Changes in academics' job profiles

During the last decades, there has been a tendency of ‘academic drift’ within higher education (Lourdes Machado, Ferreira, Santiago, & Taylor, 2008; Harwood, 2010), with a potential to staff drift in which lecturers in applied universities become more ‘academic’ through the addition of research responsibilities (Griffioen & De Jong, 2013; Kyvik, 2007; Neave, 1978). New universities in mainland Europe moved away from a teaching-only practice to more engagement with research, whereas old universities (i.e. research-intensive institutions) attempted to improve their teaching capacity (Huisman & Kaiser, 2001; Kyvik & Skodvin, 2003). Within the Netherlands, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science emphasised the connection between research and teaching within universities (2015), following the general positive–normative view on research integration (Trowler & Wareham, 2008)