Now about that, Burton Clark has remarked over 30 years ago, that an interesting aspect of the academic profession is that academics are more tied to their disciplines, subjects or fields than their institutions. It is quite easy for a professor in, let's say, chemical engineering education to move from the University of Cape Town to Virginia Tech in the USA, but for the same Prof. Jenni Case, it would be almost impossible to move from UCT Chemical Engineering to, let's say, the Department of Archaeology in the same institution. That, however, does not mean that there are no important differences between Engineering Education at UCT and Virgina Tech (and Jenni has already had a glimpse of that).
In the same way, being a political scientist working in the field of higher education studies, it has been relatively easy to move from the national Council on Higher Education (i.e. the statutory advisory and quality assurance body in SA HE), to the Institute for Post-School Studies at the University of the Western Cape, then to the Directorate for Institutional Research at the University of the Free State, and eventually into the HE Unit of Education and Skills Development at the Human Sciences Research Council. In all these cases, my major responsibility has been to conduct higher education policy-relevant research as an engaged scholar. The emphases of course are different: The CHE was focused very strongly on national level, policy-relevant research. At UWC, my research (which was mostly linked to the Centre for Higher Education Transformation/CHET) was mostly 'blue-sky': studies into the contribution of higher education to the development of citizenship competences among students. Conversely, at the UFS, the focus was decidedly institutional: my researchers and I mostly dealt with matters that would ultimately advise rectorate and the university council, like the language policy review, the student affairs quality enhancement review, the review of student governance, the institutional culture studies.
Here at the HSRC, the scope and focus is honed by South African national developmental priorities, variably widened to consider the broader continental and international context, or narrowed to 'drill down' into subsystems and institutions. This does not preclude my involvement in larger projects, of course, especially my passion in publishing projects (such as the UNESCO-IASAS Handbook on Student Affairs and Services, or my work on African University Presses and into Student Politics, including most recently the #MustFall student movement of South Africa).
What is somewhat different here at the HSRC is that researchers are treated as professionals and knowledge producers in a different way than an academic at the universities where I have previously worked. The difference is that your autonomy to research what you want is somewhat conditional upon your ability to generate funds for that; otherwise, there are enough opportunities to do 'consultancy-type' research for, e.g. the Department of Higher Education and Training, or Department of Science and Technology, and so forth, who have diverse data and policy-relevant research needs. It is a more 'managed' (managerialist?) environment, perhaps. We'll see.
I have never had the 'luxury' to research just what I like - even as a student - I have always done a combination of 'bread-and-butter' research and 'love projects'. So far, I have never had the questionable pleasure of a full-time permanent (tenured) professorial appointment of the old-fashioned kind (and given the teaching loads these days, I'm quite happy to be able to pick and choose what I want to teach and who I want to supervise without having to fill that quota!). What I've done, being quite frugal, is to occasionally finance my own sabbatical; and of course, I have been able to crowd out time during my normal work hours and after-hours, to pursue passion projects. That's the good thing when your job is also your passion and hobby. Anyhow, one month on, and I am getting to know the HSRC and its peoples, structures, functioning. Soon, I will have more to say about the way forward with the new unit on HE that I am leading within the Education & Skills Development programme. I might just get attached here. :)
