Dr. Aslı Vatansever publishes “Random-Track: The End of Academic Career as We Know It?” in Higher Education Politics & Economics

Dr. Aslı Vatansever, sociology instructor and Director of Development and Philanthropy at Bard College Berlin, has published an article in Higher Education Politics & Economics titled “Random-Track: The End of Academic Career as We Know It?”.

Drawing on a pilot online survey conducted with over 300 academics within the European Research Area (ERA), Vatansever’s study reveals “a potentially radical transformation of the academic career paradigm from a tenure-oriented path towards an increasingly episodic, nomadic, and unsystematic drift, defined here as ‘random-track.’”

The article, published in Higher Education Politics & Economics, explores how the academic industry proliferates a new career sequence model in response to the double bind of labor oversupply and underfunding.

The article presents the results of Vatansever’s research project that was hosted by Bard College Berlin between 2021-2024 and jointly funded by the Philipp-Schwartz-Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative of the Open Society University Network.  

Read the open-access article here.

Post Date: 02-10-2025