Considerations on COM(2024)145 - - Main contents
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This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2024)145 - . |
|---|---|
| document | COM(2024)145 |
| date | March 27, 2024 |
(2) ‘Academic staff’ in higher education should be understood as staff whose primary or major assignment is teaching or research in institutions offering programmes at European Qualifications Framework (EQF) levels 5 to 845. Staff targeted by this Recommendation should be understood to include staff working at higher education institutions who do both teaching and research, and staff who do teaching only or mostly, regardless of their status. It also includes researchers working at higher education institutions, who may not have a permanent teaching assignment, but who are involved in the life of the institution and might be occasionally involved in teaching.
(3) Some recommendations include professional services staff who are not strictly considered as ‘academic staff’, but who have extensive high-level expertise in strategic, legal or communication fields, professionals working in areas related to academic tasks but with no direct engagement in them, or higher education professionals with extensive knowledge of higher education and other relevant policy.
(4) Higher education institutions are experiencing changing conditions and new types of academic activities are being created. Academic staff in higher education are expected to fulfil various roles from traditional education and research to entrepreneurship and innovation, knowledge valorisation, transnational cooperation, business and community engagement46, regional and local development, mentoring, administration and management and participation in institutional governance. Those various roles are unevenly recognised. In order to tackle bias in career structures and overall social recognition of research at the expense of teaching and other non-research academic activities, it would be appropriate to promote approaches that acknowledge diverse academic career paths and consider these in staff appraisal and career promotion processes.
(5) Creating better conditions for academic staff and addressing barriers can help increase the attractiveness of higher education institutions as places of work and enhance their capacity to trigger additional positive spill-over effects, notably on the labour market by stimulating the development of talent. A more valued and supported academic staff can help nurture the workforce needed for the development of regional economies, which are increasingly dependent on knowledge, innovation, and highly skilled people. The importance of attractive and effective higher education institutions has been especially recognised in regions in a talent development trap or at risk of falling into one, which are lagging in terms of creating new economic opportunities.47
(6) Increasingly strategic transnational activities, including building European Universities alliances48 and developing transnational educational programmes, require academic staff, as well as professional services staff to dedicate additional time and energy to those activities on top of core teaching and research. In order to further develop these activities, appraisal and promotion mechanisms need to acknowledge staff involvement in work on transnational cooperation.
(7) A free and non-discriminatory working environment is an important enabling factor for academic staff to provide high quality teaching. Academic freedom should be protected and promoted to maintain the high level enjoyed by academic staff in the Union. Academic staff and professional services staff may also face challenges of unsatisfactory working conditions49, heavy workload and gender or other biases in assessment and recognition. Also, women are more often employed on precarious and temporary contracts than men50. To address those challenges, it is necessary to promote competitive, accessible and fair working conditions in academia.
(8) The Union action towards inclusiveness, diversity, and gender equality in higher education is based on an inclusive excellence approach. It seeks to support excellent higher education while ensuring equality of participation with a special focus on under-represented and disadvantaged communities. In order to address the underrepresentation of certain groups in higher education institutions, in particular in leadership positions, it would be appropriate to promote diversity and inclusion plans at higher education institutions, and in career promotion processes.
(9) This Recommendation is designed in close synergy with the Council Recommendation on establishing a European Framework to attract and retain research, innovation and entrepreneurial talents in Europe51, which aims at more attractive research careers in all sectors, including academia, and at a full recognition for all types of career paths. Both recommendations aim at improving working conditions, stability of careers, skills, gender equality, inclusiveness and social protection measures for their respective target groups.
(10) This Recommendation aims to encourage better recognition of the energy and time that academic staff and other professional services staff devote to transnational cooperation activities, for example the European Universities alliances. For the full roll-out of this initiative52, and the encouragement of transnational cooperation activities, including development of joint degrees, full involvement of staff and career perspectives for academic and professional services staff involved in the strategic coordination functions should be promoted. Incentivising staff to promote transnational and intersectoral mobility should also greatly contribute to the development of transnational innovative and interdisciplinary educational programmes, for the benefit of all students.
(11) This Recommendation aims at promoting measures to enhance continuous professional development, and to further acknowledge the variety of activities that academic staff perform. This will allow for full staff mobilisation to develop innovative teaching and learning, stimulate the upskilling and reskilling mindset, and promote the acquisition of skills for the green and digital transitions, including the use of artificial intelligence in teaching.
(12) This Recommendation aims to promote competitive, fair, inclusive, accessible, safe and non-discriminatory conditions for academic and professional services staff to attract them to and retain them in the higher education sector. Academic staff should be enabled to develop innovative teaching methods in an environment where working conditions are competitive and fair and where fundamental rights are protected and there is no fear of reprisal and/or undue external influence.
(13) This Recommendation also aims to improve the evidence-base for developing human resources policies and strategies in higher education. Since no internationally comparable data are collected systematically on academic staff and diverging sets of staff categories are used in different higher education systems, it would be appropriate to explore the possibility for collecting more detailed data to sufficiently monitor emerging trends and to take truly evidence-based policy steps for deeper transnational cooperation at the level of the Union.
(14) In support of this Recommendation, the Commission intends to coordinate, in close cooperation with Member States, higher education institutions and social partners, in the European Education Area Strategic Framework Working Group on Higher Education53, the preparation of guidelines to provide advice how higher education institutions can improve attractiveness of academic and professional support staff careers, and a European competence framework for academic staff, to enhance permeability of careers across sectors, building on existing relevant competence frameworks at Union level, such as the European Competence Framework for Researchers (ResearchComp).54
(15) The Commission also intends to support the organisation of a dedicated social dialogue at Union level on the careers of academic and professional services staff, facilitate peer learning between Member States on effective mechanisms ensuring recognition of academic and professional services staff engagement in transnational cooperation, and innovative teaching activities; and to support evidence-based policy and monitoring progress by mapping, through the European Higher Education Sector Observatory55 existing data on higher education career and staffing policy at European, national, and institutional level, and identifying data gaps and needs.
(16) The Commission fosters synergies with the Recommendation on establishing a European Framework to attract and retain research, innovation, and entrepreneurial talents in Europe, to ensure improved and consistent careers for academic staff working at higher education institutions and engaged in both teaching and research.
(17) The Commission intends to further develop, promote, and provide support to transnational educational cooperation and innovative educational excellence through relevant financing sources at Union level, including through the Erasmus+ programme56, and encourage Member States to use the Technical Support Instrument to receive tailor-made technical expertise to design and implement the necessary reforms in the higher education area, including by fostering cooperation between policy makers, research and academia and by developing the attractiveness of academic careers.