Realities of academic staff in Europe

Europe is aiming for a European Research Area (ERA) which is ‘unified and open to the world, in which scientific knowledge, technology and researchers circulate freely’. But only fair working conditions will lead to excellence and innovation and hence to a sustainable success of ERA.

security is no longer the norm in the academic world, gender quality remains an aspiration rather than the reality and teaching cannot be taken for granted

In the last years the EU Commission is looking more closely at working conditions of employees in this sector. The newly published report ‘Modernisation of Higher Education in Europe: Academic Staff – 2017’[1] confirms what trade unions state for many years: guaranteed job security is no longer the norm in the academic world, gender quality remains an aspiration rather than the reality and that teaching cannot be taken for granted.

only fair working conditions will lead to excellence and innovation and hence to a sustainable success of ERA

The report is of course not proposing any recommendations but Eurocadres is doing so. In our past project activities, we were looking for solutions concerning working conditions of staff in the private and public research. Eurocadres developed 12 elements of an agreement or contract from existing agreements and best practices in institutes and companies. These elements are presented as ‘Benchmarks for best contracts: towards excellence in the European Research Area’.

[1] Previous Commissin report from 2014 on „Modernisation of Higher Education in Europe: Access, Retention and Employability”