The Shifting Balance of Academic Systems: National, Regional, Global?

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the evolving roles, identities, and activities of the academic profession within the context of a knowledge-based society. It focuses on how global, regional and national dynamics shape academic careers, job satisfaction, and engagement with broader societal goals. Drawing on data from the Academic Profession in the Knowledge-based Society (APIKS) project, this volume offers a comparative analysis of academic professionals across diverse regions, including Asia, Europe, North America, and Latin America. Through exploring themes such as academics’ societal engagement, job satisfaction, demographic shifts, and the emergence of non-tenure track roles, the book presents a nuanced understanding of the pressures and opportunities faced by academics today.

This work integrates a range of methodological approaches, from large-scale quantitative analyses to regional case studies, to reveal how different national and institutional contexts influence the academic profession. It provides valuable insights for policymakers, institutional leaders, and researchers seeking to understand and navigate the complexities of higher education in a rapidly changing global environment. By highlighting both commonalities and differences in how academics across regions adapt to the demands of a knowledge-based society, this book offers new findings and points towards future research directions related to the comparative international study of the academic profession.

Futao Huang is Professor at the Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan. Before coming to Japan in 1999, he taught and conducted research at several Chinese universities. His major research fields include the  academic profession, university curriculum development, the internationalization of higher education, and higher education in East Asia. Since the late 1990s, he has published extensively in Chinese, English and Japanese languages in numerous international peer-reviewed journals. His major publications include Teaching and Research in the Knowledge-Based Society: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (2022), International Faculty in Asia: In Comparative Global Perspective (2021), and The Internationalization of the Academy: Changes, Realities and Prospects (2014).

Glen A. Jones is Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, and former dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the University of Toronto, Canada. An internationally recognized scholar in the field of higher education, Jones is a prolific contributor to the Canadian and international literature on higher education and a frequent public speaker and commentator on higher education issues. He has received numerous awards for his research and contributions to higher education scholarship, including an honorary degree. Prof. Jones teaches in the higher education program, and his research interests focus on academic work, governance, and higher education policy. Main publications include University Governance, Management and the Academic Profession  (2025), Governance of Higher Education: Global Perspectives, Theories and Practices (2nd edition - 2024), The Role of Governing Boards in Canadian Higher Education: Sociological Perspectives on the Form and Functioning of Boards (2024), and Internationalization and the Academic Profession: Comparative Perspectives (2023).

Ulrich Teichler has been research associate of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research in Berlin, Germany, from 1965 to 1978, while also being awarded the Diploma in sociology and the Dr. phil. in educational sociology. From 1978 to 2013, he has been Professor and for many years director at the International Centre for Higher Education Research of the University of Kassel, Germany. His approximately 1,500 publications – mostly in the German and English languages with translations into almost 20 other languages - address primarily the relationships between higher education and the world of work, higher education systems in comparative perspective, international mobility and cooperation in higher education, the academic profession as well as the state of research on higher education. Main publications include Higher Education Research – What Else? The Story of a Lifetime (2022), Higher Education Research, What Else? Looking Back at a Researcher’ Life (2020), and The Future of the Post-Massified University at the Crossroads: Restructuring Systems and Functions (2014).