British Academy on the weakening teaching-research nexus

The traditional relationship between teaching and research in academic careers is weakening due to the rise in teaching-only contracts, the British Academy has warned.

Via an interactive map of academic staffing in the social sciences, humanities and arts (or SHAPE), accompanied by a collection of short briefing papers, the academy highlights how the proportion of staff in these disciplines on teaching-only contracts has risen from 34 per cent to 42 per cent since 2012–13, while the proportion on traditional teaching-and-research contracts has dropped from 57 per cent to 48 per cent.

This shift “weakens the traditional teaching-research nexus,” the authors argue, and risks limiting both the development of research-informed teaching and the longer term pipeline of research-active academics.

The growth in teaching-only staff in SHAPE subject areas has been particularly pronounced in Russell Group universities, increasing by 129 per cent over the 12-year period – though staff numbers on teaching-and-research contracts at these institutions have also risen, by a more modest 36 per cent.

The growth in teaching-only positions has been concentrated at early- and mid-career stages rather than at senior levels.

The final year of available data shows a drop of five per cent in teaching-only staff, driven to a large extent by falls in early career, part-time, fixed-term roles. The authors raise the possibility that this could represent a “rebalancing” in contract types, but are quick to observe that – given the accompanying context of financial constraint and retrenchment of provision – it is “unclear” whether this truly represents a meaningful structural shift.

Alongside consideration of contract types, the British Academy data mapping also looks at early-career staff numbers as a whole, noting the most recent year of data sees a decline in employment of six per cent, from 52,795 to 49,410 – a phenomenon not seen at more senior levels. This was particularly pronounced in the disciplines of history (32 per cent), classics (30 per cent) and languages (21 per cent, though with specific subjects including French and Italian much more severely affected).

British Academy chief executive Hetan Shah warns that

“without action, strategically important disciplines and skills for the UK risk being lost to the winds, by accident or simply because no-one was watching.”

The authors of the report on SHAPE academics note that early-career staff “inject new approaches, paradigms and methodologies into the UK higher education and research system” – and represent the primary pipeline into long-term research and academic employment. Given this, decreases in staffing can signal emerging challenges to disciplinary sustainability “well before they appear in senior staffing profiles.”