Leaving Academia. Network for Leaving Processes in the Academic Context

• Applicant: Dr. Svea Korff
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism ; Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 391495698

In the German academic system, careers are difficult to plan and are plagued by precarious employment conditions and uncertain future prospects. Accordingly, the number of those who turn their back on academia and leave the academic field in the long run is high. But until now there have been no fundamental empirical or theoretical findings that would allow these exits from academia to be conceptualized in terms of the processual character by taking into account subjective decisions as well as strategies and practices at academic institutions. The goal of the proposed interdisciplinary academic network is to research the individual and organizational conditions of leaving the academic field and to shed more light on and explore in more detail, both theoretically and empirically from the standpoint of different specialist scientific disciplines, the leaving process at the various levels of the academic career (doctoral, post-doctoral and staff). At the same time, it is the goal to integrate the various theoretical strands and empirical findings on leaving the academic field into a grounded theoretical model of the leaving process. The formation of the network paves the way for ongoing interdisciplinary cooperation between academics from the educational and social sciences who are researching the leaving processes in academia. In this way, currently available knowledge can be pooled and new findings used to establish the new research area Leaving Processes in the Academic Context as part of empirical research at universities, drawing on an educational-scientific perspective that takes into account such relevant issues as the lack of pedagogical guidance. During the two years in which network members will work on joint projects, preliminary findings are to be put up for discussion at academic meetings and national/international publications in relevant journals drafted. The results of the concluding symposium will be published in one volume and thereby made available to a broad specialist audience.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks