Juggling hats: academic roles, identity work and new degree apprenticeships

This study considers academic identity and the performance of identity work in the context of the design and delivery of new degree apprenticeships. Recent UK Policies have driven many changes in UK higher education, including the rapid development of new awards combining an apprenticeship with a full bachelor's or master's degree. Delivery requires university partnerships with industry, supported by significant government funding-and targets. Semi-structured in-depth interviews identified the pressures on 30 participants to retain academic identity in managing relationships with a range of different partners as shown in a generative model of academic identity work. Results show the ambiguities and uncertainties embedded in supporting academic identity, with stress caused by managerial approaches and difficulties in maintaining the identity of 'a proper academic' with implications for university management. Introduction This article explores how rapid changes in UK higher education policy and systems affect academic identity. Specifically, the recent development of apprenticeships at degree level is discussed as a context to consider how academics form and support identity, during the design and delivery of these new workplace integrated degrees. These awards are part of the changes in the academic landscape described by Degn (2015, 1179) which put pressures put on academic identities through the rise of "entrepreneurialism, accountability and what is increasingly known in academia as new managerialism" (Deem et al, 2007). The higher education system in the UK has been subject to many overlapping policy initiatives in the last 5 years, changing curriculum, research and knowledge exchange assessments, altering funding models and the ability to recruit foreign students (Universities UK, 2018). This paper is important in considering how the individual academic is impacted, in their efforts to implement changing institutional imperatives