The Global Future of Higher Education and the Academic Profession focuses on the all-important emerging BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) nations by analyzing the academic profession and particularly salaries and contracts. The professoriate is key to the success of any academic system, and this is the first book to carefully analyze academic systems and the academic profession. The academic profession must be adequately paid, and appointments to academic jobs must be based on merit and provide an effective career path for the 'best and brightest' to be attracted to the profession. The BRICs show a variety of approaches to academic careers--and none provide globally competitive salaries. China and Russia, in particular, pay academics poorly. Using purchasing power parity, this book is able to accurately compare the actual purchasing power of the academic profession. The book also analyzes how professors are appointed and promoted. While the BRICs may be emerging global economic powers, their academic systems still face significant challenges.

The academic profession faces new challenges everywhere. The pressures of mass higher education, accountability, fiscal constraints, distance education and the new technologies, and changing attitudes concerning academic work have combined to place unprecedented strains on the professoriate. This book brings together some of the best analysts of the academic profession in a wide ranging comparative analysis of the changing academic workplace. The stress here is on middle income and developing countries, but the issues discussed are relevant everywhere. This book, precisely because of its comparative and international perspective, is useful worldwide. Among the topics considered in the case study chapters are: the changing demographics of the academic profession, including the role of gender in the professoriate, new developments in academic appointments, including the terms of academic work, evaluation of professors, and the tenure system, external pressures on the academic profession, including demands for accountability and threats to academic freedom, the changing nature of academic work, including patterns of teaching and evaluation of students and increases in teaching responsibilities, the role of research in a changing academic environment, the impact of the new technologies and distance education, and future prospects for the professoriate.

This is the first book to critically analyze the future of higher education systems in the four BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - and the USA, analyzing academic salaries, contracts and working conditions and how national policy will affect the academic profession in each context.

The academic profession faces new challenges everywhere. The pressures of mass higher education, accountability, fiscal constraints, distance education and the new technologies, and changing attitudes concerning academic work have combined to place unprecedented strains on the professoriate. This book brings together some of the best analysts of the academic profession in a wide ranging comparative analysis of the changing academic workplace. The stress here is on middle income and developing countries, but the issues discussed are relevant everywhere. This book, precisely because of its comparative and international perspective, is useful worldwide. Among the topics considered in the case study chapters are: the changing demographics of the academic profession, including the role of gender in the professoriate, new developments in academic appointments, including the terms of academic work, evaluation of professors, and the tenure system, external pressures on the academic profession, including demands for accountability and threats to academic freedom, the changing nature of academic work, including patterns of teaching and evaluation of students and increases in teaching responsibilities, the role of research in a changing academic environment, the impact of the new technologies and distance education, and future prospects for the professoriate.

This is the first book to critically analyze the future of higher education systems in the four BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - and the USA, analyzing academic salaries, contracts and working conditions and how national policy will affect the academic profession in each context.