Governance of academic teaching: why universities introduce funding programs for teaching and why academic teachers participate

ABSTRACT

While the effects of governance reforms on research have been widely discussed, little is known about their consequences for teaching at universities. This study examines the issue by considering competitive funding programs for teaching currently being introduced in German universities using interviews to explore why universities introduce competitive funding programs for teaching and why academic staff participates. The findings illustrate narratives that are interpreted via Mintzberg's conception of ‘professional bureaucracy’ (1979). Funding programs appeal to academics’ research identities, enabling them to utilize such programs autonomously for their benefit. The study concludes that funding programs are attractive because of their ability to foster innovative teaching and are particularly suitable semantically as they enable both university management and staff to pursue their multiple interests. University governance in the form of funding programs for teaching ultimately affects teaching, leading to specific forms of teaching governance and contributing to ongoing changes in academic identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Governance
• teaching practices
• academic staff
• teacher identities
• case study

1. Introduction

In recent years, a new governance regime has been established globally in institutions of higher education (HE), leading to strong pressure to transform in-line with new public management (Schimank 2005; Bleiklie and Kogan 2007; Jansen 2007). This direction, encouraged by governments and HE policies, aims at strategically steering universities toward competitive third-party funding, thereby reducing public spending costs (Prichard and Willmott 1997; Deem 1998; Harley, Muller-Camen, and Collin 2004). Debates in HE and organizationa studies reflect in-depth on the profound changes within HE (Ramirez and Christensen 2013; Hüther and Krücken 2018). Attention is typically paid to the effects of new public management (NPM) reforms on research as an academic activity (Jansen et al. 2007; Whitley 2010; Schimank 2014).

We observe a rise in competitive funding programs for teaching in the German HE system, which can be regarded as in-line with the familiar steering mechanisms of (third-party) research funding. However, currently, not much is known about the effects of these programs on academic teaching and the staff who implement them. While analyses of the impact of governance on academic teaching are generally still rare (Leisyte, Enders, and de Boer 2009; Wilkesmann and Schmid 2012), there is a rising interest in teaching as an academic activity (and the changes herein). This includes actor-centric approaches, focusing on (changing) individual teaching motivation (e.g. Becker, Kreckel, and Wild 2012; Bloch et al. 2014; Wilkesmann and Lauer 2018) and approaches that highlight underlying governance mechanisms and their institutionalization within universities (e.g. Cox et al. 2011; Houben 2013; Schmid and Lauer 2016; Lauer and Wilkesmann 2019; Mojescik, Pflüger, and Richter 2019). Those debates indicate that examining teaching as an academic activity helps to perceive changes in HE systems more generally. More specifically, such examination enhances our understanding of how governance reforms and NPM affect teaching.

Examining the ways in which academic staff use funding opportunities for teaching contributes to elaborating the contours of a changing governance of academic teaching. Therefore, through a qualitative case study conducted at a large German university, this study seeks to understand: (1) why university management introduces competitive funding programs for teaching, and (2), why academic staff participates in such programs. This study's contribution to the literature is twofold: First, we show how re-examining well-known theories and applying them to the governance of academic teaching can deepen our conceptional understanding of academia. Second, we enhance current reflections on university governance by addressing and exploring the interconnections of NPM and teaching.

2. The rise of funding programs for teaching in Germany

Internationally, there are broad differences in HE systems and university management. While American universities introduced central leadership as early as the 1960s (Ramirez and Christensen 2013), European universities were traditionally characterized by the co-existence of state bureaucratic control over administration and professional control over academic tasks (Clark 1983). Although the pace and extent of reforms differ (Bleiklie et al. 2011) in European countries, recently, the governance of university systems has changed in the direction of NPM, promoting concepts like strategic leadership, accountability, and competition (de Boer, Enders, and Leisyte 2007; Jansen 2007; Ferlie, Musselin, and Andresani 2008). One successful way of implementing these policies was to introduce market arrangements in funding (Teixeira et al. 2004). Some studies indicate that, as a consequence of NPM and its priority for research parameters, teaching and research are increasingly framed as two distinct activities (Leisyte, Enders, and de Boer 2009).

