Merger mania? The Finnish higher education experience
- Authors: Aarrevaara, Timo , Dobson, Ian
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Mergers in higher education : the experience from Northern Europe p. 59-72
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
Academics under pressure : Fear and loathing in finnish universities?
- Authors: Aarrevaara, Timo , Dobson, Ian
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Forming, Recruiting and Managing the Academic Profession p. 211-223
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This chapter presents an examination of Finnish university academics and the pressures they encounter in the rapidly changing academic milieu. In addition to the evolution all societies are subject to, staff in Finnish universities has had to adjust to a Universities Act that came into force from 2010, and this ushered in fundamental changes in governance arrangements and confirmed a pattern of increasing managerialism. Evidence indicates that many academics feel little capacity to influence decision making, and some are trapped in a cycle of precarious employment by oft-renegotiated short contracts. In addition, universities find themselves in competition with other labour market segments for highly qualified knowledge workers, a factor which has the capacity to have an impact on universities and their academic workforce. Using quantitative data from the Changing Academic Profession survey and augmenting this with qualitative data from the EUROAC project, this chapter examines Finnish university academics perceptions of academic life in the twenty-first century. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.
- Description: This chapter presents an examination of Finnish university academics and the pressures they encounter in the rapidly changing academic milieu. In addition to the evolution all societies are subject to, staff in Finnish universities has had to adjust to a Universities Act that came into force from 2010, and this ushered in fundamental changes in governance arrangements and confirmed a pattern of increasing managerialism. Evidence indicates that many academics feel little capacity to influence decision making, and some are trapped in a cycle of precarious employment by oft-renegotiated short contracts. In addition, universities find themselves in competition with other labour market segments for highly qualified knowledge workers, a factor which has the capacity to have an impact on universities and their academic workforce. Using quantitative data from the Changing Academic Profession survey and augmenting this with qualitative data from the EUROAC project, this chapter examines Finnish university academics’ perceptions of academic life in the twenty-first century. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.
Changing employment and working conditions
- Authors: Aarrevaara, Timo , Dobson, Ian , Wikström, Janne
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Academic Work and Careers in Europe : Trends, Challenges, Perspectives p. 95-115
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This chapter considers the academic working environment in eight European countries and reports on academics' impressions of the changes that environment has undergone in recent years. We focus on the extent to which the content of academic work in these countries is similar or different; the nature of academics' working conditions and how they have changed; and what academics' affiliations are. The analysis also considers differences according to seniority. Based on interviews with European academics, we consider how changes in working conditions, employment and modes of operation have affected scholarly work and related activities, and the impact change has had on academic freedom. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.
Publishing and presenting: A cross-national analysis of engineering academics in Europe
- Authors: Aarrevaara, Timo , Dobson, Ian
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Global Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 15, no. 3 (2013), p. 148-154
- Full Text: false
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- Description: The international Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey was used to compare several measures of research output in participating European countries. When looking at the output of books, articles, reports and conference presentations, results indicated variations between countries and between the engineering field of education and other fields of education. European university engineering academics produced relatively more research reports/monographs written for a funded project, but tended to produce at lower rates than academics overall in the other three forms of written research output. © WIETE 2013.