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A reform of academic careers is needed in Europe to ensure that academia remains an attractive career option and place of excellence. So, how are universities addressing how academic staff are supported and trained, assessed and recognised in their work across teaching, research, administration and more?
Academic careers have always been competitive, but Europe’s higher education sector now faces numerous challenges such as demographic shifts and funding cuts, precarious contracts and working conditions. As such, there is increasing momentum to address academic careers and assessment, both in the academic sector and among policy makers.
For the European University Association, a comprehensive, holistic approach to academic careers and assessment is key. Academic careers is therefore a cross-cutting issue across all university missions. Indeed, in its vision for 2030, ‘Universities without walls’, EUA identified the reform of academic careers as a priority for action.
This page brings together EUA’s work to promote a comprehensive, holistic approach to academic careers and assessment, supported by activities in the fields of research assessment and staff development in learning and teaching.
Although universities may vary in mission, vision, size and context, they all depend equally on the high-quality work of their staff to achieve their goals. Consequently, universities need to provide a supportive and stimulating work environment for their staff.
The unique selling point of an academic career is that it offers an opportunity to produce, transfer and apply knowledge in a holistic way. However, the long-term sustainability and attractiveness of academic careers depend on how they relate and critically respond to societal expectations, without being subjected to short-term economic and political exploitation.
To support the Association’s member universities across Europe, in 2025 EUA presented five key principles for attractive and sustainable academic careers. They address:
Learn more about EUA’s key principles for academic careers
A certain level of competition is necessary to achieve academic quality and it is unavoidable in the pursuit of external research funding. However, by acknowledging that teaching, research and innovation are fundamentally collective endeavours and by providing an ambitious yet supportive academic culture, universities can continue to attract the brightest minds for the future.
Indeed, to be an attractive employer, universities need to offer sustainable career paths within a working environment that encourages collaboration and a mutual sense of responsibility and respect.
Regardless of their starting point, universities ultimately benefit from establishing and actively promoting opportunities for continuous professional development and subsequently recognising and rewarding staff achievements. Career paths are, ideally, designed to allow for continuous development, as well as flexible and permeable intersections between teaching, research and innovation and outreach activities.
One defining trait of universities across Europe is their diversity. Diverse staff backgrounds, profiles and career paths ensure that academia remains dynamic, reflects the diversity of society and helps education and research to respond to real-world challenges.
Indeed, this diversity is crucial for the long-term sustainability of universities, and equity and inclusion need to be defining principles throughout a university’s policies for recruiting and developing staff.
It is also in the interest of universities and society to develop flexible and attractive career frameworks. Career models that accommodate a variety of professional goals ensure that academics can live up to their full potential while contributing meaningfully to their institution’s societal mission.
In particular, an investment in early-career academics is an investment in the sustainability of the higher education sector.
A doctoral degree is no longer a guaranteed entry ticket to an academic career. While there are many benefits in careers becoming more fluid and in staff switching more easily between academic and non-academic jobs, the lack of secure, long-term career paths poses risks.
Early-career academics, especially those at the doctoral level for whom the path ahead is the longest, may find the lack of clarity and security at the start of their career unsettling and experience the work environment as overly competitive. Universities now compete for talent just like other employers do, and they should therefore make sure that they remain attractive to early-career academics.
Read about how universities can support the next generation of academics
In ‘Universities without walls’, EUA highlights that reforming academic careers includes “using a broader set of evaluation practices for academic careers, which include a wide definition of impact, beyond traditional bibliometric indicators; promoting further parity of esteem between different career paths, including parity of esteem between research and teaching”.
Improving academic career assessment is a shared responsibility and requires a comprehensive approach uniting diverse stakeholders. As such, EUA played a key role in drafting the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, and as one of the agreement’s first signatories the Association was also one of the initiators of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).
EUA remains committed to the principles and objectives of CoARA and continues to support the coalition’s goals through a dedicated Action Plan.
Download EUA’s CoARA Action Plan
Alongside the Young Academy of Europe, EUA now jointly leads the CoARA Working Group on Reforming Academic Career Assessment. This group allows for comprehensive and systematic dialogue on the objectives and principles of reforming academic career assessment, with a diverse range of stakeholders (e.g. national and European university associations, individual universities, researchers’ organisations, learned societies, research centres, agencies for the evaluation of universities and research institutes).
The group is a collegial and safe environment for organisations to share experiences, best practices, challenges and unexpected outcomes. It is developing an adaptable toolbox considering all university missions and the broad scope of activities, skills and competences of academic staff at different stages of their career.
Learn about the working group's activities
Through its long-standing work on Open Science, EUA has highlighted the importance of including incentives and rewards for Open Science throughout the research process as part of better research and career assessment practices. Previously, EUA has played an important role in building a knowledge base and contributing evidence on universities’ research assessment practices, namely through its 2019 EUA Open Science and Open Access Survey on Research Assessment and its joint work with the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and SPARC Europe on ‘Reimagining Academic Career Assessment: Stories of innovation and change’.
A better balance of responsibilities reflecting all university missions in academic careers is needed, reflecting the broader need for parity of esteem between research and teaching in academia. As such, teaching needs to be fully recognised as central to the academic profession and considered in assessment practices and career development.
This will foster greater recognition of the education mission of universities and enable them to act in the best interest of academics and benefit student learning. In this regard, academic assessment also relates to advancing the professional role and identity of academics in Europe as they juggle various, and occasionally conflicting, expectations.
To raise the status of teaching in higher education, incentives and policies are needed for academic staff to invest in teaching, develop their teaching competences, better balance their teaching and research workload and progress in their careers in teaching. To this end, the Staff development in learning and teaching at European universities (STAFF-DEV) project has mapped staff development approaches across Europe, as well as capacity building activities. So, what has this project found out about the link between L&T staff development and career progression?
Consult the STAFF-DEV survey results
In November 2024, the Council of the EU, which is comprised of EU member states, adopted a ‘Recommendation on attractive and sustainable careers in higher education’. The recommendation stresses the need to acknowledge the diversity of academic career paths and highlights the importance of valuing teaching as well as research. It also includes measures to incentivise higher education professionals to take part in a broader range of career-related activities, including cross-border educational activities.
According to the European University Association’s ‘Key principles for attractive and sustainable careers’ and additional surveys of its members, most universities already support the professional development and capacity building of their staff, albeit to varying extents and through different measures.
Academic career assessment consists of the entire catalogue of methods that are used to evaluate the performance, outputs and impacts of academic activities for the purposes of recruitment, performance evaluation and career progression. This includes the incentives and rewards available for all academic activities, i.e. education, research, innovation/knowledge transfer, service to society, impact generation, leadership and (for university medical centres) patient care.
The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) is a collective of organisations committed to reforming the methods and processes by which research, researchers and research organisations are evaluated. The European University Association played a key role in establishing CoARA.
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