Abstract
European higher education systems have undergone significant transformation in the past two decades due to the new governance arrangements. Studies have indicated that the teaching-research nexus is being reshaped by the changes in institutional environment, which include increasing student numbers, financial pressures, shifts in evaluation and rewarding criteria for faculty, as well as the expectations of external sponsors of research. This changed nexus implies that teaching and research time in academics’ work portfolios increasingly compete with each other, which alters the nature of academic work and career paths at European universities. This chapter analyzes the extent to which the changing teaching-research nexus may influence gender inequalities among academics by focusing on the Dutch higher education system, and in particular, on a case study of a university in the Netherlands. Based on analyses of national and institutional reports, pertinent literature and survey data from this university, we demonstrate that the preconditions for a change in the teaching-research nexus exist in the Netherlands. Further, we find that an imbalanced allocation of teaching and research tasks is highly likely to have constraining effects on the career prospects of female academics.
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Notes
- 1.
Success in research remains one of the most important criteria required for promotion to higher-ranked academic positions. A large number of research outputs and grants seems to conform better with contemporary notions of performance, while teaching has fewer measurable outputs (Blackmore and Sachs 2007).
- 2.
The proportion of women in academic top positions in the Netherlands saw an incremental increase from 8 % in 2002 to 13 % in 2010 (European Commission 2012). Further, the Dutch higher education system has a relatively new system of job ranking, creating highly differentiated formal positions in which teaching and research tasks may occur in different proportions while sticking to the traditional Humboldtian model of teaching-research nexus (De Weert 2009: 148).
- 3.
In addition to these positions, a common practice in Dutch universities is to employ doctoral candidates as a part of academic staff with employment contracts. The position is called “Research Assistant Trainee” (AiO), consisting mainly of research tasks with approximately 20 % teaching duties (see De Weert and Boezerooy 2007).
- 4.
- 5.
See the previous section on teaching-research nexus in the Dutch academic job classification system.
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Leišytė, L., Hosch-Dayican, B. (2017). Gender and Academic Work at a Dutch University. In: Eggins, H. (eds) The Changing Role of Women in Higher Education. The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42436-1_5
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