Academia: a state of employment or a state of mind?
“The Great Resignation”, is one of the first macro-trends that will shape the post pandemic world and academia is not an exception. While Universities worldwide find themselves bleeding human resources, a new concept of “Extramural” academia is rising . Empowered by a $300 billion edTech industry, a disruptive educational ecosystem is being shaped and it’s hungry for academic talent. The challenges ahead will be far more complex than salary rises and the answer might be in seeking synergies rather than competing for scarce talent. Re-defining the conventional model of the academic teacher might be on the cards soon.
“The Great Resignation”, sounds more like a movie title but it is not, at least not yet!
It is however one of the first macro-trends that will shape the post pandemic world. Having been forced through an unprecedented experience, people have reviewed their lives, re-assessed their values and demand better. Higher Education is no exception, although as an inherently “slow” industry, trends have only now started to become visible and will continue forming long after the dust of the pandemic settles.
It is however one of the first macro-trends that will shape the post pandemic world. Having been forced through an unprecedented experience, people have reviewed their lives, re-assessed their values and demand better. Higher Education is no exception, although as an inherently “slow” industry, trends have only now started to become visible and will continue forming long after the dust of the pandemic settles.
A recent study in Nature, showed the emerging trend in universities to be concerning as well as very specific. Fewer than half of the surveyed academics felt positive with their work prospects, while the dissatisfaction disproportionally affects mid-career academics. Mid career academics are critical links in the university “chain of command”, as they have significant experience, while having capacity for “hands-on” fieldwork. They are also the ones to drive change and mentor early career and new recruits.
Rather than a “sudden death” effect like in travel and hospitality, the pandemic affected higher education significantly but quietly, like a massive undercurrent. It amplified chronic deficiencies and undermined faith in old narratives. It is no surprise therefore to see the “fatigue fracture” in the mid-career academic life cycle. These are the people who have worked hard to grow in a system they appear to have lost faith in, but who still see themselves as “having a few good years left” that they cannot afford to waste. Complaints of deteriorating work-life balance in academia have surfaced all over the world, placing current academics under immense pressure, while also deterring others from entering. Long working hours including weekends, increasing teaching workload and administrative duties, coupled with immense pressure for publications and grants have reportedly taken a toll in many academics family life. The “Great Resignation” might be the tip of the iceberg, but the great disillusionment has been for many the true undercurrent.
Is this trend also hitting dental education? Hard to find the exact data, as not many organisations observe and share such “vital signs”. Yet, in a concerning tone, the American Association for Dental Education (ADEA) recently reported that advertised academic vacancies of all ranks in Dentistry doubled between 2020 and 2021, with currently 486 full time and 188 part time academic positions vacant in USA alone. Maybe unsurprisingly, “lack of interest” as a reason for the vacant positions has jumped to 34% in 2021 from 14% in 2020. Combined with a well known chronic difficulty to attract and retain entry level academics in dentistry, a trend of weakening mid-career lines might soon have an amplified effect. Furthermore, with dental academic teachers being clinicians in their great majority, a “great resignation” might be also manifested with an preference for part-time employment among previously committed tenured staff.
At the same time, there is a massively growing disruptive industry outside universities, which is hungry for academic talent and can empower academics to reaching unprecedented impact.
Education startups with rapidly increasing impact such as Edsurge and Learnworlds have been the brainchildren of former full time academics, in their turn empowering more academic teachers to pursue their own “extramural” pathway. Paradoxically, many colleagues have come to discover that they were able to enjoy a working life with more academic qualities – including more academic freedom – when they abandoned University tenure track positions.
And while most universities witnessed a pandemic-catalysed divestment -at least with regards to human resources, 2021 brought an unprecedented investment in edtech startups, reaching $20B in venture capital funding globally. That’s 33% growth from the 2020 total! EdTech has seen 38 unicorns so far, with 17 joining in 2021 alone and five IPOs in the last 12 months. A big share of this investment was directed to tutoring platforms in China and India, a significant portion targeted corporate, professional and tertiary education, with such targeted platforms such as Course Hero and Articulate reaching valuations of 3.5 and 3.75 $billion respectively. More startups are currently emerging in niches like microlearning, gamification, mobile apps and course platforms focused on the learning experience (LXP), creating a ripe ecosystem for even more unicorns in the next years.
A highly disruptive ecosystem of “extramural” academia is rapidly growing to fill in voids also in professional education and it’s expansion could “suck-in” academic teachers like a black hole. The growing e-learning industry is expected to reach $319 billion by 2029, $49 billion of which is forecasted to be the market share for online courses directed at professional growth and education. Individual academics, professional societies and private enterprise powered by edTech are moving to partnerships with industry targeting a large share of post-graduation education and continuous professional development. Extramural academia is a trend that could challenge many established norms in the near future and competition for academic talent will be fierce – not any longer only among universities.
As the dust settles, a complex picture emerges in academia, even more in healthcare sciences where most academic teachers are also practitioners and clinicians, highly regarded by an audience in need of lifelong education and professional development. Universities waking up from the Covid-induced hybernation find themselves haemorrhaging human resources, with the blood lost appearing increasingly difficult to replace. Universities branded prestigious enough to fish from a global talent pool might fare better than regional and local ones, but even highly regarded institutes will find it difficult to maintain critical operations to their pre-covid level of standards. Models of the past appear increasingly alienated by the emerging educational environment, while attracting quality academic teachers will require daring structural changes that go beyond just “raising salaries”. Unlike many other highly skilled professionals, academics have not chosen a university career with a primary focus on salary. On the contrary, in particular in clinical disciplines academic teachers chose university employment despite their considerably higher market value in private settings. Although stagnating salaries have been a concern in many cases, the disillusionment is deeply rooted in other aspects which were promised in an academic career, but now slowly disappearing.
Perhaps the only feasible pathway will be in investigating synergies and developing new collaborative models where conventional and extramural academia intersects. Such models are already availabe and have existed for a while in different forms in forward-looking universities, being however the exception rather than the rule. Identifying success stories and best practices might be a good starting point to progress. It’s high time to reflect and redefine the role of academic teachers within and outside the universities, in order to secure continuity of talent within the university walls, but also meaningful work, entrepreneurship and personal growth conditions for academics, which fulfill the needs of modern education and practice.
Academia is a state of mind – not a state of employment.
And as more and more people come to this realization, tectonic shifts lie ahead.
Ultimately, it is still a very exciting time to be a teacher!
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Acknowledgements
I’m grateful to my good friends and elite academics, Heiko Spallek, Helen Lockey, Nadeem Karimbux, Marc Tennant, Leonie Short, Will Giannobile, Paul Weigl for their insights and constructive feedback while writing this article.
References
- Nature.com, 2021. Stagnating salaries present hurdles to career satisfaction.
- 2020-21 Dental School Faculty Vacant Positions in United States. Association for Dental Education in Europe. Available at https://www.adea.org/2020-Vacancies
- Carroll-Ann Trotman et al Faculty recruitment, retention, and success in dental academia. American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics
- M. Alrashdan. Career perspectives of senior dental students from different backgrounds at a single Middle Eastern institution. BMC Medical Education. Available at https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-018-1386-9
- Jeffrey Young, 2019. The Professor Who Quit His Tenured Job to Make Podcasts and Lecture Videos. Edsurge. Available at https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-01-29-the-professor-who-quit-his-tenured-job-to-make-podcasts-and-lecture-videos.
- Holon IQ. Global edtech venture capital report. Available at: https://www.holoniq.com/notes/global-edtech-venture-capital-report-full-year-2021/