"I'm not a real academic": a career from industry to academe

• Published in: Journal of further and higher education Vol. 37; no. 3; pp. 384 - 396
• Main Authors: Santoro, Ninetta, Snead, Suzanne L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01.05.2013
• Subjects: academic indentities; Academic staff; Academic staff attitudes; Academic staff role; academic work; academics from industry; Accountability; Australia; Career change; College Faculty; Expectation; Foreign Countries; Postsecondary education; Professional Autonomy; Professional personnel; Publish or Perish Issue; Qualitative Research; Researchers; Self Concept; Semi Structured Interviews; Specialists; Student Attitudes; Teacher Attitudes; Teacher Role; Teaching (Occupation); Teaching experience; University teaching; Australia
• ISSN: 0309-877X; 1469-9486
• DOI: 10.1080/0309877X.2011.645457

Over the past thirty years universities have increasingly extended their offerings of vocationally oriented degrees and have recruited into academe, practitioners from the professions. This paper reports on a qualitative study that investigated the experiences of 20 professionals-turned-academics in Australia; their expectations of academe and how they defined, resisted and took up the multiple and changing roles associated with academic work. Findings indicate that the majority experienced nostalgia for universities of the past which they imagined to be places of intellectual elitism and curiosity-driven research and scholarship. At the same time, they identified strongly as practitioners within their professional fields, were committed to field-oriented practical education and resisted taking up researcher identities, understanding 'real' research in narrowly defined terms. Our discussion of these findings highlights the tension between what is desired and what is real in academe and its impact on job performance and satisfaction for this group of academics.