knowledge production (national, institutional)hinges on top performers. • Highly homogeneousclass (working pattern and role orientation). • Similar cross-nationally and differ substantially from other academics intra-nationally. • Systems of HEperceived as fair and meritocratic. • Egalitarian ideology protects the stratified (steep internal hierarchy) scientific community against polarization.

13. VI. Academic salary stratification (1/2) • A cross-national perspective: predictors for entry to the class of top earners. • The 80th percentile of gross academic income, 40+, experience 10 years +, five major academic clusters, each country. • Top earners substantially more (80-140%) productive (and publishingmuch more (100-150%) internationally co-authored research). • Perplexing: longer administrative and service hours – rather than longer research hours and shorter teaching hours.

15. VI. Academic salary stratification (2/2) • Previous research: strong positive correlation between research hours and salary levels(Fairweather 2005). • Our research (European sample) does not confirm these findings. • Traditional links do not hold in Continental Europe. • Top earners: • more time on all academic activities exceptfor teaching and research. • more time on admininstrative and non-commercial service.

16. VII. International research stratification (1/2) • Academicspowerfully stratified by international research collaboration. • ‘Internationalists’ and ‘locals’in research (”Are you collaborating with international colleagues in research?” Yes/No): two prototypical figures. • Some systems, institutions, academic clusters, and academics- more internationalized. • International research (& publications) contribute to the increasing stratification of the academic profession. • Reason: international collaboration positively correlated with higher publishing (and citation) rates.

18. VII. International research stratification (2/2) • Mean productivity consistently higher for internationalists. • International publication co-authorship: strongly correlated with international collaboration. • Internationalists across Europe: at least twice as many peer-reviewed article equivalents (PRAE) as locals, about three times more article equivalents in English (ENG-PRAE). • European academics who do not collaborate internationally(=locals) may suffer increasing losses (both research resources and academic prestige). • Academic performance stratification = linked to research funding stratification = linked to academic journal stratification (top journals).

19. VIII. Policy implications: performance stratification (1/1) • Implications different by job profile and institutional type. • Especially important for young academics. • Time investments of top performers: in research and in all other academic activities (teaching, service, administration). • Research time vs. non-research time. • Entry ticket to top performance: • long research hours, • long total working hours, • high research orientation, and • high levels of international collaboration. • Less (research) productive academics (50% of academics accounting for 8.5% of all publications) –significant untapped research potential across Europe. • Top performers tend to attract other top performers.

20. VIII. Policy implications: academic salary stratification (1/1) • Academics with a ‘taste for research’, remember – much time in Europe will be spent on non-research activities. • The core distinction: research and non-research activities. • European institutions offering more research time may be more attractive to research-oriented academics. • Systems with merit-based pay may be more attractive to research-oriented academics, and specifically to top performers. • The influence of salary stratification on the future of the academic profession (& its attractiveness).

21. VIII. Policy implications: International research stratification (1/2) • The competition for prestige (and research resources)hinges on internationalization in research. • Single rule: ‘No international collaboration, no international co-authorship.’ • Local prestige & local publications vs. successful careers. • Institutional success vs. individual research successes (prestige maximization model, Melguizo and Strober 2007). • Scholarly publishing: more than an individual matter: • Determines institutional/departmentalfunding. • Defines resource-rich vs. resource poor units within institutions. • Who generates research funding?

22. VIII. Policy implications: International research stratification (2/2) • Internal implicationsof external research collaboration. • Internationalists differ fundamentally in their academic attitudes and behaviors from locals. • Both types constitute homogeneous groups across European systems. • International visibility of national research hinges on prevailing patterns of: • collaboration (international, national, none at all), and • publication (international channels, national channels, none at all).

23. IX. Conclusions (1/3) • Research is the single most stratifying factor in the HE enterprise. • The underpinning of the stratification system in HE is contribution to knowledge – through published research. • Prestige & success inseparable from consequential, high-quality publications. • Our large-scale comparative data showincreasing tensions in HE,extending to the individual academic. • The tensions can be operationalized through the various stratification types. And measured – across national systems, academic disciplines, age cohorts, gender…

24. IX. Conclusions (2/3) • Academics at the center of governance and fundingand assessment changes. • Research-focused vs.teaching-focused institutions:changes filter down into academics’work and life. • Academic job requirements mirror the increasing stratification of HE institutions(and individuals). • The big-picture issues(e.g. institutional mission differentiation)are related to direct anxieties for individual academics.

25. IX. Conclusions (3/3) • The three types of stratification studiedrefer predominantly to research. • Other stratification types, not discussed: • Academic power stratification (divided by: academic positions). • Academic age stratification (divided by: age cohorts). • Academic role stratification (teaching, research, both). • Genderstratification. • Research funding stratification (divided by funding opportunities). • Academic journal stratification (divided by journals)… • Empirical evidence shows that the academic profession is: • heavily internally divided (as never before)… • possibly because it is massified (as never before). • Turbulent times – but our collective future is at stake… • Thank you!