Academic careers and the valuation of academics: A discursive perspective on status categories and academic salaries in France as compared to the U.S., Germany and Great Britain

Academic careers are social processes which involve many members of large populations over long periods of time. This paper outlines a discursive perspective which looks into how academics are categorized in academic systems. From a discursive view, academic careers are organized by categories which...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Higher education 2017-06, Vol.73 (6), p.963-980
Main Author: Angermuller, Johannes
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic careers
Academic staff
Ausland
Bureaucracy
Careers
Classification
College Faculty
Comparative analysis
Compensation and benefits
Competition
Cross Cultural Studies
Demographic aspects
Discourse Analysis
Education
Educational aspects
Educators
Foreign Countries
Frankreich
Government Role
Großbritannien
Heterogeneity
Higher Education
Institutional Characteristics
Labor Market
Lehre
Negotiation
Oligarchy
Power Structure
Professional Recognition
Salary Wage Differentials
Social aspects
Social processes
Social status
Student
Studium
Teacher Salaries
USA
Valuation
Wages & salaries
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Academic careers are social processes which involve many members of large populations over long periods of time. This paper outlines a discursive perspective which looks into how academics are categorized in academic systems. From a discursive view, academic careers are organized by categories which can define who academics are (subjectivation) and what they are worth (valuation). The question of this paper is what institutional categorizations such as status and salaries can tell us about academic subject positions and their valuation. By comparing formal status systems and salary scales in France with those in the U.S., Great Britain and Germany, this paper reveals the constraints of institutional categorization systems on academic careers. Special attention is given to the French system of status categories which is relatively homogeneous and restricts the competitive valuation of academics between institutions. The comparison shows that academic systems such as the U.S. which are characterized by a high level of heterogeneity typically present more negotiation opportunities for the valuation of academics. From a discursive perspective, institutional categories, therefore, can reflect the ways in which academics are valuated in the inter-institutional job market, by national bureaucracies or in professional oligarchies.
ISSN:0018-1560
1573-174X
DOI:10.1007/s10734-017-0117-1