Doing Academic Careers Differently:Portraits of Academic Life:The General Academic

This chapter ventures on what we have decided to call the general academic. It tells stories to shine non-typical academics, who, in their desire to enhance their ability to disseminate knowledge, show that being different is not all bad in the academic world. The current structure of Higher Education, which runs on the ‘publish or perish’ mantra, promotes academics who publish multiple articles in a specialised area of research as more important while pushing the general academic, those not conforming to this familiar root low in the pecking order. There has been an observation where several prestigious universities hire early career academics to teaching-only posts, but in turn, these academics are conditioned to view this as a temporary path, and that they need to shift to research based contracts to avoid becoming unsuccessful academics. However, as universities strive to improve teaching and learning experiences, does this view remain a reality? Does focusing on teaching ultimately lead to an unsuccessful academic career? This chapter explores this question and demonstrates that love and passion for impact teaching and student engagement offer the versatile general academic hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel