Is Peer Review Fit for Purpose?

Peer review is endemic to judgement in higher education. It is assumed that when we need to make a judgement on the quality of something—student performance, academic employment, teaching, research and publication—then we may rely on the assessment of peers, whether they be fellow students, lecturers or more senior academics. This chapter will illustrate and challenge this assumption, and assess how ‘fit for purpose’ peer review is in twenty-first century academe. It will focus on different practices of peer review in the contemporary higher education system, it will also question how well they work, how they might be improved and what the alternatives are. The examples to be discussed include refereed journal articles, the assessment of doctoral degrees and the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Epistemic injustice and epistemic positioning: towards an intersectional political economy

This article introduces the concept of epistemic positioning to theorize the relationship between identity-based epistemic judgements and the reproduction of social inequalities, including those of gender and ethnicity/race, in the academia. Acts of epistemic positioning entail the evaluation of knowledge claims based on the speaker’s stated or inferred identity. These judgements serve to limit the scope of the knowledge claim, making it more likely speakers will be denied recognition or credit. The four types of epistemic positioning – bounding (reducing a knowledge claim to elements of personal identity), domaining (reducing a knowledge claim to discipline or field associated with identity), non-attribution (using the claim without recognizing the author) and appropriation (presenting the claim as one’s own) – are mutually reinforcing. Given the growing importance of visibility and recognition in the context of increasing competition and insecurity in academic employment, these practices play a role in the ability of underrepresented groups to remain in the academic profession.

Epistemic injustice and epistemic positioning: towards an intersectional political economy

While access to higher education continues to expand, the participation of women and ethnic minority scholars in the academic profession remains low. This paper theorizes the relationship between identity- based epistemic judgments and the reproduction of social inequalities in the academia. It conceptualizes these judgments as acts of epistemic positioning, which entail the evaluation of knowledge claims based on the speaker’s stated or inferred identity. These judgments serve to limit the scope of the knowledge claim, making it more likely speakers will be denied recognition or credit. The paper introduces four kinds of epistemic positioning: bounding, domaining, non-attribution, and appropriation. Given the growing importance of visibility and recognition in the context of increasing competition and insecurity in academic employment, these practices play a role in the ability of underrepresented groups to remain in the academia. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for conceptualizing and addressing the relationship between social inequalities and recognition, to build towards an intersectional political economy of knowledge production.

Barriers to the Practice of Sport and Physical Activity from the Perspective of Self-Determination Theory

The practice of sport and physical activity can be hampered by the presence of amotivation, the frustration of basic psychological needs, and barriers to carrying out that practice. Based on the principles of self-determination theory (SDT), the objective of this study was to analyze the relationship of these variables and assess differences based on age, sex, residential independence, academic/employment situation, and prior sport and physical activity. The sample comprised 102 individuals, aged between 18 and 25 (M = 21.61; SD = 2.04), who completed the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire, the Frustration of Psychological Needs in Physical Exercise Scale, and the Self-Perceived Barriers of Physical Activity Questionnaire. Our results showed that participants had high values of controlled motivation, the frustration of the basic psychological need for competence, and high values for the barrier of obligations/lack of time. We found a significant and positive association between the frustration of the basic psychological need for competence and the barriers present in the practice of physical activity. Moreover, we found that women reported experiencing body image/anxiety as a barrier to practicing sport and physical activity more than men and individuals aged 22–25 years experiencing obligations/lack of time as a barrier more than the those aged 18 to 21 years. Practical applications were proposed to avoid the frustration of basic psychological needs, increase the most self-determined forms of motivation, and reduce barriers to the practice of sport and physical activity.

Leaving academia: why do doctoral graduates take up non-academic jobs and to what extent are they prepared?

