GLOBAL: Academic migration is no easy ride

A range of changes await academics who move countries - different languages, different cultures, new environs. But no matter where they go in the world, there is one thing they are unlikely to escape and that's the neoliberal audit culture that underpins university management.

That conclusion is among several early observations made by Professor Brigitte Bönisch-Brednich who recently commenced a study of academic migration.

An academic migrant herself (from Germany to New Zealand), Bönisch-Brednich says the "line management" approach to running universities occurs in varying intensities and versions around the world. But she found it more pronounced in New Zealand universities than in those of her homeland.

"For me it was a real shock," she says, recalling the appointment of a new head of school without any consultation with staff - a move that would have been unthinkable in German universities.

Such differences are often at odds with the expectations of academic migrants, she found after the first stages of her research that included interviews with academic migrants to New Zealand and other countries.

"There is an assumption that universities, at least in the developed world, are very similar. This assumption seems to be shared by migrant academics and their universities."

In particular, academics believe they will be at home in their discipline no matter where they are based, says Bönisch-Brednich, a professor of anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington.

She says universities are only superficially similar - they have similar structures, such as faculties, and they face similar challenges. In reality, the differences are so great that academic migrants should assume difference, not similarity, when they move countries.

"Successful migration requires awareness of difference, readiness to question difference... on the university side it needs a high level of reflexivity to accepted ways of doing things," she says.

In some cases, academic migrants will have to accept a name change as their local peers and students struggle to pronounce their name correctly. "You might lose an umlaut or two," she laughs.

Those who speak their university's language as a second tongue are likely to find their command of that language inadequate for the work required of it. Even those who think of themselves as near-fluent are likely to feel reduced to the language of teenagers when they discuss academic matters, she warns.

In New Zealand, academics must get used to a monolingual culture. Texts in obscure languages - such as French, she says wryly - have to be translated for students. "If it is not English, it does not really exist."

Then there are social differences. In New Zealand, for example, people refer to one another by first names - a far cry from the formal approach in Germany. In Austria, one of Bönisch-Brednich's research subjects soon gave up expecting to resolve issues and questions by a simple exchange of emails. Instead, a range of social contacts ranging from meetings to social drinks were necessary.

Finally, there are often pleasant surprises. Junior staff in some countries will find they have the same access to research funds and study leave as their senior colleagues and those from the US might be relieved to find there is no tenure track for them to follow.

Bönisch-Brednich warns that universities need to be sure to explain to newcomers how they operate. If not, academic migrants will retreat into their disciplines and will not get involved in university management.

This is particularly important for countries with relatively high proportions of academic migrants, such as New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland. The UK and US also have many academic migrants.

"You need a plan of action in place to explain cultural differences to new migrants so they can feel comfortable and not alienated," she says.

* John Gerritsen is editor of NZ Education Review

John.Gerritsen@uw-news.com