BEING WORKAHOLIC IN THE UNIVERSITY. TEACHER, RESEARCHER OR MANAGER?
Magdalena Iorga
Ph.D. Lecturer, „Gh.Asachi” Technical University of Jassy, and postdoc fellow, Center for Health Policy and Ethics, „Gr.T.Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Jassy, Romania
e-mail: magdaiorga@yahoo.com
AGATHOS, Volume 2, Issue 2 (3): 129-138
© www.agathos-international-review.com CC BY NC 2011
Abstract: Belonging to the university guild supposes the fact of recognizing of a high scientific level and peculiar relationship skills. To be a teacher in the contemporary Romanian university is a real challenge. Being overwhelmed by frequent and not always wise changes as regards the academic demands, teachers have developed abilities to continuously adapting to the new contexts. Instead of focusing to the necessary improvement of their lectures, they had to orient themselves towards the increase of the quantity of various courses and towards the manifestation first of all as project managers and researchers. So, teachers turned from the status of mentors for the students toward the position of a kind of “workaholics” under the threatening slogan: “publish or perish”. In the Romanian university of nowadays, teacher became more and more a walker facing a crossing point where a difficult choice must be made, seeing that three ways are to be followed at the same time: the didactic, the research and the management activities.
Keywords: teacher, university, workaholic, researcher, manager
The new generation of teachers is oriented towards personal interests rather than to the institutional or teaching ones. The evolution of higher education - here we especially refer to the situation in nowadays Romanian university - leads to business and academic research rather than to the development of the academic staff. This change of orientation must be analysed from the teachers’ perspective, by considering their expectations.
The assessment of the academic staff does not consider students’ final results, the number of students attending the course or the originality and improvement of the lectures through partnerships (for instance, the updating of theoretical data, according to the labour market requests and professionalisation). Teachers are valuated according to their research activity, the number of grants, the conferences participation and the quality of journals or reviews where they publish their work, by priority. Just a few criteria refer to the didactic activities, while research and self-improvement are what really counts when it comes to assessments and professional evolution.
This is the reason for which a major concern became – as Clark Kerr states in his work1, for example - the fact that the academic activity is based rather on a personal interest than on an institutional one. Thus we can consider to be normally that, being pushed by norms of the institution, teacher is forced to orient his activities towards his personal objectives (research and self-improvement) rather than the teaching occupation. Implicitly, the university teacher’s route will follow the accumulation of project participations (with a positive impact on personal and institutional finances) and research hours with the view of publishing articles (personal interest in order to reach a higher position); while didactic activities, inherent to this profession, merely come on third position in classification.
We also add the possibility of the result of individual research „to be externally oriented, therefore not in the benefit of the university that hired the respective teacher – this is a frequent situation in the faculties where the research products are sought by industry or certain research institutions. Moreover, State’s financial support is constantly being reduced, which causes this reorientation and indebtedness to other projects and economic or industrial partnerships”2. Thus, a conflict appears between the learning of work ethics and the university corporate ethics.
An interesting approach of the academic autonomy might reveal some of its positive aspects, but also its difficulties, traps and weaknesses, because “teachers share their own convictions and political views, without previously warning the audience about it”. The academic lecture should promote facts correctly and impartially, and also “competing systems and alternatives”3, in order to allow students to freely valuate, to judge facts by themselves. Seen as one of the most important manipulation tools, the education can influence moral judgment by using up-to-date political and social guidelines.
Assessing University Teachers
In his article about the migration of Romanian researchers, Răzvan Florian (2004) draws the attention upon the fact that insignificant studies are being published in improvised reviews, which have been created overnight for researchers and university teachers to be able to publish their work, which is mandatory in their profession. The present assessment of the publications does not follow proficiency standards; instance, a number of 10 points is given if the study has been published within a Romanian university and 30 for an ISI-indexed review. The difference between these options is huge, from a research criteria point of view as well as duration of the editing process. These are the author’s suggestions4:
• the valuation of scientific activities to be performed on a strict basis of scientific excellence, as it is internationally done (and implicitly, to no longer recognize publications in Romanian reviews that are not indexed in international databases) and by ensuring the transparency of the research financing process;
• the improvement of financing in research, by rising the GDP percentage allocated from the state budget to research according to the minimum 0,8% value and the permanent government promise to raise it to 1%.
