The Employment of Academics and Administrators in European Higher Education: National and Organizational Determinants

Research on employment focused on short-term academic employment trends in different countries uses non-representative samples and has been often limited to descriptive statistics. Most recent studies have used regression models to explain different aspects of academic employment. These findings, though, are based on the analysis of only few countries. Current gaps in the comparative study of academic employment are also related to the methodological limitations of comparable information across countries.Through this research cooperation, we aim to determine which national institutional frameworks and which organizational characteristics explain changes in the patterns of academic and administrative employment in universities and colleges across 28 European countries. A further specific object is to elucidate changes in the relationship between the employment of academics and administrative staff. We will build a dataset based on national databases and the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) that allows a cross-national study on the forms and effects of higher education expansion and managerial trends on higher education personnel in Europe. The sample allows comparing jobs across sectors and types of institutions.We will build multilevel and regression models with the percentage of full professors or the percentage of full-time non-academic staff from total non-academic staff as the main outcome variables. Results will be analyzed using concepts of sociological neo-institutionalism and through multilevel models which would test, among other relationships, the role of variables such as country, cultural region, influence of new public management reforms, population, publications, students, legal status, institutional status, funding, area, and recent mergers or acquisitions. At the end of the scientific exchange, two co-authored articles about the employment of academics and the employment of administrative staff will be written.