Abstract
During the last five decades, Austrian higher education system underwent two major reform cycles that severely affected the working conditions for academics. In the 1970s and 1980s, Austrian policy makers created a stable ‘middle rank’, i.e. permanent academic positions below the professoriate. However, in 2001 this policy was reversed in connection with the introduction of a new governance regime. The paper will analyse how the changing legal conditions have shaped the academic profession and how these changes were perceived by academics. The central question of this paper is the balance between radical change and the persistence of long-standing traditions in the structure of Austrian academic careers.
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Notes
- 1.
Contrary to this development, at the same time academics in the United States founded the American Association of University Professors, encompassing all academic ranks. The driving initiative came from established professors; this was unlike the German speaking countries, where junior academics were fighting for their social rights. ‘The fact that this initiative was assumed by the academic elite in this country points to the special context in which the call for professional unity arose. Here professors were not members of autonomous guilds or of a high and privileged stratum of the civil service; they were employees of lay governing boards in private and public institutions.’ (Metzger 1987, p. 168).
- 2.
Chair-holders in 1955: 336 ordinary and 121 extraordinary professors; in 1964: 502 ordinary and 113 extraordinary professors; in 1970: 806 ordinary and only 100 extraordinary professors at all Austrian universities; Source: BMWF, Hochschulberichte.)
- 3.
The faculty assembly was composed of: 50 % professors (all associate and ordinary professors of the faculty), 25 % assistants and 25 % students; this body decided the demand for new staff and sanctioned the creation of new posts.
- 4.
The three groups (professoriate, assistants and students) were represented in equal numbers in the so-called institutional conference.
- 5.
Associate Professors UOG 1975: 172 in 1973; 305 in 1975; 540 in 1986; 608 in 1993;
Ordinary Professors: 1093 in 1975 to 1201 in 1993, Source: BMWF, Hochschulberichte.
- 6.
Quote from an interview with an Austrian associate professor in the framework of the EuroAc project: http://www.uni-kassel.de/einrichtungen/en/incher/research/research-area-change-of-knowledge/euroac-academic-profession-in-europe.html
- 7.
With the (minor) exception of the so-called ‘staff scientist’, a permanent non-professorial academic position.
- 8.
During the interim or transitional period between 2002 and 2004 (when the University Act entered into force), it is hard to statistically trace the various co-existing positions and legal arrangements. For this reason, this chapter leaves out the years between 2002 and 2004. Even after 2004, when the new staff-reporting regulations of the University Act applied, thus rewriting a (new) statistical basis, there was still considerable confusion regarding how positions were defined. This situation was only fully resolved in 2009, when new positions that were codified in the collective agreement were ultimately categorised and defined by the universities.
- 9.
Burton Clark has pointed to problems associated with mass higher education systems where the chair structure is preserved: ‘As academic enterprises and systems have grown, the chair, compared to the department, has been an increasingly inappropriate unit for swollen disciplines. Systems that have both kept the chair as primary unit and have grown much larger have exhibited overload and extreme fragmentation. Most important, the chair system has a weak capacity to correct errors, particularly in the crucial area of equity appointments. When a mistake is made in selecting a mediocre person to fill a chair, the affect is long lasting, through the rest of the academic life of the incumbent and beyond.’ (Clark 1983, p. 48).
- 10.
‘For it is extremely hazardous for a young scholar without funds to expose himself to the conditions of the academic career […] The question whether or not such a private lecturer, and still more an assistant, will ever succeed in moving into the position of a full professor or even become the head of an institute. That is simply a hazard. Certainly, chance does not rule alone, but it rules to an unusually high degree. I know of hardly any career on earth where chance plays such a role.’ (Weber 1947a, p. 129f.).
- 11.
The typical situation in the US is the ‘appointment of more than one professor in the same field, and a regular graded set of salaried academic ranks that together comprised the academic career. Moreover, in the United States a full professorship became the normal expectation of every academic man or woman, as the terminal grade of the career.’ (Trow 2010, p. 323).
- 12.
It was a widespread metaphor in the 1800s to compare the situation of a private docent who was waiting for a ‘call’ with a young woman eager to get married (cf. Schmeiser 1994, p. 66).
- 13.
‘Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary…’ (Weber 1947b, p. 358).
- 14.
In the late 1800s, when tensions between ordinary professors and the lower ranks of academics intensified, professors defended their social position by referring to these exceptional qualities. For example, the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin states: ‘With some talent, effort, and persistence one can become a competent civil servant; one is a researcher by grace of God.’ (cf. Schmeiser 1994, p. 35).
- 15.
Up to the early 1900s, sacrifices were not just economic in nature – a willingness to postpone marriage was also considered a sign of devotion (cf. Schmeiser 1994, p. 39).
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Pechar, H., Park, E. (2017). Academic Careers During the Massification of Austrian Higher Education. In: Machado-Taylor, M., Soares, V., Teichler, U. (eds) Challenges and Options: The Academic Profession in Europe. The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45844-1_6
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