Getting Promoted in Academia: Sunway Shorts, #1

By Graeme Wilkinson

Practical Career Guidance for Ambitious Academics and Aspiring Leaders in Higher Education

This short guide to career development for academics provides sensible and practical advice on how to rise to the top in the highly competitive world of higher education. Drawing on the author's wealth of experience in international universities, the book is packed with tactics and strategies for building a successful academic career and growing a strong personal brand as a leading and highly respected academic.

Whether your goal is to be a top professor, academic manager, or university leader, you will find valuable tips in this book that are scarcely written down. This book is essential reading for every academic who wants a high-flying career. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunway University Press
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9789675492204

Graeme Wilkinson

GRAEME WILKINSON is Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Distinguished Professor and the former Vice-Chancellor of Sunway University, Malaysia. He held senior management roles in three UK universities before moving to Sunway, and has worked in management consulting, academia, and international government research. He is a graduate of Imperial College London and Oxford University.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Sunway University Sdn Bhd

Published by Sunway University Press

An imprint of Sunway University Sdn Bhd

No. 5, Jalan Universiti

Bandar Sunway

47500 Selangor Darul Ehsan

Malaysia

press.sunway.edu.my

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, now known or hereafter invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

eISBN 978-967-5492-20-4

Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Wilkinson, Graeme

Getting Promoted in Academia : Practical Career Guidance for Ambitious Academics and Aspiring Leaders in Higher Education / Graeme Wilkinson.

Mode of access: Internet

eISBN 978-967-5492-20-4

1. Career development.

2. College teachers—Promotions.

3. Electronic books.

I. Title.

650.14

Edited by Sarah Loh

Designed and typeset by Rachel Goh

Cover image: Lera Efremova/Shutterstock.com

Image used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Preface

This book is aimed at ambitious academics who want to build successful and enjoyable careers in universities and other higher education institutions. Higher education has become one of the major global industries of the 21st century, which is vitally important for the future of mankind. This is an industry that generates knowledge, documents it, exploits it, and passes it on to future generations. In so doing it leads to global economic and social progress, and its core staff of educators and researchers—the academics—therefore contribute to the development of civilisation.

Being an academic is not an easy job, but it can be very rewarding and uplifting. Engaging with eager open minds and seeing the transformation in students as they learn from you is indeed very gratifying, as is the discovery of new knowledge or gaining new insights into intractable problems or issues facing mankind through research. Universities are places to enjoy working in; particularly if you can build a solid career in them and see personal development and progress in terms of status, income, and the level of respect and authority you command.

However, universities are also intensely competitive and rapidly changing. Most higher education institutions will employ between several hundred and several thousand academics, depending on their size, and the total number of academics worldwide is of the order of several millions, though the precise number is difficult to determine¹. Most academics are high achievers and ambitious, therefore getting a promotion in the face of stiff competition is not at all easy.

This book looks at what it takes to get promoted in academia and how academics should manage themselves and their activities, and optimise their efforts to maximise their likelihood of success in career development. The book will be of most benefit to those in the early part of their academic careers, though mid-career academics should also find it useful, especially if contemplating a promotional move into an academic management role.

The content of the book draws on my personal experience as an academic, academic manager, and ultimately institutional leader, in different parts of the world. This includes experience in both public and private, and research-intensive and teaching-focused institutions. I have seen many good academics get promoted, but also many others, probably equally talented and diligent, fail to get promotions that they were hoping for. I learned some important lessons from observing this, which I have tried to document here. I hope that this book will enable others to learn from these experiences and reach their own full potential in academia.

My experiences have included reviewing many applications or cases for promotion and chairing many promotion interview panels over the years. It has been pleasing to see many hard-working and dedicated academics gain the promotions that they deserved, and also to see others, initially turned down for promotion, to heed good advice and go on to achieve it later. Ultimately a university leader wants to see all of his or her academic staff achieve their full career potential and in so doing contribute to the success of their institution.

I should make it clear at the outset that this book represents my personal views and nothing contained herein represents an official view or policy of any institution I am or have been associated with. I am sure that not everyone will agree with all of these views or my perspective on what makes an academic successful, but academia is a profession in which diversity of views is seen as a strength and from which everyone ultimately learns.

It is also important to recognise that every individual case for promotion has to be judged by an institution on a wide range of measures and may involve a competition between candidates with varying strengths. There can never be any guarantee that following the advice in this book will result in an academic promotion. With that caveat, I trust that what follows will be of value to the many highly committed and extremely hard-working academics throughout the world.

I also hope that the guidance in this book will be helpful indirectly to higher education institutions. If their academics know how to succeed and build their careers, they are more likely to engage in modes of behaviour that are helpful to their employers. Staff who actively engage in their own career development also contribute more effectively to the development of their institutions. It thus becomes a win-win situation for both academics and universities.

––––––––

Graeme Wilkinson

Centre for Higher Education Research &

Vice-Chancellor’s Office

Sunway University

Chapter 1: Introduction

The Career of an Academic

Becoming an academic in a university or a similar higher education institution is a good career choice. You are not likely to get rich nor will you be poor. Rather, you should be able to live a reasonably comfortable lifestyle and operate within a vibrant intellectual atmosphere where new ideas are born, discussed, and disseminated. You will also have a lot more control over what you do, and how you do it, day by day than employees in many other professions.

That is not to say that being an academic is for lazy people, quite the contrary. You may at times be very stretched managing a demanding workload of teaching and assessing students, as well as keeping up with the latest thinking in your discipline and making progress with your research.

Apart from the freedom to choose how you teach and what you research, you will find yourself immersed in an environment of extremely bright people—fellow academics and students alike. You are likely to find it stimulating, though on occasions, frustrating due to the quality-related government-driven bureaucracy that now pervades universities in many countries and that keeps you from doing the things you enjoy most—the teaching and the research.

Universities are good places to build a career because the demand for higher education is continuing to grow globally. Despite new technological advances that could have a significant impact on the way higher education is delivered, growth in academic jobs is likely to continue at least for the foreseeable future. The growth in global higher education is primarily because most people (particularly the young, but increasingly the middle-aged and beyond) now recognise that to be successful in the 21st century and contribute as professionals in a globalised fast-shifting knowledge-based economy, it is necessary to be educated to a high level and even re-educated more than once. They also appreciate the need to develop professional skills and essential life skills through a university education to be able to cope with several changes in career with increasing longevity.

There are now over 28,000 universities in the world; a number which grows by approximately 6% a year². The number of universities in some highly developed countries has stabilised, but in many newly industrialised countries and most developing countries, the number of universities continues to increase and those that already exist continue to expand as the demand for higher education qualifications continues to grow. Reportedly, China opens new universities at the rate of almost one per week³. Some countries, however, are exceptions to this general pattern of growth. In a few countries, particularly in Asia, the falling fertility rate has recently led to a decrease in the young adult population and this trend is expected to continue in the next decade⁴.

Despite this, the overall population of students in universities grows worldwide year on year, and good academics available to teach them are in short supply. What this means is that academics can be reasonably sure of long-term employment if they adapt to changes in teaching practices, keep themselves at the forefront of their disciplines, and are prepared to be mobile between institutions; even internationally as this can potentially open up a lot more career opportunities.

Whether you want to be mobile and move between institutions, or remain firmly in your current institution, it is likely that you will want to advance in your career. Universities normally have a hierarchical academic grade structure (see Table 1) and most academics will wish to move up the grades as time goes by and their aspiration level increases.

Table 1: Typical hierarchical grades for academics. Titles vary by institution as do their relative positions in the hierarchy.

A typical career in academia usually starts with a post at the entry/junior grade as a research assistant or teaching assistant. These are often posts for temporary researchers employed to undertake fixed-term research projects and receive some teaching experience on the side. This is a typical way in, but not always. Academics aiming at a long-term career will aspire to get into a more permanent role with an established post linked to the core business of teaching and/or research.

The concept of permanence in academia is not, however, what it used to be in many countries. The idea of long-term tenured academic posts, with permanence and a right to challenge conventional wisdom on any topic, is now something which is tending to disappear as institutions grapple with rapidly changing funding contexts, as well as rapid changes in society and the way in which higher education is being delivered. Increasingly, institutions seek to avoid tying themselves down with permanently engaged staff at any level.

––––––––

Career Grades

The base grade for an academic with full responsibilities in teaching and/or research is typically the post of Assistant Professor, Lecturer, or Teaching Fellow; other titles may apply depending on the country and type of institution. Above that there will be one or more mid-level grades with titles such as Associate Professor, Senior or Principal Lecturer, or Reader, depending again on the country and type of institution you are in.

Above these intermediate grades will be the senior grade of Full Professor or equivalent, which is a fairly universally adopted title. It is usually the ultimate career grade to which most ambitious academics would aspire. In some institutions, there may be an even higher grade reserved for particularly outstanding individuals, which might be known as Senior Professor or Distinguished Professor. These are normally relatively rare appointments and only apply to exceptional individuals who have achieved significant distinction in their respective fields.

Whatever your level of aspiration, I am sure that you are unlikely to want to stay at the entry or base grades. In some institutions, you may never be offered a long-term post at such grades and obtaining a promotion may be essential to gain tenure or permanence.

Furthermore, if you are in one of the mid-level grades and ambitious, you are likely to aim to become a full professor at some point in the future. You