Similar processes may be observed in teaching. Since the Bologna Declaration in 1999, many European countries have implemented new criteria assuring teaching quality, in-line with broader managerial values (Serrano-Velarde 2008). This development also holds true for Germany (Enders, Kehm, and Schimank 2002; Kehm and Lanzendorf 2007), labeled a ‘soft-governmental regime’ (Lauer and Wilkesmann 2017, 267). While competition in German HE had been primarily aimed at research activities (e.g. within the Excellence Initiative framework), the Quality Pact for Teaching (QPL) has now applied this idea to teaching. The QPL, a funding program financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) between 2011 and 2020, is conceived of as in-line with new managerialism in the form of competition. The competitive distribution of funds to support learning and teaching is innovative both structurally and in terms of content. According to the program website, the targeted allocation of third-party funding is intended to ‘improve the staffing of universities for the purposes of teaching, supervision and counselling’, ‘to support universities in the qualification of their teaching staff’, and ‘to implement measures targeted at ensuring and developing high-quality teaching’ at universities¹ (which includes developing innovative teaching models, focusing on making degree programs ‘more practical’ thus promoting universities’ ‘third mission’).

In this context, it is important to note that specific teaching concepts are emphasized in these programs, including research-based learning.² In the QPL project database, 53 out of 460 funded projects are listed as ‘research-oriented teaching and learning’. We consider the relatively high funding rate (11.5%) for research-oriented teaching formats within the QPL framework to indicate a high level of acceptance of such concepts within HE policy and universities.³

In addition to the QPL, we observe that many German universities implement internal funding programs encouraging academic staff to try new didactic concepts (e.g. Exploratory Teaching Space at RWTH Aachen University, the bologna.lab at Humboldt University Berlin, the Teaching Fonds at Technical University Munich, and Instudies at Ruhr University Bochum).⁴ These (temporary or permanent) funding programs provide financial support to individual applicants to test and implement innovative teaching formats. Owing to their competitive structure, applications are evaluated by a committee, similar to the peer-reviewing procedures of external funding agencies.

To learn more about the governance of academic teaching, this study examines academics who participate in such teaching funding programs, asking why they participate, in relation to university managements’ incentives.

3. Theoretical background

In a broad sense, governance usually means the coordination and control of autonomous but interdependent actors either by an external authority or by an internal mechanism of self-regulation or self-control (Mayntz and Scharpf 1995, 16). While neither an integrated theory of governance nor a theory of the governance of universities exists (Jansen 2007), countless empirical studies provide insight into developments in coordination and control within HE; typologies help to compare and comprehend key dimensions.

Compared to other European HE systems the German governance model has traditionally been characterized by strong state regulation and strong academic self-governance. However, after the implementation of NPM, respectively the ‘managerial turn’ in the 1990s, the model changed significantly in major aspects (See Table 1).

Table 1. NPM-model versus traditional German governance model.

	NPM-model	Traditional German governance model
State regulation	Weak	Strong
External regulation	Strong	Weak
Internal hierarchy	Strong	Weak
Academic self-governance	Weak	Strong
Competition	Strong	Weak

Adopted from Hüther and Krücken (2015, 140); translated by the authors.

These changes in coordination and control of universities also affect teaching practice. Therefore, we try to capture developments in teaching organization within one ‘managerial’ university in Germany (see Section 4). We look at teaching governance, where institutional arrangements generate specific forms of thinking and acting regarding teaching. Institutional arrangements in HE are generally influenced by legislation, funding agencies, systems for evaluation, accreditation, and control; within universities, they are significantly negotiated and acted out by university management and teaching staff.⁵

While HE studies typically use rational choice or neo-institutional perspectives to understand individual motives within academia and institutional mechanisms in larger societal contexts (Kehm 2012), this study is interested in (teaching) governance at the meso (university) level. To grasp the perspectives of academic staff (intentional actors who decide to take part in funding programs) in relation to university management (who implement such programs), we hence utilize perspectives of organization studies for deeper theoretical understandings of these issues.

Organization studies typically regard universities as a particular type of organization, one that, in terms of its organizational structures, is among others referred to as ‘organized anarchy’ (Cohen, March, and Olsen 1972) or a ‘loosely coupled system’ (Weick 1976). Here, organizational units are mutually unresponsive and evade top-down hierarchical control. We are interested in views that assess professional autonomy and collegiality as compatible with bureaucratic management (Mintzberg 1979) and central control (Musselin 2007), as long as control is exercised indirectly (not top-down). These perspectives theoretically frame the specific role of academics, their self-conception as professionals, and their points of reference within and outside the university. Thus, we can outline academic teachers’ individual perceptions between their self-positioning in or toward the scientific community, and universities’ changing organizational structures and goals.

According to Mintzberg (1979, 189), the defining characteristic of ‘professional bureaucracy’ compared to other types of organizations is decentralized control. The decentralized core of universities, managed largely by autonomous professionals (primarily professors and other academic staff), comprises research and teaching and its products are knowledge generation and transfer. Autonomy enables the subsystems (faculties, professorial chairs, etc.) within the overall system (the university) to preserve parallel and different systems of norms and values (ibid 194). Ideally, the strong decentralized core is countered by weak central management with little external power concerning quality control and risk-taking. Nevertheless, the function of central control (university administration) should not be underestimated – particularly according to findings that universities tend to become ‘entrepreneurial’ (Clark 1998). Although the decision-making power of administrations is considerably lower than in other organizational types, it conducts tasks that provide professionals with autonomy and support (Mintzberg 1983, 199), creating an environment in which professional bureaucracy can, for example, recruit and train staff. Here, there is an accepted uncertainty among professional bureaucracies, with training and support taking place through complicated procedures of ‘training and indoctrination’ (Mintzberg 1979, 349ff.). While the initial training of professionals usually ends with a degree, this is followed by years of socialization through on-the-job training (at university, this is only deemed completed once a doctorate has been awarded).

Professional bureaucracy does not provide for explicit reflection on the methodology used for the routines of training, indoctrination, or conditioning. Thus, there are few generalized guidelines or professionalized standards for academic teaching. Teaching abilities develop through biographical appropriation and imitation but not through professionalization. From this, we assume that academics ultimately view themselves as autonomous professionals, orientating their actions primarily toward the scientific community or their academic colleagues (decentralized core); this holds for research and teaching.

HE systems’ circumstances have changed recently, and training courses in university didactics are leading to increasing professionalization and standardization. However, we assume that other academics or the scientific community in total still retain the central reference point for the orientation and positioning of the academic staff in their teaching practice, rather than the courses provided by university management. While research is constitutive for the academic identity of scientists, this is less so for teaching. This is reinforced by the fact that in appointment procedures, research-related criteria (publications, funding) are primarily used to select suitable applicants, while teaching-related criteria (evaluations, certificates, teaching concepts) play a marginal role in filling professorships (Barnett 2003; for Germany see Kleimann and Hückstädt 2018).

Nonetheless, organizational sociology has so far largely ignored the form and function of these new institutionalizations, as well as the issue of teaching. Proposing the university as a ‘specific organization’, Musselin (2007, 71) highlights that academic activity is characterized by a loose functional coupling, which requires a low degree of cooperation and coordination among academic staff and constitutes unclear technologies in teaching and research. Consequently, formal structures can certainly pose bureaucratic challenges, but their influence on content and cooperation is negligible (ibid 75). Academic teaching thus seems barely controllable; efforts by university management to implement control mechanisms in organizational structures would, therefore, have little or no effect on the way that academics actually teach.

From this theoretical perspective, we examine what encourages academics to participate in funding programs for teaching, in relation to university management, to discover the contours of academic teaching governance.

4. Materials and methods

This study researches the issues above through the case study of a large German university, using semi-structured interviews with teaching staff and university management. Following the literature, we consider this method appropriate concerning its ability to provide apt insights, particularly when in contrast to working comparatively, or with standardized methods. Analyzing a single organization allows us to build in-depth knowledge of the processes of implementing and the practices of utilizing teaching funding programs (see also Yin 2014; Stake 1995). While participant observation may also allow this, we focus on the perceptions of university management and academic staff in terms of academic teaching (within the institutional setting of the university). Here, interviews emphasize the interviewees’ perspectives (Bryman 2016). To investigate the influence of competitive procedures on teaching perceptions, we designed the interviews in reference to ‘problem-centered’ interviews (Witzel 2000; Witzel and Reiter 2012). Problem-centered interviews can (inductively) capture the interviewees’ approaches to social phenomena (‘problems’) while allowing for relatively high prior theoretical knowledge. They are particularly suitable in this study because they stimulate narratives by employing imaginative and semi-structured prompts. By asking about the hopes, wishes, and visions of teachers, we aim to get in-depth accounts on notions of teaching in a broad sense.

The research team conducted most of the 22 interviews in 2018. The sample includes 16 semi-structured interviews with academic teachers of different status groups (professors, junior and senior academic staff) who successfully applied for funding, and six with representatives of the funding organizations. While this sample does not accurately represent academic teachers in general, it broadly reflects the relevant status groups and different disciplines (natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, economics, law). Interviews typically took approximately 60 minutes and were conducted and transcribed in German. We used conventional qualitative content analysis to systematically classify and code the material (Mayring 2014). In line with the principles of problem-centered interviews, particular attention was paid to generate codes both deductively and inductively (Kuckartz 2014).

All interviews were conducted at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), well-known as a ‘reform university’.⁶ Established in 1965 during a phase of broad educational expansion in Germany, it was among the first universities to adapt bachelor's and master's degrees for all its curricula in the 2000s. With around 43.000 students, it is one of Germany's largest universities. RUB's formal structure is organized along functional criteria, with typical tendencies of so-called managerial (Amaral, Lynn Meek, and Larsen 2003), entrepreneurial (Clark 1998; Bamkole and Ibeku 2020), or stake-holder universities (Bleiklie and Kogan 2007): particular forms of accountability are emphasized (e.g. accounting and reporting systems); there is a high concern for issues of efficiency and economy (e.g. management by objectives on all levels), graduate employability is highlighted (e.g. during processes of student program re-accreditation), research is being commercialized (e.g. by promoting the generation of new ventures and start-ups), a strengthened commitment to knowledge transfer and third mission exists (e.g. via the so-called ‘Blue Square’, the universities’ outlet in the city center which interacts with the civil society through a diverse program).

Noteworthy here is RUB's ambition to develop into one of Germany's ‘excellent universities’ (by participating several times in the so-called ‘excellence initiative’ competition). To this end, significant changes in organizational culture and academic identity have been initiated recently. Institutional autonomy is promoted as a basis to satisfy the interests of major stakeholders. RUB academics are one relevant stake-holder group; students (plus student programs and teaching practices) are another.

Therefore, innovation in teaching is explicitly used to strengthen RUB's (external) profile and its (internal) steering ability, which is most apparent in RUB's pronounced engagement in teaching funding programs. First, RUB successfully implemented two proposed teaching projects within the Quality Pact for Teaching (inSTUDIES: multidisciplinary and inter-faculty and ELLI: Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Sciences), which have received a total of €21 million funding since 2011. Second, the university management also encourages teaching engagement through different internal funding programs. The University Program for Research-Based Learning receives the most funding, has been permanently anchored in the organizational structures of the university since 2011, and competitively funds several staff positions each year for implementing research-based learning.⁷ The program was initiated in close cooperation between the Rectorate and the University Commission for Teaching (UKL), which, to echo Mintzberg, represents the organization's professionals, creating incentives for academics to be innovative in their teaching practice.⁸ The Commission both plays a decisive role in the catalog of criteria⁹ used to evaluate the application and is the deciding body. Owing to the variety of disciplines and status groups among its members, the subject-specific content of the applications only feeds marginally into the decision-making process.

University management deliberately refrains from specifying details regarding the definition of research-based learning, or content in the calls for proposals, and rather emphasizes the structural requirements applications must meet. It is in the interests of university management to invest the funds made available for the university program in developing and disseminating the format of research-based learning, rather than strengthening the research activities of individual applicants.

5. Results

This section presents key insights into why university management introduces competitive funding programs for teaching, and what led the applicants to participate in such programs. It is apparent that the potential benefit of these programs for academic staff exceeds their teaching interests and motivation.

5.1. University management

According to the interviews, university management pursues multiple goals with the introduction of funded teaching programs. Firstly, these programs are perceived as suitable ways of promoting innovation in teaching practices, especially research-based learning (e.g. University management 6). By creating incentives for exploring uncommon teaching concepts, the university hopes to foster up-to-date teaching throughout the departments without a priori setting of format or content. This reasoning is not surprising. Innovation is generally seen as one of a universities’ major goals (e.g. in Mintzberg's concept), and innovation via incentives is a narrative that is set up by the QPL.

Secondly, university management stipulates that these competitive teaching programs are intended to promote a ‘culture of competition’ within the university:

… As far as a culture of competition, I think that the RUB is relatively far along and it is well advised to continue with these competitions, calls for proposals. (University management 4)

This argument is (again) closely connected to a wish to fulfill the RUB's mission statement without implementing these teaching concepts in a top-down manner:

If I have to implement a teaching concept that I’m not convinced of, that's a disaster, right? And therefore, the whole strategy, which is also visible in the teaching programs, in the projects, and so on, is really to convince, to argue, as well as to invite. (University management 3)

By providing competitive funding programs, university management intends academic staff to perceive these teaching concepts as an offer rather than a constraint. Funding programs are seen as an invitation for academics to (voluntarily) try new formats and competition increases their appeal. This logic of emphasizing competition as a mechanism for improvement is closely connected to NPM logics and aligns with the broader strategic goals of RUB (see above). Therefore, this argument is also hardly surprising. Nevertheless, we were surprised by how explicitly university management advances academic culture in this regard. The next section shows how academic staff members have different arguments when it comes to their rationales for participating in these programs.

