As higher education transforms, administrative burdens are increasing and the race for publications is accelerating. How do academics experience their work today? This is what the major survey “Teachers-researchers: a great sick body” (Enseignants-rechercheurs: un grand corps malade) , published in May 2025 by Le Bord de l’eau, sheds light on. We invite you to read an excerpt from this survey, which focuses on their relationship with time.

The many activities involved in research require time both to act and to think, imagine, and exchange. Researchers need concentration, reflective detachment, formal (in meetings) and informal (over coffee or between meetings) exchanges, and therefore mental availability, the complete opposite of the current cognitive overload. They also, and even more importantly, need periods of latency, distancing, and conceptualization. However, these times, seemingly unproductive but in reality creative and essential, vary from one researcher to another, from one subject to another, from one moment of their career to another. It is not only a question of time, but also of concentration and mental availability.

These times cannot be measured by quantifiable standards. They cannot be measured by counting publications and citations in articles or books, the logic that is now at the heart of the evaluation methods for researchers and research units. Such quantitative evaluations are incapable of taking into account the cumulative processes of knowledge construction that operate by complementing and becoming more complex.

A research result resulting in a communication or publication in year N is often the product of many years of research, trial and error, progress and corrected errors, but thanks to which progress has been made. It is a work that is not very visible and that each researcher is generally incapable of quantifying himself. However, the evaluation that is increasingly present and decisive for the future of teams is organized at the price of ”  managerial and technocratic drift, [of] individualization of the evaluation, [of] perverse effects of bibliometric procedures…  “.

Organizing research involves accepting that time is “lost” so that new knowledge can be “gained.” This essential logic is incompatible with the cult of urgency and short-term evaluation that reigns today and creates constraints that force us to rush research and publications in a context where ”  the accountant replaces the strategist, the short term replaces the long term, the search for immediate gain replaces the establishment of quality production  .”

The evolution of research evaluation criteria corresponds to a productivist drift  :

“In this regime of generalized competition, the notion of academic productivity intervenes at all levels to guide the allocation of resources, from the University as a whole to each individual teacher-researcher, including departments, models and research teams.”

The search for productivity and the evaluation made of it have transformative effects on work  :

“In academic research, the main criterion used to measure the productivity of a teacher-researcher is the individual production of articles in journals listed in hierarchical lists. […] Bibliometric systems indeed promote forms of automatic piloting of the evaluative action. Nevertheless, these immediate advantages obscure the central question of the purpose of the action: does the race for publication to increase a bibliometric advantage, and to make the teacher-researcher a “productive actor”, necessarily lead to an improvement in the achievement of the diversity of the missions incumbent on him, and to an improvement in the quality of scientific results? Does this measurement of the productivity of teacher-researchers ensure the scientific quality of individuals, and the overall quality of the action – for example – of the body of economists? The economic, ecological and social crises produced by contemporary capitalism allow us to doubt this!”

Not only does this development risk undermining the reliability of scientific results and publications, but it also risks causing disillusionment, discouragement and disengagement among teacher-researchers, particularly under the effect of “accounting injunctions” which undermine the meaning of their missions.

“What has changed is also increased competition between teacher-researchers. From my point of view, this doesn’t necessarily advance science because they spend an enormous amount of time looking for financial resources. And what’s more, they are judged on this search for finances. […] We talk about publications and we talk less and less about teaching and responsibilities, but the financial part is becoming increasingly important. So we quantify the work of the researcher by, okay, I’m going to exaggerate a little, but it’s done on purpose, by the turnover they will achieve, by the number of projects they will bring back” (Thierry, PU in automation at university).

“There’s a lot more pressure to publish. I don’t feel very impacted by it because I’m practically at the top of the ladder. So, I tell myself that I might not publish anymore, but it has zero impact on my life, zero!” (Emmanuelle, university computer science professor).

“If it’s to be insignificant teachers who produce insignificant research, that is to say, who do not produce meaning, it’s not worth it” (Aminata, PU in education and training sciences at university).

“I’m two years away from retirement and I’m just waiting to get out. Well, that’s also a pre-retirement phenomenon, I think it’s always existed. But I’m still an activist in my life and now I’m completely discouraged” (Élise, PU in American civilization at university).

“We, at university, lie to ourselves with this idea that we are still academics, teacher-researchers, the reality is that 80% of us are super high school teachers. We work in undergraduate programs with people who will not become lawyers, or sociologists, or psychologists. I think we also lie to ourselves about our social status. Obviously, I can wear the robe, but when you look at the level of remuneration and even social prestige in society, you can see that it is no longer what it used to be. So, I think we lie to ourselves. And I just want us to stop lying to ourselves, but to stop lying to ourselves at all levels” (Tom, PU in public law at university).

This phenomenon aggravates the transformation of research activities into an adjustment variable in EC timetables.

“I observe that we recruit teacher-researchers based on their research skills. And if this is to put them in situations where they will no longer be able to do research, there is a problem in the system. We cannot ask people to be internationally visible and then end up in a situation where they are just teachers who are a little less well paid than preparatory class teachers. There is a problem” (Amin, university mathematics professor).

It is indeed impossible to postpone the preparation of courses and not be present in class or in tutorials, it is just as impossible for all those who have one or more responsibilities (degree or department) not to complete on time the tasks that occur at the start of each academic year (management of staff, timetables, course distributions, etc.) and, at the end of each semester (assessments, return and compilation of grades, juries, etc.). It is then the research time, devoted to surveys or experiments, to reading or writing that is postponed, or even sacrificed.

It should be noted in passing that the semesterization (which took place in 2002) has doubled the number of intakes and end of course sessions to manage. One of the major indirect effects of this reorganization is that the start of the academic year is happening earlier and earlier (in September instead of October for most students, and therefore as early as August 15 for many teachers and administrators) and that the end of the year is happening later, the time to finish the second semester courses, organize the exams and, moreover, in an increasingly short time, the resits (previously organized in September, with real revision periods for the students). This process has been intensified with the new student application and recruitment procedures ( Parcourssup and MonMaster).

Author Bio: Dominique Glaymann is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Evry – University of Paris-Saclay