Purpose An increasing number of doctoral graduates are seeking non-academic employment. While statistics have revealed multiple aspects regarding the non-academic employment they hold, there is insufficient documentation of what has led them to leave academia and to what extent they are prepared for non-academic positions. This paper aims to address this gap and reports on five Chinese doctoral graduates’ reflections on their change in career choices. Design/methodology/approach This study is exploratory and follows the approach of qualitative multi-case studies. The data includes in-depth interviews with five Chinese doctoral graduates and their responses to a survey. The paper applies a theoretical perspective drawing from protean career and boundaryless career theories, focusing on the participants’ agency in managing career choices and their meaning making of career decision-making. Findings The study has found that, besides the factors mentioned in the literature, such as lack of academic positions, pressure related to academic work and lack of career planning, some participants were directed by their intrinsic values, and agency plays an important role in their career preparation. Practical implications The study makes recommendations on university career guidance for doctoral students. Originality/value This paper documents why and how doctoral students change their career choices, which have not been sufficiently documented in the literature. As well, the theoretical perspective used provides an innovative way to interpret doctoral students' career decision-making.

The academic precariat post-COVID-19

The nature of work has changed, in accelerated late-capitalism and as a result of the COVID-19 global health crisis. For academics, casualised and precarious, the sweeping institutional changes of contemporary neoliberal universities, the sharp rise in managerialism, and the political power plays of universities have created further untenable spaces for work and study. In this article we explore the relationship between doctoral studies, precarious academic employment, the pandemic, and the disproportionate effects of the changes in higher education on women. Through exploration of personal experience, as precarious academic workers, researchers, and doctoral students, we provide parallels to research literature across pandemic and post-COVID literature. We provide practical suggestions for the corporate university, to rebuild its catastrophically collapsing systems, and re-centre doctoral students in mentorship as the new future of universities in Australia, and around the world.

Field Specializations among Beginning Economists: Are There Gender Differences?

We examine the process underlying field specialization among beginning economists. Our multivariate logit framework accommodates single-and dual-field specializations with correlated choices. Including field-specific relative salaries and expected probabilities of academic employment is a novel aspect of this research. After conditioning on personal, economic, and institutional variables, we find that women graduate students are less likely to specialize in labor/health, macro/finance, industrial organization, public economics, and development/growth/international fields and are more likely to specialize in agricultural/resource/environmental fields. The Duncan dissimilarity index suggests that 14 percent of either sex would have to change specialization in order to achieve complete parity.

From Treasure to Trash: The Changing Meaning of Books in the New Social Economy of Higher Education

This paper draws on the findings of an autoethnographic study to discuss significant changes in the character of US institutions of higher education in recent decades. The autoethnography incorporates two forms of evidence: first, a dataset generated from the author’s experiences, observations, communications, and interactions over a 40-year career as a college professor in a wide range of academic settings, and second, a specific event that occurred just weeks before the author’s formal retirement from full-time academic employment. The latter event proved to be analytically important as a crystallizing experience for making sense of the larger body of data collected over the author’s academic career. The event serves as a dramatic illustration of profound changes in how various academic constituencies have come to define the meaning and value of academic books. The paper proposes that the changing meaning of books among key academic actors can be viewed as an important signifier of broader social-economic trends in higher education in the postwar era.

On the Way to Researching Universities

This chapter aims to shed light on the significant experiences and challenges that have occurred during a university-funded project, exploring the dynamics of academic employment in the light of gender roles. The data for this mixed methods study comes from a research on Turkish universities, including 505 questionnaires and 46 in-depth interviews with academics from 39 different universities, located in 20 different cities of Turkey. The stratified sample of quantitative research represents the distribution of gender, department, managerial experience, position, and development level of the city, where the universities are located. In-depth interviews are used along with the survey to better understand the nature of academic employment and the implications of quantitative data. This chapter addresses the challenges, such as accessing the universities, ethical and emotional considerations, the effect of Turkish culture, censorship, and the ways that they affect the research process itself and the researchers.

Entrepreneurship and University Spin-offs for (Academic) Employment?

In the new Millennium Italian universities have lived many changes deeply reshaping academic institutions. A relevant aspect was the more and more significant need to answer the demand of society and respond the social pressure to accountability through the transfer of knowledge, innovation and technology to economy. It led to an extension of the so-called university Fourth Mission, an instrument dedicated to create spin-offs to share scientific research results with society. The paper investigates the present reality of university spin-offs in Italy by considering their growing number also in the light of their role ofinstrument for academic job substitution. In particular, a tool to respond to the current condition of young Italian academic researchers increasingly affected by job offer reduction due to budget constraints, consequent university policies and new management issues.