5.2. Academic staff

When interviewing the academic staff, we find three major rationales for participating in teaching funding programs: (1) engagement with students and potential junior researchers, (2) combination with one's research, and, (3) acquisition of funding and securing of employment. As we will see, some of these rationales seem to confirm well-known considerations (e.g. teachers engage with teaching because they are intrinsically motivated), while other results seem to point in the direction of a change in academic identities (e.g. using such formats to cope with the challenges of large public universities, new public management requirements, and the insecurities of academic careers in Germany). This will be discussed in Section 6.

5.2.1. Engagement with students and potential junior researchers

The academic staff we interviewed emphasized their personal motivation for teaching, perceiving an imbalance in how academia prioritizes research. The desire to engage with students is a key driving force to teach, and hence, to be aware of internal funding programs for teaching in the first place.

The central narratives of successful applicants in terms of how they understand themselves as academics includes how they understand academic activity, stressing their academic socialization:

I think that if I look back at my own biography, above all, it was former university lecturers that I had myself. I studied in [location¹⁰] and had professors there who were world-famous in their subjects, and who still managed to find time to talk to every single student and to consider each student's concerns as equally important as a presentation at an international conference or a DFG¹¹ application or something similar, and that was a great thing. (Prof. 5, Humanities)

Accordingly, academics refer to positive role models (excellent researchers and highly engaged teachers) who motivated and inspired them as learners and become reference points for their roles as academics and teachers. This is somewhat aligned with what one would expect as per the literature: it is well-known that engagement with teaching is strongly linked to intrinsic motivation (e.g. Wilkesmann and Lauer 2018). Intrinsic motivation for teaching, so our data shows, is (at least partly) a matter of one's personal (learning) biography. Therefore, they derive their teaching practice from their understanding of the subject and research, which is closely linked to their training and indoctrination (and therefore their disciplinary academic identities).

As mentioned above, the funded (mostly research-based) teaching formats are also linked to the idea that students will be able to develop and apply broader competences in practice than they would in ‘normal’ seminars or lectures (another reason to make use of teaching funding programs):

It is a different level of supervision, but my hope and my goal, and […] the kind of people I gain as employees, means that I am satisfied. If they join me later, I’ll have better ones or at least people who I believe think critically. (Prof. 2, Natural Sciences)

The fact that research-based learning appears to link areas of research and learning creates challenges in reconciling how research and learning are understood. While in research, it is accepted practice that excellence among the best performers should be promoted through competition, these principles seem to be transferred to students in processes of learning. Generally, research-based learning can be viewed as an investment in one's department or research, although the return on this investment is uncertain and long-term. Applicants raise the hope that better-trained students will return as future doctoral candidates. Consequently, research-based learning is often described as a legitimate tool to recruit young researchers, ultimately bolstering the interviewees’ research practice. Applicants can interpret research-based learning both against the background of academy values and norms and across different subject areas, translating it into their teaching practice. As a rule, research (viewed as occupying a profoundly legitimate place within the academy) is emphasized over learning. Thus, the interviewees’ teaching formats are related to their research fields and are designed to be challenging for the students:

To be honest, it was always targeted as one of those, I don't want to say elite, but it was intended for the top ten percent [of students]. […] In other words, we targeted students who recognized very early on that research might be where they eventually wanted to go. (Prof. 2, Natural Sciences)

The funded projects may be regarded as a form of excellence recruitment of young potentials for further research activities. This strategy (of utilizing funded teaching programs to foster potential future researchers) is primarily utilized by the status group of professors. Because these programs typically imply small, research-related courses, they can intensively foster students, especially talented ones who are drawn to such formats even if they are labor-intensive. Competitively funded teaching programs provide benefits for universities such as RUB (large public research universities with heterogenic student bodies), because they stimulate the most talented students.

5.2.2. Combination with and support of one's own research

In describing the case study setting, we highlighted that the program criteria do not contain any subject- or content-related specifications. Therefore, applicants’ chosen teaching formats are invariably closely linked to their scientific interests. Whether they are enthusiastic about or identify with a new topic, it becomes apparent that their subject-driven curiosity is key to applying for specific programs. This is also reflected in the individual strategies employed by academics when submitting applications, as they primarily emphasize students’ increase in specialist competence, rather than the conceptual development of new formats and, therefore, regard research-based learning as an element of academic education or training.

