Anthony Welch 
The Professoriate 
Profile of a Profession

What does it mean to be an academic in the twenty first century? Clearly, there is no one answer to this question, as the diversity evident in the following chapters reveals. Elite research universities often tend to join with others of their kind, so that a professor from an elite US institution may well undertake a Japanese sabbatical (if at all) at the University of Tokyo, a UK semester at Oxford or Cambridge, or an Australian semester at the University of Sydney, or perhaps Melbourne. At each, they can expect to have at their disposal well-stocked libraries, replete with requisite books, journals and databases, (many now available electronically), as well as highly regarded specialist peers in their research areas, with whom they can discuss their work in detail. How can this academic lifeworld be compared with that of a member of the South East Asian professoriate, for example, or many in Latin America and Africa, where inadequate wages often necessitate taking on a second job, often at a lower quality private institution (which, however, likely offers better remuneration), and/or perhaps conducting a small business on the side (Welch 2003, Tipton, Jarvis and Welch 2003), and where the lack of basic infrastructure, as well as research training, means that teaching, and perhaps some administration, is perhaps the limit of one’s activities? The story of differentiation, however, is not limited todifferences between elite institutions in OECD countries and more modest institutions elsewhere.

Table of Content

Challenge and Change: The Academic Profession in Uncertain Times.- Globalisation’s Impact on the Professoriate in Anglo-American Universities.- Academics and Institutional Governance.- Faculty Perceptions of University Governance in Japan and the United States.- From Peregrinatio Academica to Global Academic: The Internationalisation of the Profession.- Academics’ View of Teaching Staff Mobility.- How Satisfied Are Women and Men with Their Academic Work?.- Academic Work Satisfaction in the Wake of Institutional Reforms in Australia.- Academic Challenges: The American Professoriate in Comparative Perspective.- Improve Teaching Methods or Perish.- The Chinese Professoriate in Comparative Perspective.- The Academic Profession in Hong Kong.- Conclusion: New Millennium, New Milieu?.