This volume offers a timely and internationally grounded exploration of one of the defining challenges facing higher education today: the growing influence of performance regimes on academic work, institutional governance, and professional identities. As higher education institutions worldwide are increasingly assessed through publication metrics, citation indicators, teaching evaluations, rankings, and impact measures, questions arise about what academic performance truly means, how it should be evaluated and how it affects the academic work, institutional governance, and broader societal engagement.
Drawing on empirical data from the international APIKS (Academic Profession in the Knowledge-based Society) study, the volume offers comparative insights into how performance expectations shape academic careers, influence research and teaching priorities, and affect institutional strategies in different national and cultural contexts.
Moving beyond a narrow focus on institutional outputs, the book places the academic profession at the center of analysis. It explores the tensions between research productivity and teaching quality, the increasing importance of international collaboration, the growing recognition of knowledge and technology transfer, and the impact of managerial and accountability practices on academic autonomy and job satisfaction. Particular attention is paid to the unintended consequences of performance-based systems, including administrative burden, intensified competition, and changing professional norms.
At a time when international initiatives such as CoARA, DORA, and the Leiden Manifesto are calling for more responsible and holistic approaches to research assessment, this volume offers a nuanced and evidence-based contribution to ongoing debates about the future of academic evaluation. Through a rich combination of comparative perspectives and empirical analyses, it challenges simplistic understandings of performance and advocates for more equitable, context-sensitive, and mission-aligned approaches to assessing academic work and offers valuable perspectives for scholars, policymakers, and higher education leaders seeking to balance accountability with academic autonomy and mission-driven work.
This volume offers a timely and internationally grounded exploration of one of the defining challenges facing higher education today: the growing influence of performance regimes on academic work, institutional governance, and professional identities. As higher education institutions worldwide are increasingly assessed through publication metrics, citation indicators, teaching evaluations, rankings, and impact measures, questions arise about what academic performance truly means, how it should be evaluated and how it affects the academic work, institutional governance, and broader societal engagement.
Drawing on empirical data from the international APIKS (Academic Profession in the Knowledge-based Society) study, the volume offers comparative insights into how performance expectations shape academic careers, influence research and teaching priorities, and affect institutional strategies in different national and cultural contexts.
Moving beyond a narrow focus on institutional outputs, the book places the academic profession at the center of analysis. It explores the tensions between research productivity and teaching quality, the increasing importance of international collaboration, the growing recognition of knowledge and technology transfer, and the impact of managerial and accountability practices on academic autonomy and job satisfaction. Particular attention is paid to the unintended consequences of performance-based systems, including administrative burden, intensified competition, and changing professional norms.
At a time when international initiatives such as CoARA, DORA, and the Leiden Manifesto are calling for more responsible and holistic approaches to research assessment, this volume offers a nuanced and evidence-based contribution to ongoing debates about the future of academic evaluation. Through a rich combination of comparative perspectives and empirical analyses, it challenges simplistic understandings of performance and advocates for more equitable, context-sensitive, and mission-aligned approaches to assessing academic work and offers valuable perspectives for scholars, policymakers, and higher education leaders seeking to balance accountability with academic autonomy and mission-driven work.
Corinna Geppert
Finnish higher education Knowledge-based decision-making in higher education Performance information in higher education Performance measures and academic workload Academics' administrative workload New Public Management (NPM) Effect of performance measures on academics’ publications APIKS survey Effect of internationalization on research performance Performance of the academic profession in Mexico Latin American academic profession APIKS data from Hong Kong Teaching-research nexus in Lithuania and Estonia Job satisfaction in Taiwan, Japan and Korea Governance and management of universities in East Asia