The organizational framework conditions of teaching practice can present a challenge, one that applying for funding to support research-based learning is designed to meet. The interviewees refer often to RUB as a ‘mass university’ with high student numbers and a heterogeneous student body, and interpret the trend toward research-based learning as a consequence of this:

I am in a mass subject, […] and this means that, depending on the semester, almost fifty MA theses per year have to be supervised in what are sometimes unfavorable combinations. I am also very happy to do all this, but […], it depends on other areas, for which there is simply no time […] you have to make sure at the same time that you don't cut back on supervision, but that all students, no matter how many come to my office here, are looked after equally well, and that always poses a bit of a challenge in terms of didactics. On the one hand, you want to do justice to individual support; on the other, you have to keep an eye on the mass and what you are there for, that is, not only teaching, so formats such as research-based learning result quite inevitably because you have to somehow try to combine the high teaching load with your own research adroitly without the students having the impression that, well, [self-reference] is only using us as guinea pigs for research. (Prof. 4, Humanities)

This quote illustrates that implementing research-based learning is a strategy for academic staff to deal with diverging expectations as they negotiate the tension between research and (mass) teaching. Here, they sense an increasing pressure to perform in both (third-party-funded) research and as teachers for an increasing number of students. However, this is not reflected in the organization's staffing structures, with applicants turning to the funding program to compensate for this shortage in the short term – and perhaps to use the program to develop long-term solutions. Additionally, they get the opportunity to try out new formats that may blend these conflicting interests. In practice, applicants use these formats to design or conduct their third-party funded research in teaching practice – analyzing in-depth previously collected data with students and/or publishing these findings in journal articles, books, or anthologies together. Thus, funding enables multiple options for applicants to combine their research with teaching. However, as the quote indicates, this utilization also raises concerns among some (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) that students might interpret this as exploitation; suggesting that this academic practice is not yet part of academic identity. Conversely, student theses are often used as preparatory work for the doctoral projects of academic staff or are otherwise linked to (externally funded) projects in natural sciences. However, based on the range of utilization strategies, the data also show that in the natural sciences, funding teaching formats creates opportunities that go beyond the classical approach of student involvement in data collection.

5.2.3. Acquisition of funding and securing employment

Although intrinsic motivation is described as fundamental, these programs can only unfold as effective incentives as they are financially appealing and comprise a feasible teaching format:

Overall, it is about projects that make an impact on students, and […] things like one's third-party funding portfolio, which we are all committed to, also matter somehow. […] external funding is a different category than internal funding, but what really counts is what reaches the students. (Prof. 4, Humanities)

This quote demonstrates how these funding programs appear to generate added value for students and applicants alike. The former profit from motivated lecturers and new teaching formats, while the latter benefit from opportunities to raise funds. Nevertheless, these funds are considered less valuable for one's own career than third-party funds from external sources, regardless of the sum. Despite this, teaching commitment is now measurable monetarily. All applicants stress that they would not have been able to carry out their projects without the funding programs and the resources they provided. Different motives are evident among the applicants according to their status group. Professors participate in funding programs to raise financial resources to hire (assistant) lecturers to support them (more concretely, their research output) and strengthen their funding portfolio and thereby display their performance orientation, which may, in turn, lead to achievement-oriented means paid out by the university. Academic staff at the doctorate/post-doctorate level apply to secure their own employment given that these positions are typically temporary in Germany. For both status groups teaching funding programs allow them to pursue their teaching interests and their career interests.

Similarly, the data shows that applicants utilize these formats to form, maintain, or deepen cooperation with (non)academic partners:

As with these projects of research-based learning, there is always a lot of unexplored territory that one should enter at some point […] to decide for oneself, yes, I’ve learned a little something new. That's just the way it is with research-based learning, especially when you work together with people from the professional world […]. (Research associate 5, Social Sciences)

These applicants nevertheless promote an academic approach but stress that it is a central and important competence in fields of activity outside the university, enabling cooperation with other scientists and practitioners regarding one's research activities and scientific expertise. This shows that academics also reflect on their responsibilities and roles as teachers beyond the university and the scientific community. This rationale connects to a variety of narratives within the ‘managerial’ university: third-mission, employability, and commercialization of research. Occasionally, our interviewees mention that the cooperation with external partners might be used to prepare an ‘exit’ from precarious working conditions within (German) universities.

The data suggest that this perspective of broad-based support is related to teachers’ employment statuses (primarily temporary, non-professorial posts) and the time they have been engaged in professional bureaucracy. However, the data do not allow us to reconstruct the extent to which this can be interpreted as an internalization of external factors, or as an expression of different teaching conditions depending on status or discipline.

