On being an academic: a study of lived experience

© 2003 Dr. Andrew David Leslie ScownTo be an academic and work in an Australian university at the beginning of the twenty-first century is to be caught in a web of change, contradiction and turmoil. Amidst this tumult, academics are experiencing increased pressure to maintain high levels of performance, and university life is expected to continue as normal. However, to describe what normal means for higher education today (indeed for any age) would be to answer a great vexed question. As Australia awaits the blueprint for reform of higher education that is to be released with the May 2003 budget there is much hope that things in the future will be different, that the pressures on the higher education system will lessen, and that academics will be able to focus on the core elements of being an academic. Regardless of the outcome of this or any reform there is inevitability that life for the academic will continue to follow paths that are coloured by traditional understandings of what constitutes the life and work of the academic. Admittedly, the time and place where academics live and enact their academic work will influence the lived experience of each academic thus rendering it extremely difficult if not impossible to offer a simple or unified description of what it is to experience life as an academic. However, understanding the meaning of such experiences is important to shaping the future directions in academic life. One vehicle to achieve this understanding is through researching lived experience. This study seeks to uncover the points of unity that academics experience in their daily work, to identify the similarities and differences amongst academics as they face the challenge of working in a university at this period of time, and to provide academics with the voice to define and describe what rests at the core of their professional being. Ultimately, this study provides the opportunity for academics to comment on the uniqueness of their lived experience of academic life and to move towards defining the essential nature of being an academic. This study is located in a large, established university in a metropolitan capital in Australia. Academics from varying disciplines and at different levels of academic appointment participated in the interviews for the study conducted in the closing years of the twentieth century. Fifteen academics were interviewed on a bimestrial basis over a sustained period of time (over two years for most participants) and three academic managers from the university chancellery participated in a single interview. The focus of each of these interviews was to describe the lived experience of being an academic and to determine the meaning of what it is to be an academic in today's world. The theoretical framework for structuring this study is that of hermeneutic phenomenology and the guiding objectives for the study were to identify meaning in the lived experience of being an academic and to understand how being an academic is experienced today. The study draws heavily on the existing knowledge of higher education and academic life. The literature review addresses the phenomena influencing higher education and examines the responses of higher education to accommodate such globalising trends. Policy decisions in Australia that have shaped higher education and influenced the direction of academic life and work are also explored in this review. Clear from this review is that the extant body of knowledge reports strongly and offers significant commentary on the influences shaping academic life. What is missing in this body of knowledge is clarification of the meaning of what it is to be an academic living and working in today's world. Accordingly, in identifying the essential elements of what is required for an academic to be an academic, this study attempts to bridge this gap in the literature by presenting and re-presenting that matter that constitutes the phenomenon of being an academic. The analysis of data and findings of this research utilise strongly the voices of the participants in this study. The integrative themes of the Boyer scholarships (1990) have been employed to present the elements identified as essential to the phenomenon of being an academic. A phenomenological narrative is included to capture the lived experience of the participants in the study and to describe the phenomenon of being an academic. The study concludes with an overview of the significant outcomes of the study presented as challenges to the key stakeholders influencing academic life and also includes suggestions for further research