Academic generations and academic work: patterns of attitudes, behaviors, and research productivity of Polish academics after 1989

Abstract

This paper focuses on a generational change taking place in the Polish academic profession: a change in behaviors and attitudes between two groups of academics. One was socialized to academia under the communist regime (1945–1989) and the other entered the profession in the post-1989 transition period. Academics of all age groups are beginning to learn how tough the competition for research funding is, but young academics (‘academics under 40’), being the target of recent policy initiatives, need to learn faster. Current reforms present a clear preferred image for a new generation of Polish academics: highly motivated, embedded in international research networks, publishing mostly internationally, and heavily involved in the competition for academic recognition and research funding. In the long run, without such a radical approach, any international competition between young Polish academics (with a low research orientation and high teaching hours) and their young Western European colleagues (with a high research orientation and low teaching hours) seems inconceivable, as our data on the average academic productivity clearly demonstrate. The quantitative background of this paper comes from 3704 returned questionnaires and the qualitative background from 60 semi-structured in-depth interviews. The paper takes a European comparative approach and contrasts Poland with 10 Western European countries (using 17,211 returned questionnaires).

Keywords:

• academic work
• academic generations
• junior scholars
• research time allocation
• research productivity

Acknowledgments

The work on this paper would not be possible without invaluable support given by two colleagues: Dr. Wojciech Roszka (statistics) and Dr. Dominik Antonowicz (interviews) as part of the MAESTRO team. The author also wishes to thank Ulrich Teichler, the coordinator of the EUROAC project, ‘Academic Profession in Europe: Responses to Societal Challenges’ (2009–2012), part of the European Science Foundation, EUROCORES EuroHESC scheme. Finally, the author wishes to express his gratitude to two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Research Council (NCN) [MAESTRO grant number DEC-2011/02/A/HS6/00183] (2012–2017).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1060706

Notes

1. In Europe, our study is focused on full-time academics in the UK from the Russell Group, and in Finland from universities rather than polytechnics; similarly, in the Netherlands we have excluded academics from hogescholen, in Germany academics from Fachhochschulen, and in Norway from statlige høgskoler; only in Italy and Austria did we focus on all full-time academics as no other institutional types were represented in the sample.

2. We worked on the final data set dated 17 June 2011 created by René Kooij and Florian Löwenstein from the International Centre of Higher Education and Research (INCHER) – Kassel, Germany.

3. The interview material is quoted as follows: interview number/age (under 40/Older).

4. We have decided instead to use methods of statistical inference for particular components of the indices. Because the comparison was between 11 countries, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used. Variables were log transformed. For each age cohort for each component of the indices the null hypothesis was rejected. Due to the lack of homogeneity of variance between particular countries for particular variables, for pairwise comparisons in post hoc tests, Tamhane t² post hoc test was used. The details are not presented here as the table of results of pairwise comparisons (4 age cohorts × 5 variables × 11 countries) is too large.