Higher Education trade unionists and representatives from 20 European countries gathered on 21-22 February in Brussels 2019 for Higher Education and Research Standing Committee (HERSC) meeting. In this meeting they concluded that that the main threat to academic freedom is posed by precarious contracts which are preventing academics from carrying out independent research. Participants were also concerned that private sector funding was heavily influencing what research was being conducted. HERSC members proposed concrete examples of indicators and ways to measure academic freedom, namely gathering statistics on the percentage of lecturers and teachers on precarious contracts.
The report: in English ...
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