6. Discussion

The impact of new governance on academic teaching has been left widely unattended to date. This study examined increasingly implemented funding programs for university teaching and their effects on academic teachers and why academic staff use competitively funded teaching programs in relation to university management. We found that funding programs appeal to academics’ research identities and enable them to autonomously utilize these programs for their benefit – to engage with teaching, support their research output, and acquire funding to secure employability and employment. The study concludes that funding programs are not only attractive because they foster innovative teaching but are also particularly suited semantically, enabling both university management and staff to pursue multiple interests. On the one hand, university management implements funding programs in reaction to external conditions and expectations. Such programs enable university management to present themselves as modern universities with individual profiles through innovation and supporting teaching vis-à-vis the political domain and other stakeholders, without being suspected of curtailing the autonomy of teaching.

Academic staff, on the other hand, do not perceive these funding programs as a steering mechanism of university management, as they can autonomously design and implement their (funded) courses, utilizing such programs for their benefit. As researchers, they are used to market logics and competition for funding; these programs address researchers’ individual identities. Interviewees from all status groups and disciplines emphasize that the funds can also be listed in job applications.¹² Although not considered equivalent to third-party research funding by the applicants, this is the first time that commitment to teaching translates comparably in monetary terms. Without the funding incentive, none of the applicants would have conducted their projects.

As the organization stresses that funding programs are voluntary, academics can view themselves as autonomous professionals who orientate their teaching practice toward academic principles, rather than to organizational goals of gaining ‘excellence’. In Mintzberg's terms, the interviewees participated in such programs based on their professional judgment, as patterns of explanation are strongly connected to teachers’ research identities.¹³ Their primary commitment is to their profession, while they intrinsically justify their teaching efforts and emphasize their self-interest, as neither the scientific community nor the faculty gives them recognition. This corresponds with the findings of Wilkesmann and Lauer (2018) on the (high-intrinsic) motivation to teach among academic staff, which seems to contradict Mintzberg's assumption that academics orientate their actions primarily toward the scientific community, or their academic colleagues. However, this study discerns that academics describe their pedagogical socialization as influencing their interest in teaching, implying the continued relevance of procedures of training and indoctrination for their academic identity. Moreover, these procedures are also transferred into their teaching practice (since recruiting potential junior researchers is a central rationale), which even may strengthen their relevance for academic identities. Further, the findings indicate that academics hope they can synergistically link their teaching with research through different strategies, as research has a higher status. Although they do not enhance their professional reputation or receive recognition for teaching from the scientific community or their academic colleagues, such formats nonetheless offer added value.

This study presents an example that is specific in focusing on teaching funding programs centered on research-based learning and, thus, is methodologically limited. However, the material reveals the direction in which teaching cultures and identities are changing in Germany because of NPM. The implementation of teaching programs via the QPL indicates a weak(er) state regulation, and strong(er) external regulation (e.g. via funding agencies, in this case, BMBF). The data shows that internal hierarchies between university management and teaching staff (directly or indirectly) inform teaching practice. However, we would not interpret this as ‘strong’ hierarchical structuring (as would typically be expected in the NPM-model, see Section 3). Instead, it shows that with the so-called ‘University Commission for Teaching’ (UKL), the organization's professionals help shape teaching practice. Meso-level governance is strongly rooted in the principle of collective responsibility, which ensures professional autonomy and the inclusion of different interest groups in joint decision-making (see also Hattke and Frost 2018). Therefore, innovative teaching concepts, which are a core part of the university's mission statement, are strategically framed as an invitation through the programs rather than a constraint in a top-down manner. Similarly, we do not find weak academic self-regulation; but we do find that the notion of ‘competition’ not only influences research parameters, it also plays a role in teaching. The typical autonomy of academic professionals is challenged by a different type of market logic (see Leisyte 2015).

All in all, the study (again) points in the direction that, internationally, governance changes in Germany's HE may still be seen as rather far away from (the narrative of) ideal-typical New Public Management (see also de Boer, Enders, and Schimank 2007, 150; Hüther and Krücken 2015, 142). Instead, Germany's HE is practically characterized by various ‘hybridizations’ between ‘traditional’ governance and the ‘NPM-model’ (Bogumil et al. 2013). The German case is therefore particularly informative for other cases with comparatively low levels of NPM.

