Academic freedoms and bureaucratic bonds of the lecturers: results of field research in british and french universities

This case-study article presents the results of a field 2016-2017 study done in the universities of Great Britain and France. The purpose of the research was to identify the features of the professional identity of university lecturers in these countries including the applicability of their experience to harmonize Russian higher education. According to this purpose, there were in-depth interviewed about 50 representatives of British (more than 20 interviews) and French (about 30 interviews) higher education institutions. In advance, there had been worked out a guide containing five blocks of questions. In the course of the study, there were clarified typical reasons for choosing the profession of a university lecturer; the lecturers’ views on the competencies required to work at the university, on the advantages and disadvantages of their profession, on the existence of a code and/or unwritten rules of the relationship within the team, on typical conflict situations. The problem of the relationship between academic freedoms and bureaucratic bonds has become the leitmotif of the whole study. As result, there have been distinguished the deep foundations of the transformation processes at the university. The study showed that British and French lecturers understand their profession, as a rule, in a similar way. The differences identified are not serious. The results can be applied to the Russian university system, which is at the initial stage of transforming towards innovative-entrepreneurial type. British and French universities have already gained the skill to overcome the difficulties of this transformation. The article written on the unique author’s material summarizes the experiences of several dozens of modern university professors from Europe. It is important to fix the state of affairs and developments in British and French higher education today.