Diversifying dynamic academic career paths is one of the focal points of the Recognition & Rewards programme. We want academics to be able to develop in those areas where their talents lie and make their mark in one or more core domains, keeping in mind that their profile may change in the course of their career. The roadmap Room for Everyone’s Talent in Practice states that by 2023, all institutions will create career and development paths for assistant professors, associate professors and full professors with profiles or emphasis on research, teaching, impact, leadership and patient care.

At the end of 2024, we produced an overview showing where we are today.

The main conclusions (reference date: December 2024):

  • All institutions are implementing academic career paths;
  • The pace at which this happens varies per institution;
  • The terminology used is not uniform, but does not present an obstacle;
  • Institutions largely follow the same principles;
  • In the domains of impact and leadership, institutions make different decisions;
  • Institutions have identified a number of problem areas that require follow-up actions.

All institutions implement academic career paths

The overview shows that all institutions are in the process of creating dynamic differentiation in academics’ career paths, as agreed in the road map Room for everyone’s talent in practice. The pace at which this is achieved varies per institution. How institutions implement career paths also varies. Most institutions have chosen to establish a framework of principles for career paths at the central level. It is then up to the faculties to translate this framework into specific career paths and establish corresponding criteria for the domains of teaching, research, impact, leadership and patient care. The responsibility for implementation therefore lies with the faculties.

Terminology

Institutions use different terms for implementing career diversification, mostly calling them (differentiated) career paths or (job) profiles, allowing academics to then place their own emphases or choose their focus domain within these paths and profiles. Some institutions have deliberately chosen not to develop written career paths. However, academics working in these institutions can also place their own emphases, customised to their wishes, and thus choose a ‘profile’.

Basic principles

Despite the various terms used, the institutions appear to be mostly following the same principles to facilitate the dynamic diversification of academic career paths:

  • Employees in the job groups of assistant professor, associate professor and full professor are the primary target group. Some institutions are also developing, or intend to develop, career paths for lecturers and researchers. This is how they want to facilitate horizontal mobility. Some universities also intend to develop ‘career paths’ for PhD candidates and/or postdocs.
  • For employees in the job groups of assistant professor, associate professor and full professor, the dichotomy between teaching and research is a given. They are expected to meet some basic requirements in teaching and research before they can make their mark in either domain. In some universities, the possibility of differentiation only starts from the position of UD1.
  • Besides teaching and research, academics can also make their mark in the domains of impact, leadership and patient care. At most institutions, separate profiles exist for these domains or academics can emphasise or focus on a particular domain. Most university medical centres have developed their own profiles around the three core tasks of teaching, research and patient care.
  • The choice of a particular profile is always made in consultation with the supervisor(s) and should fit the strategy of the team/department/faculty.

 

Impact and leadership

Universities make different choices regarding the domains of impact and leadership. Some of the institutions assume that academics should always generate impact in the domains of teaching and research. For this reason, they have not developed a separate impact profile. Other universities have deliberately chosen to develop an impact profile, such as Maastricht University and the VU Amsterdam. The Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB) also has an impact profile.

The same pattern is visible in the leadership domain. Some of the institutions assume that all employees develop in the area of personal leadership. Once employees aspire to an administrative career, there is room for them to further develop this aspect and choose a management profile.

An overview