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Revisiting academic work and
academic trajectories: Why? How?
Christine Musselin (CSO, Sciences Po et CNRS)
University of Kent, October 2012
Plan
1.
Many studies but still some shadow issues
2.
Towards a sociology of academic work
3.
Academic trajectories/careers
4.
The academic profession and other activities
1. Many studies but still some shadow
issues
1. Many studies but still some shadow issues

Comparing national settings to identify common
trends
 The threat to “permanent” positions
 The increase in non-tenure-track faculty
 What was previously considered a “normal career path” with a
transition period becomes an exception
 The variety in status is increasing because the employment of
contingent staff is less regulated and more governed by local
rules
(1)
1. Many studies but still some shadow issues
 The development of institutional management
expanding along with and superseding self-regulation
 Last but not least, the academic profession has lost
some of its prestige
(2)
1. Many studies but still some shadow issues

Some “shadow” Issues
 Measuring evolution over time within a single
country and between countries.
 The “invisible” workforce: we lack descriptions
and analyses of those working in this “secondary
academic labor market”
 Faculty members as citizens or private persons
(some renewal with N. Gross).
(3)
2. Towards a sociology of academic work
2. Towards a sociology of academic work

Analyzing Academic Activities
 The divide between research and teaching.
 Research activities as a profession or as a network
 Teaching and pedagogy
 Research against teaching
(1)
2. Towards a sociology of academic work
(2)
 Academic work from a more comprehensive
perspective
 How academics articulate the tensions and
complementarities between the many different tasks to be
achieved.
 Most of the time, academic activities have been approached
with the sociology of professions: why not by the sociology
of work.
– Not much attention has been paid to issues such as the
division of work among peers
– Teaching and research as loosely coupled activities
2. Towards a sociology of academic work

(3)
Academic productivity
 Scientometrics and bibliometrics have produced data on
scientific productivity of academics
 But they rarely look at the qualitative and quantitative
impact of the transformation of academic work
 Only few scholars, such as Paula Stephan, have observed how the
transformation of academic labor markets is jeopardizing
quality.
 Even less look at the impact of the “industrialization” of
teaching or of part time and adjuncts on the quality of teaching
2. Towards a sociology of academic work

(4)
The role of universities in the production of new
norms (PhD of Simon Paye)
 Universities as employers
 Human resources offices as norms producers
 Formalization of procedures (yearly assessment for instance)
 Formalization of criteria
 Formalization of career paths
3. Academic trajectories
3. Academic trajectories


(1)
Most works on the academic labor markets
describe how careers are structured by nation
More recently,
 Some studies used the distinction between bounded
(organizational) and boundaryless careers
 In fact they oppose and separate what sociologists
from the Chicago school considered as interdependent.
3. Academic trajectories


(2)
First potential development: bringing together
labor markets, employment relationships, and
organization of work
Second potential development: the
transformation of careers using cohort analysis
to compare trajectories and the odds of entry,
promotions, and institutional mobility
3. Academic trajectories

(3)
An example (with M. Sabatier and F. Pigeyre)
 Methodology
 Comparison between four cohorts in three disciplines
(management, history and physics): 1976-1977, 19861987, 1996-1997, 2006-2007
 Biographical interviews and statistical analysis
 A stable pattern in the entrants profiles
 Entrants are young, early and rapid and it is more and
more so overtime
 In physics, entrants are younger, earlier, and more rapid
than in management and history
.15
.1
0
.05
Age of access
in physics for
instance
.2
3. Academic trajectories… (3)
20
30
40
50
60
age_entree
coh1
coh3
coh2
coh4
70
3. Academic trajectories

(3)
An example (with M. Sabatier and F. Pigeyre)
 Methodology
 Comparison between four cohorts in three disciplines
(management, history and physics): 1976-1977, 19861987, 1996-1997, 2006-2007
 Biographical interviews and statistical analysis
 A stable pattern in the entrants profiles
 Entrants are young, early and rapid and it is more and
more so overtime
 In physics, entrants are younger, earlier, and more rapid
than in management and history
.15
.1
0
.05
Distribution
by age and
discipline in
cohort 3 for
instance
(3)
.2
3. Academic trajectories
20
30
40
50
60
age_entree
gestion
physique
histoire
70
3. Academic trajectories
(4)
 Profiles are stable overtime but the processes leading
to access have deeply changed
 A « vacancy chains » model in the 70s and 80s:
– Many positions are created to face the first massification
– Once a position is vacant, the next in the line got it
– Seniority prevails
 In the 90s and 200s
– Creation of post-docs
– Standardization of the process leading to a position
– Young, early, rapid get a positions, but for the other, the longer
they are post-docs, the less chance they have to get a position
4. The academic profession and other
Activities
4. The aca. profession and other activities


Most of the time, the academic profession has
been studied as autonomous and specific
It has seldom been compared with other
professions, until recently
 Some research deals with the transformation of
work in firms
 Others focus on the transformation of academics
into knowledge workers
 New perspectives ?
Thank you very much !