In this article, we explore the question of how membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctions are used at German professorships to organize research. Using these five criteria of an organization from Ahrne and Brunsson (Organization, 18(1):83-104, 2011) as a theoretical pattern, we shed light on the meso-level of universities in the…

Insecurity and intense competition for permanent academic positions appear to be common experiences for early career researchers across the globe. With academic precarity now firmly on the international research and policy agenda, this article looks comparatively at postdoc precarity in three European countries: Ireland, Norway and Switzerland. It…

In 1984, Ryan and Sackrey's "Strangers in Paradise" explored the challenges of the professoriate for those from working-class backgrounds. Nearly 40 years later, there is a substantial body of narrative and reflective writing by working-class academics. We present findings from analysis of 218 narratives from working-class academics.…

Funders are increasingly requiring international collaboration for research projects and such projects add to the reputation, rankings and research gravitas of institutions and individual researchers alike. The power asymmetries in global knowledge production means that international research collaboration comes with a range of taken-for-granted…

The multi-billion-dollar university rankings industry purports to offer insights into the quality of institutions, but the extent to which it does so has consistently been refuted. Critics argue that problematic proxies, composite indexing, homogenising effects, and several other issues make them both unscientific and neo-colonial. This article…

When a pronounced taste for science leads researchers to self-select themselves in academia, higher education systems must be able to protect it. By relying on the economic theory of higher education, the international mobility and the sociology of science literature, we compare the working condition in the four major European higher education…

The emergence of critical university studies in recent years has provided cogent analysis on neoliberalism's reach into public higher education. While neoliberal encroachment into areas such as governance, funding/corporate partnerships, curriculum, and academic freedom are frequently discussed, less treatment is given as to how neoliberalism…

In this paper we move from considering the chair as an (inanimate) object, to exploring its vitality through a more vibrant and active reading of this inescapable everyday item. We are inspired by feminist new materialism and how affect shapes our understanding of matter. Reading matter in this way surfaces our orientations toward everyday items…

Despite its lengthy history and relatively stable structure, evidence shows that the US system of doctoral education has been in a continual state of change. This change is reflected in disciplinary contexts, student demographics, professional outcomes, and the investment of external stakeholders. While the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted issues of…

The number of PhDs awarded in chemical engineering is disproportionate with the number of tenure track positions available; an overview of the contributions that can be made by teaching-focused faculty is presented. Statistics are provided for the number of chemical engineering faculty in the US by rank, position and gender. Based on literature…

America's workforce is aging, and popular press articles have warned of a "silver tsunami" of retirements, particularly among the baby boomer generation. Dramatic headlines aside, even gradual changes in workforce demographics will affect hiring, budgeting, training, and more. Higher education tenure-track faculty may be uniquely…

This statistical note updates earlier work on the salaries paid to general staff working at Australia's public universities, and the levels at which universities classify those staff. In 2017, higher proportions of general staff in more senior grades could be found at the University of Technology Sydney, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,…

Research grant funding influences the organisation of academic work and academic careers. We problematise general approaches to gender bias in research grant funding and argue that it fails to include the wider structures of inequality and the unequal gendered power relations in academia. Approaching the subject with gender budgeting we challenge…

Early-career faculty (ECF) are faced with maintaining excellence in teaching and research for tenure. However, many enter academia with little or no teaching experience. Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence, a year-long professional development program, was designed to mitigate these pressures and help faculty become fast, efficient, and…

Many of the gender and racial wage gaps found in society are also seen within higher education, with less diversity among college administrators, faculty, and staff than the United States population as a whole. Postsecondary institutions alone cannot correct the systemic inequities that limit socioeconomic mobility and racial justice, but they can…