Academic Staff

Terms such as scholars, academics, academic staff, researchers, teachers in higher education, or professors describe persons in charge of generation, preservation, and dissemination of systematic knowledge of a high intellectual caliber. In the United States, faculty is also used to describe academics, whereas this term depicts university departments in Europe. As a rule, academic staff refers to persons employed full-time or part-time to teach and/or conduct research at institutions of higher education.

The definitions and actual professional roles of academic staff vary substantially by country. For example, the proportion of researchers who work within higher education as compared to those outside of higher education varies substantially. The number of academics at higher education institutions differs as a consequence of variations in student entry rates among the ...