This is what the author emphasizes, when he is analysing the ways teachers must handle the different academic demands (didactic, research-connected, but also managerial ones), proving that Romanians are always ingeniously: When teachers were required to publish in scientific reviews abroad, some turned to obscure publications in the world, hosting not necessary worth articles. Thus, we can expect that, when researchers are awarded for their activities abroad, some of them orient themselves towards scholarships in elsewhere spaces, and then they receive incentives returning home. The author claims that a scientific finding should be considered original only when it crosses the country’s boundaries. “a publication made in an international review confirms the scientific value of the respective researcher and that serves Romania’s interest of having an elite group of scientists, able of triggering results which lead to innovative technological applications with a high economic impact, so that the investment made in research be recovered” (Ibidem).
But what is the purpose of research in contemporary Romania? According to Liviu Jalbă5, there are three possible answers to that:
• research for stimulating production (the valuation is based on the criteria of the final product quality and on its popularity on the market);
• research to attract young people in this activity (by building a strategy to draw young people to research fields and by focusing on the human resource rather than on the final product);
• research to improve the country’s image (the purpose being that of organizing and attending conferences, international wokshops and also scoring highly).
The quest of the Romanian academic research seems to find a solution in the organization of research centers within the higher education institutions; the process happens in the world’s most important universities. We shall see whether this reorientation of research, from university teachers to researchers, will bring certain relaxation in the timetable of university teachers and also in the assessment criteria (as they include several aspects of the mandatory research activity). Thus, they might orient themselves mainly toward teaching.
Promoting University Teachers
According to Lisbon Declaration, The European Union was supposed to reach, by 2010, the status of the most advanced society of knowledge and also the most advanced economy, where education and research become the new foundations of society.
Following this direction, universities, which are fundamental units, simultaneously integrating advanced research projects and education, become important agents in promoting a knowledge-based society and economy. “Consequently, the academic promotion appears as a fundamental mechanism which can contribute to reaching the objective of creating a knowledge-based society and economy. Briefly, the academic promotion through research is a condition of the modern university, adapted to the dynamics of the social context where it runs its activity”6.
In great European universities, but not exclusively, the promotion of teaching assistants is made according to four criteria:
• research activity
• didactic performance
• prestige
• management experience (the latter counting for higher academic degrees).
Research activity is valuated, as shown above, through publications in international reviews or by concluding research with a patent or a prototype registration. In this case, research is combined with economy. In most universities, these findings are not identified with the researchers’ activity, but rather with socio-economic finality of the results’ dissemination.
Unlike what is happening in Romanian universities, European institutions do not take research grants into account when it comes to promotion criteria. As Daniel David asserts, they are rather relevant in private universities or maybe they can count when there are several candidates.
The indicators of the didactic activity are:
• self-assessment
• peer review
• student valuation
• quality and novelty of teaching
• quality of the examination process
• the amount of time allotted to tutoring students
• students’ performance (Ibidem).
The prestige implies leadership, which means that the university teacher should be part of an editorial committee, direct a research unit or receive relevant prizes, among others.
The administrative activity refers to the managerial experience of the teacher in coordinating departments, deanship, or PhD students’ research activities. The new approach to management, which used to seek a professor able to handle everything, starts to alter. According to Daniel David, “we must notice that this criterion is declining, seeing that the leading positions in universities do no longer fit the Humboldtian model, but rather focuses on an entrepreneurship pattern. While the Humboldtian model implies, for instance, that the head of department often has the most relevant scientific career, the entrepreneurship model aims that a management position has to be occupied by competent managers who can often lack a scientific career” (Ibidem).
In nowadays Romania, the academic promotion criteria are open to discussions. It is not clearly, for instance, who can start the academic promotion process. More often, the proposal comes from the Chief department, but it can also be made by the Dean. Nonetheless, there might be some other ways too, such as the self-proposal.
There are discussions regarding the application of the academic criteria, looking for establishing good practices in their implementation. For example, the above mentioned author stresses some points:
• The university’s research activity is currently estimated through its scientific articles, published in prestigious reviews that are part of the “main information flux”; we are talking about ISI-indexed reviews or the IDB (which stands for International Databases, whereas ISI stands for Institute for Scientific Information). A mentioned case refers to the amusing situation where the Executive Minister published in the White Charta of University Research the fact that “Spiru Haret” University turned out to have the highest number of ISI publications out of all Romanian universities, where they had erroneously included local reviews.
• There are not objective assessments on behalf of students as concerns the didactic activities; the valuation is not made by judging the evolution of alumni or present students (even this is a valid practice in the pre-university system); there are remarkable differences between universities and the proficiency standards. Textbooks and lab guides, which at some universities are considered didactic tools, often are included in the chapter of scientific contributions.
• Teacher’s prestige is defined according to his / her leading position, through the reached professional position or through received prizes and distinctions. Although this is wide internationally accepted, these criteria do not coincide with the Romanian university practice. The author writes about a case, which is not singular, of distinctions awarded for publications in important Romanian reviews, but which had not been acknowledged on an international scale, due to the lack of sufficient research. Thus, the promotion of elites has been based on false premises. It is also claimed that, by analysing the prizes awarded in Social Sciences by the CNCSIS, we easily conclude that those awarded with such distinctions, for supposed significant contributions to national knowledge, are practically invisible in the profile reviews from abroad.
• Managerial experience is a special situation within Romanian higher-education institutions. As we have already and repeatedly emphasized, the teacher is forced to develop multiple activities, which also differ considerably among themselves. Teacher must go on top of assumed managerial tasks, besides those of research, teaching, PhD advising and active membership in various commissions and committees. This type of situation may (and often it does) generate conflicts of interests and a problematic administrative activity. The solution stands in separating the professional and scientific activity from the administrative one, according to the entrepreneurial model. (Ibidem)
An interesting point of view belongs to Monica Heintz who sustains that “the heterogeneity of work-related values in Western countries is currently just as great as it used to be and it differs from country to country; the work ethics depends on the historical period that we refer to, on social class and on occupation”7. A relevant example is the coining of the term “workaholic”, designating a person who works excessively, for various reasons (focus on career, absurd requirements of the workplace and especially of one’s self-imposed working style, or the attempt to “drown” one’s frustrations by means of work). Heintz’ opinion is that the Romanian people’s current vision upon work would be the following: “Romanians have access to fragmentary images of the diversity of work-related values and practices, that reaches Romania through mass media, through foreign consultants and through occasional translations of Benjamin Franklin, through new books on how to manage one’s own life, through friends who share their Western experiences and through Romanian emigrants to the West. Although the images contained by suggested kaleidoscope are slightly obsolete, they strike Romanian people as new. Thus, Romanians express their admiration for the proof of strenuous work, strict work division at the level of companies and of society, the absence of bribery and ‘guiles’, the apparent kindliness, but actually fierce hierarchy within companies, and they consider these features to be ideals which are not applied in Romania (…). The capitalist work ethics (the Western style) means ‘intensive work’, to most of the interviewed people; ‘well done work’, to a limited number of people; ‘intelligent organisation and flawless workforce management’, to a so- called intellectual minority”. The author detects policies based on the Western paradigm, which has been applied by part of the intellectual class starting from 1997; however, in the absence of swift positive results, intellectuals have identified the population’s “mentality” as guilty of the failure of economic reforms. Thus, “the Romanian mentality” – that is, the notion that “Romanians do not work hard enough” – has turned into the primary agent responsible for the passivity and lack of organisation of the country (Heintz, 16).
Being workaholic was considered to be a strong point for an employee, appreciated and hunted by companies. In Workaholics: Living with them, working with them (1985), Marilyn Machlowitz sustains that this lifestyle is a virtue and not a vice. The most important thing is that the workaholics are persons who like to do what they are doing. But it is also important to make the difference between “hard-work” and “workaholism”. The “hard-workers” are accomplishing their jobs with specific goals and then they are enjoying free time they get. But the workaholism is an “addictive behavior”, a “work addiction” that is supposed to be rewarded by the managers, demonstrating negative effects upon the person’s life.
American employees spend an average of 44 hours per week working, an increase of 3.5 hours since 1977 - according to a study8 made in 1998 by the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit research group in New York. The situation is compared with the average of 39 hours per week in France, 40 hours in Germany, and 43 hours in the United Kingdom. In the same study, one of three Americans said that they get home their work once a week at least, a 10 percent increase over the past 20 years. Americans take less vacation and holiday time than workers in almost every other developed country - 19 days per year comparing with 42 days in Germany.
Workaholism is a major problem in many developed countries in the world, but cultural differences must be taken into consideration: too many hours per week in U.S; the employees do not take their free days in Japanese companies; special rules for holidays in European Union. The work style is strongly influenced by cultural and historical points of view. Some companies from Europe put into practice “take it or leave it” days-off, meanwhile studies run in Japan reveal a high suicide rate for very young persons who are depressed for not being “number one” in the class.
There is a sort of belief that workaholism is the present cocaine; it is the “problem without a name”. It is time for our profession to stop relegating workaholism to pop psychology bookshelves and to seriously look into this problem. It is time to engage research that will bring results with “clinical reports that will no longer perpetuate workaholism’s masquerade as the best dressed addiction”9, considers Bryan E.Robinson. He categorizes workaholics in four types: relentless workaholics, bulimic workaholics, attention-deficit workaholics and savoring workaholics.
The teaching occupation comes with its own disadvantages, especially on the academic level. In contrast with other occupations the “work object” mostly remains at the workplace, the didactic practice is continuously brought home. Ideas on a topic cannot be abandoned when the teacher is leaving the office or at the end of the program in the institution. In most cases, teachers carry home tests to be graded, where they also prepare or improve their lesson plans, or even elaborate additional teaching materials.
In the university, the situation becomes even more complicated. The work of a university teacher implies not only teaching activities, but also research, writing of scientific articles, internal or external research projects, documentation for professional purposes, preparation of courses and seminars, and for the beginners, the PhD individual research activities. The university teachers also have the obligation to take part in conferences or extracurricular projects. No less, they are supervising the students’ work, whether we talk about tutorials or the teaching process itself.
In the ordinary world, university guild membership means recognition of a high scientific level and interpersonal skills. In the real world of last decades, to be professor in contemporary Romania is a real challenge. Frequent changes of demands, sometimes contradictory, for the academic work have prompted teachers to develop exceptional adaptation skills. Somehow, teachers changed themselves from mentors for their students to project managers or researchers, by priority, experiencing the situation of workaholics who are marked by the slogan: “publish or perish”. They really need to find the balance between the three paths in which they have to perform: teaching, research and management.
Nowadays, the duties that the university teacher must accomplish and the obligation to combine, commercially speaking, “3 in 1” jobs: teaching-research-management remain under the threats of the workaholism, which eventually is a form of addiction.
References:
Cucoş, Constantin (1996). Pedagogie. Jassy: Polirom.
David, Daniel (2006). Procedurile de promovare academică în România şi rolul cercetării în cadrul acestui proces, “Revista AdAstra”, 5 (1).
Florian, Răzvan (2004). Migraţia cercetătorilor români, “Revista AdAstra”, 3 (2).
Heintz, Monica (2005). Etica muncii la românii de azi. Bucharest: Curtea Veche Publishing.
Iorga, Magdalena (2011). Etica universitară. Perspectivă psihosociologică. Jassy: Editura Timpul.
Jalbă, Liviu (2004). A vorbi despre cercetare în România este ca şi cum ai predica în deşert, “Revista AdAstra”, 3 (2).
Kerr, Clark (1994). Knowledge Ethics and the New Generation Culture – Includes Related Articles and Bibliography – Cover Story, „Change”, Jan-Febr.
Robinson, Bryan.E. (1998). Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them. New York: New York University Press.
1 Clark Kerr (1994) Knowledge Ethics and the New Generation Culture – Includes Related Articles and Bibliography – Cover Story, „Change”, Jan-Febr.
2 Magdalena Iorga (2011). Etica universitară. Perspectivă psihosociologică. Jassy: Editura Timpul, p.119.
3 Constantin Cucoş (1996). Pedagogie. Jassy: Polirom, p.49.
4 Răzvan Florian (2004). Migraţia cercetătorilor români, “Revista AdAstra”, 3 (2).
5 Liviu Jalbă (2004). A vorbi despre cercetare în România este ca şi cum ai predica în deşert, “Revista AdAstra”, 3 (2).
6 Daniel David (2006). Procedurile de promovare academică în România şi rolul cercetării în cadrul acestui proces, “Revista AdAstra”, 5 (1).
7 Monica Heintz (2005). Etica muncii la românii de azi. Bucharest: Curtea Veche Publishing, p.10.
8 http://familiesandwork.org/site/work/projects/past.html
9 Bryan E Robinson (1998). Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them. New York: New York University Press, p.380.