Professoriate in today’s higher education landscape

One of the main and essential constituencies of the higher education institutions is the faculty. They are those who drive the students and university itself to achieve the primary goal of higher education (to convey and generate knowledge, research and service), to bring outstanding results and serve to the needs of society. Without highly trained and qualified professors the university can not achieve any success (Altbach, 2010). Without qualified and committed academic staff the size of the library, the contemporary equipments of laboratories will not play a role in producing talented professionals. Thus, first, I will focus on the role of professoriate and then I will discuss current challenges that they face.

                                           

                                                Image credit: http://philanthropy.ru/blogs/2015/02/06/20349/

  Altbach (2010) points out that higher education concentrates on such values as “hardware” which deals with the  infrastructure (buildings, laboratories, libraries) and “software” which are humans contributing to the development of higher education institutions (faculty, administrative staff, trustees, etc.). Thus, faculty has a unique responsibility and opportunity to be the flagship of higher education landscape due to the intensive nature of their work.

      The faculty is a “principal academic source” of any university (Duderstadt, 2000, p. 149). The role of the professorate in universities is significantly important. According to Duderstadt (2000), the commitment of professors defines “the excellence of the academic programs, the quality of student body, the excellence of its teaching and scholarship, its capacity to serve the broader society” (p. 149).

       Although many people tend to think that the faculty is a homogeneous group of people, sharing the same activities and having the same problems, there is a vast range of distinctions among them (Altbach, Reisberg & Rumbley, 2010; Altbach, 2010). For instance, faculty teaches students of the undergraduate, graduate, professional levels; they use own ways and approaches to provide knowledge; some of them simultaneously conduct research; some of them accomplish administrative assignments as well.

      It is undeniable that academic staff faces various challenges that may undermine the desire to work as a professor in higher education institutions. They are can be numerous but I will focus on the following: inadequate financial support, bureaucratization and qualifications.

      It is not a secret that the salaries of faculty are not more than average salary in a country. The financial support is really a problem number 1 which makes working in universities less desirable job. Therefore, there is a trend that faculty leaves their academic work. Especially, highly trained and well-qualified professors are discouraged to work due to the overwhelmed volume of workload: along with teaching academic disciplines and advancing their approaches in teaching they accomplish administrative tasks, conduct research, and do paper-work constantly.  However, compensation (salary) for their intensive work is inappropriate.

     Bureaucratization also can be a hurdle in the work of faculty. The academic staff also deals with the paperwork which takes a lot of time and efforts as well. Sometimes an increased accountability for external bodies resembles the bureaucratic control over faculty which influences negatively to their involvement in governing the university.

      Another problem for faculty is connected with qualifications. Altbach (2010) indicates that “in most developing countries, only academic staff at the most prestigious universities hold a doctoral degree – usually under 10 % of the total” (p. 87). The reason for that is “qualified academics are not being produced fast enough to meet the demand” (p. 88).

    To sum up, we see that the role of faculty is really significant and to solve above mentioned problems we should take some measures – to provide appropriate salaries and support, and increase the status of the professors.

References:

Altbach, Ph.G. (2011). Harsh Realities: The Professoriate in the Twenty-First

       Century. In Ph.G. Altbach, L. Reisberg, & L. Rumbley (Eds.), American

      Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century (pp.227-253). USA: UNESCO

      Publishing.

Duderstadt, J.J. (2000). The Academy. A University for the 21st Century

       (pp.147-164). United States of America: The University of Michigan Press.