The Changing Academic Profession (CAP) Project: Canada
Context of the Project:
In Canada, higher education institutions have come to occupy a pivotal location within the framework of an emerging knowledge economy. This shift means that federal and provincial governments have devised a wide array of policy instruments through which they seek to shape the research and knowledge production capabilities of higher education institutions in an effort to boost Canada’s location within the global economy. Internationally, Canadian institutions compete to attract skilled researchers and scholars to enhance Canada’s position within global knowledge production flows. At the intersection of these two processes, Canadian higher education institutions have been radically transformed in terms of their structural differentiation and their relationships to the broader labour market. Paradoxically, however, these transformations and their impact on academics, the academic profession and the roles and responsibilities of academic workers have not been adequately examined.

Research Objectives:
The purpose of the proposed research project is to understand the changing nature of the academic profession in Canada. We focus on three major facets of the academic profession:
1.  the relevance of academic work for an emerging knowledge society
2. the relationships between the internationalization of Canadian institutions of higher education and the organization of the Canadian academic workplace
3. the nexus between higher education management and the dynamics associated with the academic profession

Method:
This study is being conducted in conjunction with an international study of the changing academic profession in over 20 countries. The Canadian survey utilizes a core questionnaire from this international survey, which is supplemented by Canadian-specific questions. Data from the Canadian survey, which is anonymous and administered in both French and English, will be shared with the international research teams in 2008. The survey will be offered online to full-time faculty working at selected universities throughout Canada (using a stratified, random sample of institutions) in November 2007.

International Project page: http://www.uni-kassel.de/wz1/cap/international.ghk

Canadian CAP Project Team:
Principal Investigator: Dr. Amy Scott Metcalfe, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Studies, UBC
Dr. Donald Fisher, Professor of Sociology of Education, Department of Educational Studies, UBC
Dr. Kjell Rubenson, Professor of Adult Education, Department of Educational Studies, UBC
 Dr. Yves Gingras, Canada Research Chair in History and Sociology of Science, Professor in the Department of History, Université du Québec à Montréal
Dr. Glen Jones, Professor of Higher Education and Academic Dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

Outcomes to Date:
1. Participation in the UNESCO/CAP Workshop "The Changing Role of the Academic Profession and Its Interface with Management" and CAP Methods sessions; Kassel, Germany, September 2006.

2. Finkelstein, M. J., Galaz-Fontes, J. F., & Metcalfe, A. S. (forthcoming). Changing employment relationships in North America: Academic work in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. In Enders, J. & de Weert, E. (Eds.), Modernization processes and the academic profession. London: Palgrave.

3. Presentation, "The Changing Employment Relationships of Academics in North America and its Implications for Regional Faculty Collaboration"; Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC), Quebec City, April 2007; Copresenters Jesús F. Galaz-Fontes and Martin J. Finkelstein.

4. Participation in “The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative and Quantitative Perspectives” conference, January 2008, Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University (Japan).

5. Metcalfe, A. S. (2008). “The changing academic profession in Canada: Exploring themes of relevance, internationalization, and management.” In, Report of the International Conference on the Changing Academic Profession, RIHE International Seminar Reports, no. 12, pp. 57-73. Hiroshima, Japan: Research Institute for Higher Education.

6. Metcalfe, A. S. & Fisher, D. (2008, November). The changing academic profession in Canada. Panel presentation as part of a symposium titled, The governance and management of higher education in mature higher education systems, presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Jacksonville, Florida.