Towards a new academic professionalism: a manifesto of hope

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate debate on developments within hig her education. It is concerned primarily with the hopeful working out of a new kind of professional ethic. It explores the extent to which and ways in which academic staff working within the context of higher education might be seen as professionals with a shared set of values and expectations. It a gues that the changing conditions of higher education have made it extremel y difficult to speak of academic workers as a unified 'profession', Moreove r, the stratification of higher education has led to increased and deepenin g divisions of labour, within which academic workers have become increasing ly isolated while also becoming increasingly accountable. The only way out of this impasse, it is argued, is for academics to re-define their professi onalism in terms of their underlying commitments and purposes. That task of re-definition is discussed in terms of a distinction between two competing notions of academic freedom: the traditional notion of academic freedom as freedom for academics, and an emergent notion of academic freedom as freed om for others. It is with reference to that emergent notion that this artic le speculates upon the possibility of a new professionalism for higher educ ation, while recognising that a new professionalism of this kind would be d eeply at odds with the prevailing managerialism of higher education as mani fest in its quality-control mechanism;, accountability procedures, and plan ned systems of professional accreditation.