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CSSHE
SCÉES
Canadian Journal of Higher Education
Revue canadienne d’enseignement supérieur
Volume 46, No. 2, 2016, pages 55 - 77
The Academic Profession in Canada:
Perceptions of Canadian University Faculty
about Research and Teaching
Bryan Gopaul
University of Rochester
Glen A. Jones
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Julian Weinrib
University of Toronto
Amy Metcalfe
University of British Columbia
Donald Fisher
University of British Columbia
Yves Gingras
Université du Québec
Kjell Rubenson
University of British Columbia
Abstract
Previous scholarly attention to the experiences of faculty members has emphasized the contexts of US institutions, with minimal attention to the experiences
of faculty members at Canadian universities. This paper presents the indings
of the Canadian component of an international survey that was administered
in 19 diferent jurisdictions to understand the perceptions of faculty members
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about the nature and scope of changes to academic work. As such, the paper
explores the perceptions on research and teaching of full-time faculty members ailiated with Canadian universities. Overall, faculty members revealed
that Canadian universities have strong, engaging, and vibrant research and
teaching environments, yet there are also areas for improvement. Speciically,
indings showed that faculty members perceived considerable autonomy with
respect to research activities, despite the increasing need to secure external
funding for research. Also, faculty expressed substantial commitment to teaching undergraduate students but a lack of clarity about some issues related to
graduate teaching. The survey results provide an important baseline for future
studies of Canadian universities and the working conditions of the professoriate in a time of rapid institutional and professional change.
Résumé
Jusqu’à présent, les études scientiiques sur l’expérience du corps professoral
ont surtout porté sur le contexte étatsunien, accordant très peu d’attention à
l’expérience vécue dans les universités canadiennes. Cet article présente les
résultats de la partie canadienne d’un sondage international efectué dans 19
juridictions, et dont le but était de comprendre la perception du corps professoral
envers la nature et la portée de changements modiiant le travail académique.
Dans l’ensemble, les membres du corps professoral ont conié que le milieu
de la recherche et de l’enseignement est solide, stimulant et dynamique, bien
que des points restent à améliorer. Plus précisément, notre recherche révèle
que les membres du corps professoral perçoivent une autonomie considérable
sur le plan des activités de recherche, malgré le besoin grandissant d’obtenir
du inancement externe pour la recherche. De plus, les membres du corps
professoral ont exprimé leur engagement capital envers l’enseignement au
premier cycle, mais aussi un manque de clarté quant à certains problèmes liés
à l’enseignement aux cycles supérieurs. Dans un contexte de changements
institutionnels et professionnels rapides, les résultats du sondage fournissent
un important point de départ pour de futures études sur les universités
canadiennes et les conditions de travail du corps professoral.
Introduction
There has been an increasing interest in studying the experiences of university professors over the last two decades (Acker, 2003; Austin, 1992; Finklestein, 2010; Schuster &
Finklestein, 2006). The demands of public trustees and policy-makers for greater transparency, particularly in terms of understanding how members of the academic profession spend their time, have provided a rationale for a range of studies on academic work
(O’Meara, Terosky, & Neumann, 2008). Studies have explored, for example, faculty reward systems and tenure processes (Braskamp & Ory, 1994; Tierney & Rhoades, 1994),
the importance of broadening the deinition of scholarship (Boyer, 1990; O’Meara & Rice,
2005), and recruitment and socialization processes (Wulf & Austin, 2004) as well as the
teaching and research loads and the general work organization of professors (Bertrand,
1991, 1993; Bertrand, Foucher, Jacob, Fabri, & Beaulieu, 1994).
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While there has been a concerted and sustained scholarly interest in studying the professoriate in the United States and other countries with mature higher education systems,
there has been relatively little research on the experiences of faculty members at Canadian
institutions of higher education. A number of Canadian researchers have explored matters of inequity across faculty members at Canadian universities, such as issues of gender
(Acker, 2003; Acker & Armenti, 2004; CAUT, 2010; Expert Panel on Women in University Research, 2012) and the concomitant rise in part-time, contingent academic workers
(Field, Jones, Karram Stephenson, & Khoyetsyan, 2014; Muzzin, 2009; Rajagopal, 2002).
However, these studies further reinforce the need for additional research to comprehensively examine the experiences of faculty members in Canadian universities. This paper is
part of a body of scholarship exploring the experiences of full-time members at Canadian
universities by drawing on the results of the 2007–2008 Changing Academic Profession
(CAP) survey. Previous work related to this project includes studies of the remuneration
of Canadian university faculty members (Jones & Weinrib, 2012); perceptions of early
career academics (Jones et al., 2012); perceptions of faculty related to university governance and management (Metcalfe et al., 2011); gender diferences in academic productivity (Metcalfe & Padilla-Gonzáles, 2013); the evolving balance between teaching and
research in Canadian universities (Jones et al., 2014); and faculty job satisfaction (Weinrib et al., 2013). Our objective in this paper is to present and analyze data from the CAP
project regarding the perceptions of Canadian university faculty on research and teaching
in Canadian universities. For this particular paper, we provide a snapshot of data that relate to perceptions of teaching and research. Prior to examining the CAP survey in greater
detail, we review relevant research on the academic profession in Canada as well as comment on the Canadian higher education “system.”
The Canadian Context
Unlike the state-driven policy contexts of many of the countries participating in the
CAP project, the higher education policy landscape in Canada is highly decentralized, as
the provinces and territories govern the educational systems within their respective jurisdictions. Under the Canadian constitutional arrangement, the 10 provinces and three
territories have legislative authority for all public policy relating to the organization and
delivery of formal educational services within their jurisdictions, including higher education. There is no national ministry or binding policy lever for higher education. Universities function under provincial legislation, and most were created as autonomous notfor-proit corporations that receive public support through provincial operating grants.