However, the present study also is an indicator that governance reforms change teaching cultures and identities, and it may be worthwhile for further studies to expand on the shape of, the mechanisms, and consequences of the governance of academic teaching. There is still much to be done regarding how much and in what way practices are developing. Changes in academic identities’ impact on the quality of teaching seem especially pressing. It seems likely that NPM has significant side effects on the quality of teaching. Because research output and (third-party) funding count, fears that the time and attention given by many academics to teaching is declining seem justified. Because funded teaching programs connect exactly to these parameters (the interviewees use them to prepare grant proposals, to publish their research with students, etc.), the present study hints that such programs might also lead to an upgrading/a valorization of teaching.

Another ongoing open and pressing question is whether and how disciplinary academic values, norms, and identities are transformed by organizational values and norms (Leisyte 2015, 60). The present study shows that to answer these questions one needs to take a close look, because (not surprisingly) academic identities remain traditional and change at the same time (see Section 5.2). Academics participate in funded programs based on intrinsic and biographic motivation to engage with students. Further, they utilize funded teaching programs as a recruitment tool for young researchers. This indicates that these teaching formats are considered as part of the training and indoctrination of potential future doctorates. This suggests traditional academic identities are strong (see Leisyte and Dee 2012).

They also participate in funding programs to cope with the growing pressures of delivering research output while teaching within large public (mass) universities. This indicates that academic identities are changing and unchanged at the same time: academics still follow their (disciplinary) research identities (possibly even in a reinforced manner), but they have internalized concerns with issues of efficiency, which typically is interpreted as a rise of ‘non-academic’ rules, norms, and standards (Musselin 2008). Academics are particularly aware of tension in disciplines in which the combination of research and teaching has not yet become part of common academic practice. That staff highlights the possibilities of combining teaching and funding and partly utilizes funded teaching programs to secure their employment points to an (ongoing) change in academic identity which seems to accept cultures of competition and strategically tries to ‘play the game’. Simultaneously, we find that the strength of disciplinary community membership remains strong (cf. Harris 2005; Henkel 2005). For individual academics, this most likely gives rise to tensions between one's professional self and work context (see Arvaja 2018).

The study finds that teachers accept competition and strategically work to find ways of making teaching fruitful for their (research) careers. Slaughter and Leslie coined the term academic capitalism in 1997 (Slaughter and Leslie 1997) to describe an increasingly competitive environment in U.S., U.K., Australian, and Canadian universities. Similarly, terms like ‘managerial university’ denote how university governance is now guided by market mechanisms (e.g. Amaral, Lynn Meek, and Larsen 2003; Deem and Brehony 2005). Both notions also apply to academic teaching. From the perspective of organization studies, this study may act as an example that NPM ‘works’, at least in parts: academic staff accept competitive parameters, even for their teaching practice. At the same time, traditional disciplinary academic identities remain strong.

Acknowledgements

We would like to offer our special thanks to the anonymous reviewers and Carla Scheytt for their valuable and productive comments. We also wish to express great appreciation to Caroline Richter for her support in all phases of the research process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ‘instudies’ at Ruhr University Bochum (funded by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, FKZ01PL16072) from April 2017 to March 2020.

Notes

1 https://www.qualitaetspakt-lehre.de/

2 Rather than considering the didactic concept, this article primarily focuses on the effects of funding programs. For a deeper understanding, see Healey's works (2005, 2009).

3 Other projects are classified under categories such as competence-oriented, practice-oriented, or problem-oriented teaching, as well as peer-oriented-learning. As these categories are not very distinct, it can be assumed that these projects may include elements of research-based learning and vice-versa.

4 This list is intended for illustrative purposes and does not represent an exhaustive overview. Rather, the aim is to show that similar efforts can be observed at universities across federal states and their federal education systems in Germany.

5 Also by students, whose perspectives we cannot include in this paper.

6 RUB is also the authors’ home university.

7 The representatives of the organization interviewed emphasize that the RUB's application within the framework of the Excellence Initiative was a key factor behind promoting and implementing a university-wide teaching concept.

8 The members of the University Commission for Teaching are elected by the University Senate for a term of three years. See https://einrichtungen.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/de/kommission-fuer-lehre.

9 For criteria, see https://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/universitaetsprogramme/forschendes-lernen.html.

10 Pseudonyms for anonymity.

11 Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [German Research Foundation], Germany's central funding organization.

12 This is particularly important in the German higher education systems, as large numbers of academic staff are employed temporarily, leading to high mobility and pressures to optimize CVs.

13 Applicants were aware that our research focus was on research-based learning, and we cannot rule out that this influenced their responses.