MORE

Description

MORE (Mobility Survey of the Higher Education Sector) is arguably the most comprehensive empirical study of researcher mobility available. The study targets researchers working in different fields at higher education institutes in the EU and associated countries. It provides internationally comparable data on personal characteristics and education, current employment and working conditions, as well as a range of measures on international (and sector) mobility, including factors that influence mobility, and effects that can be linked to researcher mobility. MORE also has a longitudinal dimension. It currently consists of a proto-study (MORE I in 2009), a fully-fledge study (MOREII in 2012) while a third iteration is under planning for 2018 (MOREIII).The MOREII dataset includes 10,500 responses stratified by country and field of science.

The study addressed mobility as a “multidimensional concept”, distinguishing between international and inter-sectoral mobility, PhD and post-PhD mobility, mobility of more than three months and less than three months; employer mobility and virtual mobility. The surveys also addressed the phenomenon of non-mobility within careers.

The MORE2 case study on the working conditions and career paths in selected countries relies on the iFQ conceptual framework to study academic career systems. Following Gläser (2001), the complexity of academic careers is understood as caused by the fact that researchers work simultaneously in several social contexts: the science context, the societal context and the higher education context. Academics’ career paths are conceptualised as guided by the formal and informal set of rules that emerge from these three institutional contexts. Such rules are collapsed into five basic sets that capture these complex and overlapping dynamics: academic’s employment; credentials; intra-organizational practices; inter-organizational relationships and academic disciplines.