There is considerable variation in the funding arrangements and governance structures
for higher education in each province and territory (Shanahan & Jones, 2007).
Despite this variation, Canadian universities on the whole comprise a mature higher
education sector with a global reputation for high quality and internationally leading levels of post-secondary educational attainment (OECD, 2012). There has been, however,
surprisingly little research conducted on key segments of Canada’s university sector. This
paper will engage with one such under-examined area: the nature and scope of the academic work performed by full-time faculty members at Canadian universities.
Four trends that directly impact academic work in Canadian universities, especially
in the context of research and teaching, have been the rise of accountability frameworks
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and managerial regimes (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004), the prominence of faculty unionization (Dobbie & Robinson, 2008), increased debate over the expected division of teaching and research by full-time faculty, with correlating debates over institutional diferentiation within the sector (Clark, Trick, & Van Loon, 2011), and the commercial inluence
over research activity through targeted funding initiatives (Fisher, Atkinson-Grosjean &
House, 2001; Metcalfe, 2010). With regards to the irst of these trends, national circumstances inluence how accountability and managerialism frameworks impact universities
within individual jurisdictions, and the Canadian context has experienced many of the
most prominent global trends in this regard, including conlicting deinitions of “relevant” research, increased reliance on and competition for targeted research funding, and
the encroaching ubiquity of entrepreneurial strategies amongst faculty members (Chan &
Fisher, 2008; Enders & Musselin, 2008; Olssen & Peters, 2005). These factors, amongst
others, have intensiied the milieu of academic work, since in some systems “faculty are
subject to unfair tenure systems, work expectations, mission creep, managerial reform,
chilly climates, and a lack of support and mentoring” (O’Meara et al., 2008, p. 16). This
intensiication has been particularly inluential on the nature and scope of research and
teaching activities of both full- and part-time faculty members at universities across the
globe. In this paper, we discuss these dynamics as they pertain to full-time faculty members at Canadian universities.
The second trend that has inluenced the work of academics in Canadian universities
is the powerful role of unionization in the higher education sector. The degree of unionization has signiicant implications for the level of faculty salaries and beneits, as well as
working conditions and policies around tenure and promotion. Instability in the higher
education sector in the 1970s led to a broad movement towards faculty unionization in
Canadian universities, and within a decade “the landscape was transformed” as unionization had encompassed over 50% of university professors across the country (Tudiver,
1999, p. 85). The trend continued in the 1990s and 2000s, and the vast majority of university faculty are now members of recognized bargaining units. Importantly, other categories of university instructors, including graduate students and non-tenure-track positions, have also unionized at many institutions, frequently in separate union bodies from
full-time faculty (Field et al., 2014; Jones, 2013). These alternative groupings focus on
similar issues to those of their full-time counterparts, especially with regards to salaries,
beneits, and job security. The high level of unionization in the Canadian university sector is an important contextual feature of the environment and determines the structure
within which academic work is conceptualized, performed, and evaluated (Gravestock,
2011; Jones et al., 2014).
The third trend highlights the increasing debate about the separation of teaching and
research and subsequent focus on institutional diferentiation. This trend has been driven
in many provinces by iscal necessity; the traditional university model in Canada, whereby a near totality of university faculty members focus on both research and teaching, is
increasingly viewed as a legacy of a bygone era marked by economic growth and predictable budgets. The massiication of higher education in Canada, marked by world-leading
attainment levels (OECD, 2012), coupled with the signiicant cost of running universities
using a comprehensive teacher–scholar model as the standard, has created signiicant
tensions for provincial governments in an era of iscal uncertainty and crisis. Reforms
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in British Columbia led to the creation of new, teaching-intensive universities, while two
former Alberta colleges have evolved into universities with a strong emphasis on teaching. In Ontario, teaching-focused universities have been suggested as a possible remedy
for the current situation (Clark et al., 2011), while some rectors in Québec have pushed for
the creation of two types of universities (Gingras, 2013). This debate is partially informed
by disagreements over the added value that research fosters amongst teaching faculty but
mostly is guided by the argument that the current model of university education is no
longer sustainable and that teaching and research should increasingly be considered as
separate streams for university faculty.
Finally, the trend of increased pressure to conduct research in areas targeted by the
federal government of Canada has impacted the work of Canadian university faculty members. This process has been particularly salient in areas perceived as having high levels of
commercial viability and is a response to historically low levels of industry–academia collaboration in the Canadian university sector (Industry Canada, 2007; OECD, 2011). Canadian universities have long been considered woefully inadequate at fostering innovation
and development opportunities in partnership with industry, primarily driven by the high
level of state involvement in the economic utilization of scientiic research (AtkinsonGrosjean, House, & Fisher, 2001; Rasmussen, 2008; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). Since the
early 2000s, the federal government has responded to this reality and the ascension of
knowledge-based economic discourse in the global marketplace by establishing a number of federal research programs focused on the commercialization of university research
and the establishment of university–industry relations, such as an array of Networks of
Centres of Excellence, as well as industrial training and development programs targeting
post-secondary students (Industry Canada, 2007).
Several of these programs have elicited sharp critiques from the academic community with regards to perceived underfunding and marginalization of speciic disciplines
viewed as having less commercial viability. Many of these critiques contend that the federal government is using arms-length means to undermine academic autonomy by incentivizing full-time faculty to focus more on research than on teaching, and on particular
types of research rather than the full range of academic inquiry (Atkinson-Grosjean et
al., 2001; Metcalfe & Fenwick, 2009; Ozaga, 2007; Polster, 2007). Given the rise of these
four prominent trends, we turn now to a discussion of the CAP study that helps to frame
how higher education institutions and faculty members are responding to these mounting
pressures to research and to teaching.
The Changing Academic Profession Study
To understand how recent changes in the funding, governance, and administration of
higher education systems and institutions were impacting post-secondary faculty members, an international project was initiated in 2006 in order to examine the nature and
extent of these changes as experienced internationally. The result of this initiative was
the CAP project, which ultimately involved the administration of a common survey questionnaire to a representative sample of faculty in 19 jurisdictions (18 countries plus Hong
Kong). The CAP survey represents one of the most comprehensive attempts to obtain national and comparative data on the perceptions of faculty members concerning the nature
of their work and their academic work environment. The survey questionnaire was inlu-
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enced by the First International Survey of the Academic Profession, which was conducted
in 1992 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Altbach, 1996).
Canada was not included in the 1992 survey and so it is impossible to analyze change over
time, but the Canadian administration of the CAP survey remains one of the largest, most
comprehensive studies of the Canadian professoriate conducted to date.
In the Canadian context, the CAP project provides unique quantitative data on the
work, experiences, and backgrounds of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members at Canadian universities. The Canadian component of the study was designed to gather responses from a representative sample of full-time faculty members at Canadian universities. A two-stage cluster sample was created at two distinct levels: the institution and
the individual. The popular taxonomy for institutional type amongst Canadian universities
uses the following three categories: Medical/Doctoral, Comprehensive, and Primarily Undergraduate. A random sample was generated with this institutional taxonomy and consisted of 18 institutions: four Medical/Doctoral, six Comprehensive, and eight Primarily
Undergraduate. At least one university in each of Canada’s 10 provinces was represented
in this study, and for each university, only full-time faculty members were surveyed.1 Other
academic individuals with titles of Instructor, Lecturer, Research Associate, and Clinical
Faculty were not included in the Canadian CAP survey. Also, faculty members with administrative titles, such as Dean and Vice President, were excluded from the survey.
At the end of October 2007, 6,693 potential participants were sent an invitation via email
with a hyperlink to a web-based survey, which was then closed in mid-December, 2007. Another attempt to secure respondents was initiated in April 2008, and the survey was inally
closed in May 2008, having obtained 1,152 valid returns for a response rate of 17.21%. Details on the survey sampling framework and response rates are provided in Table 1.
Table 1.
Canadian CAP Survey Sampling Framework
Gross Sample*
Institutions
University Type
(#)
Faculty
Institutions
(#)
(%)
(#)
(%)
Medical Doctoral 15
31.9 18840
59.7
4
Comprehensive
11
23.4
7806
24.7
Undergraduate
21
44.7
4908
15.6
47
(%)
Net Sample
Returned Sample
Faculty
Faculty
(%)
(#)
(%)
22.2 2245
33.5
4
22.2 442
38.4
6
33.3 3109
46.5
6
33.3
501
43.5
8
44.4 1339
20.0
8
44.4 209
18.1
100.0 31,554 100.0 18
(#)
Institutions
100.0 6,693 100.0 18
(#)
(%)
100.0 1,152 100.0
*Source: CAUT Almanac, 2008
In addition to surveying multiple university types in Canada, the demographic data
closely resemble the characteristics of full-time university faculty across Canada, as can
be seen in Table 2. Further, the CAP survey sample closely mirrors the disciplinary distribution of faculty in Canada (Table 3).
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Table 2.
Demographics of Full-Time Canadian University Faculty
Faculty in Canada, 2005–2006*
CDN CDN CDN CDN CDN
CAP CAP CAP CAP CAP
Characteristics
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
Male
67.3
59.1
Female
32.7
40.9
White
84.2
85.0
Visible minority
15.8
15.0
Canadian citizen at birth
59.0
68.1
Canadian citizen (2007)
86.8
89.5
Assistant professor
28.0
28.7
Associate professor
32.0
35.3
Full professor
34.0
36.0
Other teaching title
6.0
0.0
100.0 100.0
100.0 100.0 100.0
100.0
N= 38,298 38,298 38,298 38,298 982 1,008 955 797 1,152
*Source: CAUT Almanac, 2008
Table 3.
Canadian University Faculty by Discipline
Canada* (N = 38,298)
Education
Fine and applied arts
Humanities and related
(%) Canadian CAP (N = 1,092)
7.0 Teacher training and education science
4.0
15.0 Humanities and arts
Social and behavioural sciences
Business and administration, economics
Social sciences and related
27.0 Law
Agricultural and biological sciences
Agriculture
(excluding health professions)
7.0 Life sciences
Engineering and applied sciences
9.0 Engineering, manufacturing,
construction, and architecture
Health professions/occupations
16.0 Medical sciences, health-related
sciences, social services
Mathematics, physical sciences
13.0 Physical sciences, mathematics,
computer sciences
Not reported
1.0 Other/not applicable
99.0
*Source: CAUT Almanac, 2008
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(%)
7.9
15.7
15.9
9.8
2.5
1.0
5.7
7.1
14.6
13.4
6.5
100.1
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In this paper, we focus on the responses to questions related to faculty perceptions
of research and teaching. We begin by reviewing indings on the research activities of
faculty, following by perceptions of teaching, and then look at faculty perceptions of their
balance of interests and work between research and teaching.
Research at Canadian Universities
This section presents the indings of select CAP survey questions in order to provide a
more comprehensive understanding of faculty perceptions regarding an array of researchrelated issues, such as researcher autonomy, work patterns, professional interests, and
preferred means and media of publication. All of this is done to paint a more holistic picture of how full-time faculty at Canadian universities are currently experiencing the role
of research within their working lives.
Research-Related Work at Canadian Universities
The irst general theme for analysis is conceptualized as research productivity, dissemination, and collaboration, and it relates to the amount, type, and nature of research
conducted by the surveyed faculty members. More speciically, we ask what are the collaborative dynamics and what are the chosen media for dissemination of research-related
results for faculty members at Canadian universities? The CAP survey contained a number of questions that directly addressed these issues.
In addition to the preferred media that Canadian academics use to disseminate research,
faculty were asked: “How many of the following scholarly contributions have you completed
in the past three years?” Eleven categories were put forward, ranging in scope from scholarly books authored to artistic works performed. Table 4 presents the responses from Canadian faculty on their use of forms of dissemination and on their level of productivity.
Table 4.
Percentage of Faculty Reporting Use of Forms of Dissemination, and the Level of Productivity Reported by Those Who Use Each Form
Form of Research Dissemination
Paper presented at a scholarly conference
Article published in academic book/journal
Report/monograph for a funded project
Professional article for a newspaper/magazine
Other
Scholarly books authored or co-authored
Scholarly books edited or co-edited
Artistic work performed or exhibited
Patent secured on a process or invention
Computer program written for public use
Video or ilm produced
# of Publications
(mean/3 years)
8.1
6.2
1.4
1.4
0.6
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.1
0.1
0.1
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% of Respondents
93
89
44
41
10
25
19
5
5
6
4
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In terms of the professional dynamics involved in the publication of the above research, a number of CAP questions investigated the form, structure, and processes associated with faculty responses. The collaborative dimension of academic research was
highlighted by a number of direct questions, with the following indings. A large percentage of respondents (84%) indicated that they had collaborated during the year prior to
the survey being conducted (2007) with other researchers in one or more of their research
projects, 68% reported having collaborated with persons at other institutions within
Canada, and 63% reported having collaborated with international colleagues. In terms
of co-authorships stemming from collaborate research activities, 40.3% of respondents
indicated that they had co-authored with colleagues in Canadian institutions, while only
12.7% reported that they had co-authored with colleagues in foreign countries. Despite
the low level of co-authorship with foreign scholars, however, 31% of Canadian respondents indicated that they had published in a foreign publication during the previous year.
When the data were compared to bibliometric studies for the year 2007, there appeared
to be a high level of variance in the reported levels of collaboration with international
colleagues. In 2007, nearly 45% of all Canadian academic publications were the result
of international collaborations (Lebel & Lemelin, 2009). This of course varies according
to disciplines, the humanities being the less collaborative (as measured by co-authored
papers) and the sciences reporting as the most collaborative, with the social sciences falling in between. Interprovincial collaborations are usually less frequent than international
co-authorships. Small provinces collaborate more with other provinces, and larger ones,
such as Québec and Ontario, collaborate less with the rest of Canada, with only 15–17% of
their papers being co-authored with colleagues from other provinces (Larivière, Gingras,
& Archambault, 2006; Lebel & Lemelin, 2009).
Conceptualizing Research
Questions relating to the second theme that emerged from the CAP survey are grouped
under the heading conceptualizing research. They focus on how individual academics relate to the purported goals and expectations of research vis-à-vis the dissemination and
use of their research. As issues of accountability and managerialism continue to inluence
public spending on research, the measurement and evaluation of research outputs—as
well as the politics surrounding such practices—remain deining components of the 21stcentury academic professional, with tangible implications for debates around academic
freedom. In light of this dynamic, faculty perceptions regarding desirable or preferable
uses of their research, as well as the perceived role of non-academic inluences over the
research process and the dissemination of indings, are central themes of this study’s
analysis. The following section will take up these issues by examining pertinent CAP survey questions in order to portray a broad aggregate of full-time academics’ perceptions at
Canadian universities, acknowledging that nuances exist at sub-aggregate levels that will
be well served by further analysis in subsequent studies.
The irst grouping of questions relate to the perceived goals and expectations that
faculty have regarding their research, including broader considerations of the purpose of
research within the 21st-century university. The indings indicate that a majority of fulltime faculty members conceptualize research and knowledge production as fundamentally intertwined with broader societal issues. For instance, 68% strongly agreed or agreed
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that “scholarship includes the application of academic knowledge in real-life settings,”
and 59% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that “faculty in my discipline have a
professional obligation to apply their knowledge to problems in society.” The manner in
which this knowledge is transmitted, however, presents more uncertain results. Seventysix percent of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that “scholarship is best deined as
the preparation and presentation of indings on original research,” 61% strongly agreed or
agreed that “high expectations of useful results and application are a threat to the quality
of research,” and a correlate question regarding the quantity of research indicated similar concerns, as 72% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that “high expectations to
increase research productivity are a threat to the quality of research.” These responses
seem to indicate that there is trepidation amongst Canadian academics regarding the inluence that societal issues should have on determining the nature, scope, and application
of research in Canadian universities. While a majority of respondents acknowledged that
“real-life settings” can beneit from academic research, the survey results did not support
the expectation of application as being the driving force of research.
The second grouping of questions relating to the conceptualization of research builds
on the latter conclusion and questions the inluence that external and non-academic actors have on the construction, funding, and evaluation of research activities and practices
within Canadian universities, particularly in relation to the quality, quantity, and scope
of research. In general, the CAP responses indicate that the academic profession in Canadian universities is operating within a tension between internal and external priorities.
Some responses highlight the increased inluence that funding sources and external actors play in the determination and evaluation of research, but these indings are in tension with the relatively strong perception of autonomy within the academic workforce,
including perceptions of strong support coming from institutional administrators with
regard to academic freedom and research activities.
In terms of external inluence, speciically around issues of funding, the following CAP
indings are most pertinent: 75% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that “the pressure to raise external research funds has increased since my irst appointment,” 45% of
respondents indicated that external sponsors or clients have inluence over the research
activities of individual faculty members, and only 21% of respondents reported that the
level of institutional research funding is excellent or very good. Further to this last inding,
participants indicated that 73.3% of research funding is from non-institutional or external sources. These responses indicate that external or non-academic actors are perceived
as playing a signiicant role in the deining and funding of research in Canadian universities. Furthermore, institutional resources are perceived as being inadequate to meet the
research demands of Canadian academics. As will be examined below, these indings are,
however, balanced by a wide array of responses that indicate high levels of autonomy are
still held by academics in relation to the setting of academic standards, the evaluation of
research, and the motivating factors of research activities in Canadian universities.
In terms of decisions regarding the setting of internal research priorities at Canadian
universities, only 2% of respondents indicated that government or external actors were the
primary inluence, with individual faculty (35%), institutional managers (27%), academic
unit managers (19%), and faculty committees/boards (17%) fulilling the role of arbiters
for institutional research priorities. A similar question focused on the actors with primary
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decision-making inluence for the evaluation of research activities, with the following results: faculty committee/boards (38%), academic unit managers (21%), individual faculty
members (20%), institutional managers (13%), and government or external stakeholders
(8%). The strong role that academics and institutional actors play in setting the priorities
and rubrics of research evaluation is supported by the responses to two related questions:
only 11% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed with the statement “Restrictions on
the publication of results from my publicly funded research have increased since my irst
appointment,” and 61% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that “the administration supports academic freedom.” While there appeared to be a funnelling of resources by
external sources, the vast majority of academics remained resistant to the idea that “research funding should be concentrated (targeted) on the most productive researchers,”
with only 21% of respondents strongly agreeing or agreeing with this statement.
Taken on the whole, the above indings show that while institutions are perceived by
Canadian academics as being incapable of meeting research funding demands—which
is resulting in, or perhaps a result of, external actors inluencing the dominant funding
mechanisms available to academic staf—respondents generally indicated that universities and their administrative and professional units remain the primary arbiters of research priorities, research evaluation and professional support. Consequently, it appears
that the increased inluence of external actors through research funding mechanisms has
not resulted in a perception of increased restrictions or targeting of research activities at
Canadian universities. One possible hypothesis that may explain these circumstances is
that the extremely strong legacy of institutional and sub-institutional autonomy in Canadian universities (for example, see Jones, 2002) represents a substantial negotiating
layer for the institutionalization of external inluences and conditionalities that may be
attached to external funding.
Commercial Inluence Over Research
A inal theme of analysis that relects signiicant trends in the broader literature on
academic work in the 21st century relates to the role of private-sector inluence and commercial-related research in publicly funded universities. Any examination of the role that
external actors are playing in Canadian universities should consider the growth of public–private partnership funding schemes initiated in Canada over the last 10 years, such
as the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Networks for Centres of Excellence (NCE) (Atkinson-Grosjean et al., 2001; CFI, 2008; Metcalfe, 2012; Metcalfe &
Fenwick, 2009; Polster, 2007; Tudiver, 1999; Shanahan & Jones, 2007), and the general
growth of market-oriented activities or incentivized funding schemes in public higher education institutions around the world (Fisher, Atkinson-Grosjean, & House, 2001; Fisher & Rubenson, 2010; Marginson, 2006, 2007; Musselin, 2005; Olssen & Peters, 2005;
Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). A number of CAP survey questions
directly engage with issues of private or commercial inluence over university-based research activities. The indings of these questions indicate that Canadian academics as a
whole appear to be predominantly disengaged from the private sector and are resistant to
commercially oriented research activities, despite the cautionary tales raised by researchers of both the Canadian and the global academic profession.
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In terms of funding sources, respondents indicated that in the aggregate, only 4.5%
of their total research funding is derived from business or industry sources, with an additional 3.7% coming from other sources that may or may not represent private-sector
investment or partnership. In terms of research emphasis, for the question, “How would
you characterize the emphasis of your primary research this (or the previous) academic
year?” responses averaged 4.2 on a 5-point Likert scale for the “commercially oriented/
intended for technology transfer” category, with 1 representing “very much” and 5 representing “not at all.” Lastly, only 40% of respondents indicated that their “institution
emphasizes commercially oriented or applied research.” One question engaged with the
issue of academic freedom and privately funded research by asking whether “restrictions
on the publication of results from my privately funded research have increased since my
irst appointment,” with only 11% of faculty indicating that they strongly agreed or agreed
with the statement.
The above indings and responses appear to indicate that the private sector and commercial interests do not play a signiicant role in the determination of research priorities
or activities for most tenured faculty members in Canadian universities. This is consistent
with Statistics Canada’s aggregate data on university R&D by source of funding, which
indicate that about 18% comes from the private sector (for-proit as well as non-proit).
More importantly, the large majority of these private-sector investments are concentrated
in the biomedical and engineering sciences, so the majority of professors are not touched
by the presence of privately funded research in academia, which has been relatively stable
over the last 10 years (Statistics Canada, 2013). While individual faculty members perceive institutions as being relatively interested in promoting commercially oriented or
applied research, for the most part this interest has not translated into substantial shifts
in research practices or interests at the individual level.
Teaching in Canadian Universities
The perceptions of teaching expressed by faculty members at Canadian universities
through the CAP survey reveal a robust and dedicated team of individuals who are committed to student learning, passionate about engaging students in the classroom, and
interested in improving students’ learning experiences. The discussion that follows addresses these perceptions of teaching as framed by undergraduate education and graduate education, respectively.
In the context of teaching, a major theme was the emphasis on undergraduate teaching
and perceptions related to the academic preparedness of undergraduate students. During the academic year, faculty members spend nearly 20 hours per week preparing and
conducting teaching or teaching-related activities, which eclipses all other academic tasks.
Of the time spent on teaching, faculty members spend 63.1% focusing on undergraduate teaching. Faculty members reported that the average number of undergraduates per
course was 59 students. For instructional methods in the classroom, the survey explored
the use of group work, computer-assisted learning, and distance education, and while faculty members did use these aforementioned methods, lecturing was the overwhelmingly
preferred method of instruction. Also, these faculty members were heavily invested in developing course materials. This commitment to teaching is fostered by institutional cultures that support both the assessment and the improvement of teaching. Speciically, 55%
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of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that they are encouraged to improve their teaching in response to teaching evaluations, and, importantly, 58% of individuals revealed that
their institutions provide adequate training courses for teaching improvement. While the
CAP survey questions regarding teaching evaluations were intended to describe the extent
of administrative oversight and support for the improvement of the quality of teaching,
faculty do not necessarily perceive the university’s role as that of a neutral player, given the
high stakes of performance evaluation for the purposes of tenure and promotion, in the
case of tenure-track faculty. Despite the absence or presence of institutional supports for
the improvement of the quality of teaching, faculty may be resistant to perceived interferences by university administration in the faculty–student relationship and peer-to-peer
collegiality, as reported in Canadian studies conducted by Iqbal (2013, 2014).
This focus on teaching permeates interactions with students. Most faculty members
spend time interacting with undergraduate students outside of the classroom, through
face-to-face interactions in oice hours and via email communications. Speciically, 95%
of respondents interact with students outside of the classroom and 96% engage in email
communication with students. Interestingly, there was a strong sense from faculty members that students were not equipped with basic skills prior to enrolling in a course/institution, which results in faculty members believing that they have to spend more time
teaching basic skills due to student deiciencies. So, 55% of respondents strongly agreed
or agreed that they spend more time than they would like on basic skills, while 77% of
individuals strongly agreed or agreed that they inform students about issues of plagiarism and cheating. While the nature of these deiciencies was not delineated in the CAP
survey, the strong sense of obligation by faculty members in Canada to inform students
about issues related to plagiarism and cheating in their courses suggests that particular
expectations and norms related to study skills, evaluations, and academic writing operate
at these institutions (and in academe more broadly), of which some students may not be
aware. The CAP results also support Canadian studies on academic integrity that suggest
a shifting locus of responsibility between students, faculty, and institutions when it comes
to education about such guidelines (Gallant & Drinan, 2008; Griith, 2013).
A second theme that emerged, although with considerably less frequency than the irst
theme, was that of teaching and graduate education. From an organizational perspective,
faculty members experience institutional targets related to the number of hours in the
classroom and to the number of students per class for undergraduate student populations.
For instance, 80% and 56% of respondents indicated that their institutions set quantitative load targets for hours in the classroom and number of students in the class, respectively. This sort of institutional transparency works to stabilize undergraduate education
where faculty members are aware of explicit norms and expectations from their respective
institutions. The context of graduate education is a little diferent, in that faculty members
do not experience similar direction through institutional targets related to the number of
graduate students supervised, as only 18% of faculty members revealed that their institutions had load targets or regulatory mechanisms for the supervision of graduate students.
On average, Canadian faculty members spend only 9.8% of their time instructing doctoral students, and doctoral student class sizes are small (ive students per course). These
faculty members spend more of their time teaching in master’s programs than in doctoral
programs, and the number of students in master’s classes is much larger than in doctoral
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programs. For instance, the amount of total instruction time in master’s courses is larger
than in doctoral courses, at 21.1%, and the class size for master’s courses nearly doubles that of doctoral courses, at 9.8 students per course. So, faculty members experience
important nuances to their teaching experiences in the contexts of undergraduate and
graduate levels of education, as well as through teasing out the master’s and doctoral programs related to graduate education. These nuances are related to institutional priorities
of transparency with respect to each sub-set of education as well as broader institutional,
regional, and national interests of undergraduate and graduate education.
Relationships Between Research and Teaching
An important entry point into assessing the intersections of the components of academic work emerges from responses to the question “Please indicate your views on the
following: (answer scale 1 = strongly agree to 5 = strongly disagree). . . . Your research
activities reinforce your teaching” and “Your service activities reinforce your teaching.”
Interestingly, 82% of faculty members agreed or strongly agreed that research reinforces
teaching, while only 43% agreed or strongly agreed that service reinforces teaching. Up
to this point, our discussion has focused on the separation of research and teaching: an
examination into how each operates distinctly and separately from the other as components of academic work. A further question in the CAP survey explored the relationship
between research and teaching by asking, “Regarding your own preferences, do your interests lie primarily in teaching or in research?” Respondents heavily favoured an investment in both teaching and research, as reported by 80% of respondents; however, importantly, 54% of total respondents indicated that their interests lay in both teaching and
research but leaned toward research, while 26% said they were interested in both teaching and research but favoured teaching. This inding is not surprising, given professional
and institutional emphasis on research activity, including the practice of awarding grants
based, in part, on the applicants’ excellence in achieving sustained and robust research
trajectories. As Canadian universities become more driven by external resources, even internal allocation of funding is more competitive, potentially afecting the perceptions and
behaviours of the Canadian professoriate with regard to the relative stature of research
activities (Polster, 2012). Yet, the dominance of research activity over time spent teaching and advising students cannot be fully explained by resource dependency, as teaching
is also a revenue stream for Canadian universities, particularly with the increasing emphasis on the recruitment of international students, who pay higher fees (Beck, 2012).
Indeed, the research/teaching binary is possibly a manifestation of academic culture that
requires further investigation, as suggested by Macfarlane (2015).
The distribution of workloads across the academic year and the segregation of work
by “teaching terms” and “non-teaching terms” may contribute to the existence of, or reinforce the perception of, the binary between teaching and research. One way of assessing how faculty members spend their time across the diferent aspects of academic work
is through a question on workload: “Considering all your professional work, how many
hours do you spend in a typical week on each of the following activities?” This question
was posed for when classes are in session and when they are not. For when classes are
in session, Canadian respondents reported spending an average of 16 hours per week
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on research and research-related activities (reading literature, writing, conducting experiments, doing ieldwork), compared to 19.6 hours on teaching-related activities, 4.3
hours on service, 7.9 hours on administrative work, and 2.7 on other academic activities,
for a total of 50.7 hours per week. When classes are not in session, the reported average
amount of time spent on research rose dramatically to 28.5 hours per week, with a corresponding drop to 5.4 hours of teaching. Respondents indicated that they spent four hours
on service, 6.8 hours on administration, and three hours on other academic work during
non-teaching terms, for a total of 47.7 hours per week.
Although the nature and scope of how research may inform teaching were not addressed by the CAP survey, indings from other questions on teaching may suggest possible interpretations. For instance, 60% of faculty members indicated that they use international content or perspectives in their teaching. This broadening of curricula may relect
an increased globalized research environment with more collaborative projects across
researchers and institutions, wherein the indings or implications of such research can be
applied to multiple jurisdictions.
Summary and Conclusion
Although the CAP survey was designed by an international research team for an
international context, in this paper we have analyzed the Canadian survey data in relation
to four key trends in higher education in this country: the rise of accountability frameworks, an increase in academic unionization, an increasing diferentiation at the professional and institutional levels with respect to teaching and research activities, and the
potential efects of targeted research funding on the broad academic endeavour. The CAP
survey results indicate that Canadian academics are generally satisied with the levels
of autonomy in the context of their professional research endeavours and responsibilities, but there is a strong recognition that external pressures and the expectation of commercial or applied forms of knowledge are threatening autonomous research. While the
CAP responses indicate that full-time academics are aware of the rising tension between
external actors and institutional or professional expectations, the majority believe that
their research interests have not been negatively inluenced by such patterns of inluence and that institutional administrators continue to support basic academic freedoms.
Furthermore, despite the recognition by the majority of Canadian faculty that academic
research can be beneicial to broader societal issues, a similar majority indicated that
these societal issues should not be the driving force of academic research and that expectations of higher productivity levels threaten overall academic quality. When taken as a
whole, these responses appear to support the idea that academics are best served by selfregulation and that, to this point, self-regulation has for the most part been maintained
by the current coniguration of power in Canadian higher education institutions. So, while
pressures of accountability and targeted research funding may be operating to some extent, participant responses indicated relative comfort and autonomy within the current
arrangements for research activity.
While one can hypothesize as to the reason for this continued resistance to management by non-academic forces, speciically looking at the strong tradition of institutional
autonomy in the Canadian context, further study is required in order to understand how
this autonomy has been maintained in Canada while having been sacriiced in part or in
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whole in other jurisdictions, particularly the other Anglophone countries, as exempliied
in Slaughter and Leslie’s account of academic capitalism in Canada, the United States,
the UK, and Australia (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). Further, recent scholarship (Metcalfe,
2010) suggests that trends of academic capitalism are more prevalent in Canada than
previously articulated, and evidence of commercialization and its mechanisms encourages further research to explore how academic autonomy may be shifting (Grant & Drakich, 2010). In addition, the CAP responses require further examination along a number
of trajectories, particularly in terms of diferent institutional types (research-focused vs.
teaching-focused), disciplines, professional ranks, and gender. For instance, previous research from the Canadian CAP survey indicated only modest diferences in job satisfaction, workload, and other working conditions between junior professors and their more
senior peers (Jones et al., 2012), but it would be interesting to look at diferences in responses by university type, STEM ields versus liberal arts, etcetera.
In terms of working patterns, the CAP results indicate that Canadian full-time academics work far longer than the traditional notions of full-time work—wherein individuals might work 35–44 hours per work week—both when classes are in session and when
they are not, and this is particularly salient in terms of the time spent on research, with
faculty reporting an average 16 hours a week during teachings session and 28.5 during
non-teaching terms, compared to 19.6 hours of teaching when classes are in session and
only 5.4 hours per week when classes are not in session. As outlined in the section on
research, this commitment is echoed in the high level of productivity and dissemination
practices, particularly through conference presentations and article publications. Given
that the overall level of satisfaction for Canadian academics is quite high (Weinrib et al.,
2013), there is no reason to believe that these numbers are viewed as problematic; however, the CAP survey questionnaire ofered limited opportunities to analyze the relationship between particular work patterns and overall satisfaction levels.
The teaching experiences of faculty members at Canadian universities suggest that
faculty members are highly invested in their teaching and in their students’ learning,
through large commitments of time and energy in developing course materials, using
various instructional techniques, and communicating with students in oice hours and
through email. Part of this commitment may come from general job satisfaction in the
nature of their academic work; however, faculty members may be partly committed to
issues of teaching and learning due to the perceived need to spend more time than anticipated on teaching basic skills to students. While institutional clarity through explicit
regulatory mechanisms and load targets facilitates stability in undergraduate education,
the context of graduate education is much diferent for these faculty members. For most
faculty, the time spent teaching doctoral courses is minimal and doctoral class sizes are
small. Since just over half of respondents communicated that their institutions provide
adequate training for teaching improvements, there is a need to examine possible institutional diferences related to this commitment to improvement. Hence, an exploration of
how diferent institutions commit resources, time, and policies to teaching improvement
would be a fruitful area of future investigation.
Importantly, faculty members articulated a strong belief that their research reinforces
their teaching; hence, the interactions between the diferent components of academic life,
and the degree to which professors have a holistic orientation to their work, is an impor-
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tant area for future research. As Canada has been described as a “balanced system” with
regard to the missions of teaching and research (Shin, Arimoto, Cummings, & Teichler,
2014; Teichler, Arimoto, & Cummings, 2013), further comparison with other balanced
systems, such as those in the US, UK, and Australia, may be worthwhile, particularly as
the audit culture and regulatory mechanisms of these national systems are quite diferent
from those in the Canadian context.
In addition to future research contributions, the indings from this research can inform particular policies and institutional practices. The focus of research productivity
and autonomy in a context of increasing accountability and targeted funding suggests an
imperative for explicit and co-ordinated eforts within departments and school units to
ensure the sustainability of autonomy in research activity. Further, continued attention
upon the tremendous commitments to teaching and to student support might be enacted
diferently at diferent institutions, across disciplines, and within school units. Speciic
institutional policy attention could emphasize more clarity regarding teaching strategies
at the graduate level, as well as concentrated institutional commitments to continuous
pedagogical improvement throughout an academic career.
As mentioned above, the forces of accountability and managerialism have been very
active in trying to shape institutional research agendas and priorities. The data from the
CAP survey in Canada, however, revealed important nuances to these seemingly “global”
trends. Faculty unionization may be playing an important role in protecting faculty from
external pressures and managerial practices. Many faculty respondents to the CAP study
also noted that university administrators strongly support academic freedom, and this
support may limit the adoption of certain types of managerial and accountability practices
in Canada compared with in some other jurisdictions. Indeed, it may be that the relative
autonomy of Canadian universities and individual faculty, when compared to international peer institutions and colleagues, has beneited the Canadian higher education sector.
The CAP study provides important indings on the perceptions of Canadian university
faculty regarding research and teaching. These indings suggest that Canadian faculty
work hard, and that most maintain a balance between teaching and research activities.
Faculty devote considerable attention to undergraduate education, and they believe that
their research activities contribute to their teaching. While they are clearly aware of, and
concerned by, the potential pressures associated with directed research funding and commercialization, most believe that they still have high levels of freedom to determine their
own programs of research.
Note
1.
A detailed description of the design and method of the international CAP surveys can
be found in earlier publications (see Locke & Tiechler, 2007).
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Contact Information
Bryan Gopaul
Warner School of Education and Human Development
University of Rochester
[email protected]
Bryan Gopaul is an assistant professor of educational leadership in the Warner School of
Education and Human Development, at the University of Rochester. His research focuses
on doctoral education, the pipeline to the professoriate, and international higher education reform.
CJHE / RCES Volume 46, No. 2, 2016
The Academic Profession in Canada /
B. Gopaul, G. A. Jones, J. Weinrib, A. Metcalfe, D. Fisher, Y. Gingras, & K. Rubenson
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Glen A. Jones is the Ontario Research Chair in Postsecondary Education Policy and Measurement and Interim Dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto. He is the author of more than 100 publications on higher education in
Canada, including studies of university governance, systems, policy, and academic work.
His most recent book (with Ian Austin) is Governance of Higher Education: Global Perspectives, Theories and Practice (Routledge, 2015). Information on his current projects
can be found at www.glenjones.ca.
Julian Weinrib, PhD, is a special projects oicer in the Oice of the Vice-President and
Provost at the University of Toronto. His main research interests are post-secondary education system design, the academic profession, globalization of higher education, and the
scholarship of teaching and learning.
Amy Metcalfe is an associate professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia.
Donald Fisher is Acting-Principal of Green College and an emeritus professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research on
philanthropy, university education, the social sciences, and academic–industry relations
is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Recent
publications include a co-edited volume with William Locke and William K. Cummings,
Changing Governance and Management in Higher Education: The Perspectives of the
Academy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), and a co-edited volume with Kjell Rubenson,
Theresa Shanahan, and Claude Trottier, The Development of Postsecondary Systems
in Canada: A Comparison between British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, 1980–2010
(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014).
Yves Gingras is professor in the History Department and Canada Research Chair in the
History and Sociology of Science at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His research
focuses on the transformation of universities and the dynamic of scientiic disciplines. His
most recent books are Sociologie des sciences (Paris: Presses universitaires de France,
2012) and Les derives de l’évaluation de la recherche. Du bon usage de la bibliométrie
(Paris: Raisons d’agir, 2013). He is also the editor of Controverses: accords et désaccords
en sciences humaines et sociales (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2014) .
Kjell Rubenson is an emeritus profesor at the University of British Columbia. His research deals with adult education and post-secondary education and the labour market.
CJHE / RCES Volume 46, No. 2, 2016