Herodotus, as AHA Perspectives reminded us in April 1983, was “convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay.” We may be confident, nevertheless, that universities on both sides of the Atlantic will come through their present difficulties in a form not substantially different from the one that we know today. The days when a Richard Teller Crane could campaign for the virtual dismantling of higher education, evoked in a recent article in Chicago History, are long gone and unlikely to return. In one respect, however, the universities and colleges of the late twentieth century will be very different from those in which the bulk of the current AHA membership received their training or began their careers. Bruce Stave’s interviews with established urban historians in the Journal of Urban History have reminded us of the mobility that used to be taken for granted, but which has been sorely reduced in recent years. At present, all the signs are that the current painful trends will continue well into the 1990s, with nothing more attractive than a “steady state” to succeed contraction. “One stay” will be the destiny of many, perhaps most, academic historians from now until a possible upturn in the volume of university education in the first or maybe the second decade of the twenty-first century.
In countless conversations on both sides of the Atlantic I have so far failed to meet one historian—or representative of any discipline—who does not regret the loss of the opportunity to gain experience and new inspiration in a variety of academic environments. Of course, we regret even more the complete exclusion from the academic profession of younger scholars who would have secured tenured or tenure-track posts without difficulty as recently as the early 1970s. As we know, the Public History movement is responding to the latter problem by seeking to expand employment of trained historians outside the academy, and it has the sympathy and support of many of us. Indeed, Public History’s resourcefulness sets an example that could well be emulated elsewhere in the profession. If old forms of mobility are fading away, we should endeavor to create new ones.
I have been interested in faculty exchanges since the mid-1970s. Initially I envisaged them as just one element in a general mobility, but increasingly I have come to see them as the only reach means of movement for the bulk of tenured historians. Of course, exchanges within a single national system of universities contribute to the easing of the immobility problem and I would not want to discourage them in any way. However, my concern has been to encourage international movements, on the assumption that it is here that the greatest increments of experience are to be gained. This article, therefore, is just part of a developing effort to promote exchanges within the historical sciences, broadly defined, between North America and Europe. So far this effort has been an attempt to find a formula, for exchanges are no easy matter.
“One stay” will be the destiny of many, perhaps most, academic historians from now until a possible upturn in the volume of university education in the twenty-first century.
Let me explain what the problems are. First. it is important to distinguish between what might best be called one-way and two-way exchanges. In the one-way exchange, an institution hosts a faculty member from another university or college in a teaching or research capacity, without sending one of its own members in return to the exporting institution. Such exchanges are financed by the funds of the receiving institution, or come about when a faculty member on sabbatical from the exporting institution negotiates a temporary affiliation with another college or university. Such one-way exchanges are not difficult to organize, but they fall a long way short of meeting the need. Funds to pay visiting professors were always limited, and currently they are being cut back or diverted to other uses. Moreover, in contrast to North American universities, very few European institutions have such funds, so American academics have never secured much mobility by these means. The American, it is true, usually benefits from a more generous sabbatical leave entitlement than his European counterpart and, provided of course that his research justifies a period abroad, normally has no difficulty in securing the honorary status of visiting professor at the compatible foreign institution of his choice. However, in this case he is unlikely to be incorporated into the teaching program even in the minor or occasional capacity that the terms of his sabbatical leave might allow. Moreover, there is a distinct danger that sabbatical leave will be eroded in the years to come, like other “luxuries” of easier times. Finally, some Americans are able to spend up to a year in Europe directing or teaching in their own institutions’ Junior Year Abroad programs or summer courses. In doing so, however, they build up little or no contact with European faculty or students and. in any case, most American universities and colleges do not own the very expensive European premises that would require an important commitment of their own faculty. European institutions, for their part, do not as a rule run courses for their students in North America so their faculty cannot secure a period across the Atlantic within the study-abroad framework.
The limitations of the one-way exchange leave the two-way exchange as the main potential means of increasing the number of movements. In theory, it is highly attractive and eminently feasible. Two faculty members simply “change places” for up to two semesters, taking over each other’s teaching and, ideally, exchanging houses and cars. However, long experience has taught me that it is not as easy as this. In David Lodge’s delightful novel of goings-on at Berkeley and Birmingham, Changing Places, the trouble started after the exchange had begun, but in real life, the difficulty lies in arranging the exchange in the first place. The main problem lies in finding effective pairings. First, and above all, the exchangees must have similar teaching interests so they can fit into their host departments’ programs at no detriment to those programs or to themselves (in the form of onerous preparation of new courses for just one year). British history departments, with their concentrated, linear teaching programs incorporating a high proportion of compulsory courses, are particularly sensitive to the loss of one of their members unless the replacement is a virtual clone. Second, the exchanging institutions need to be compatible: a professor of history from Oxford University might well be interested in spending a year at a community college but his Oxford colleagues would be much happier if they knew that they could look forward to working with an Ivy League replacement. Third, personal circumstances usually should be similar, not because they matter to the institutions, but because personal considerations such as spouses’ careers and children’s schooling are major influences on the individuals’ decisions to exchange. Finally, of course, there is a financial problem of varying gravity, depending on the relative strength of the dollar and the relative strength of American and European salaries. Even when the exchangees enjoy similar seniority at similar institutions—which, given the above considerations, is very likely to be the case—one or the other is almost certain to feel the pinch. Extensive consultations have convinced me that an exchange of salaries is not feasible, so exchangees will have to continue to receive their normal salaries from their home institutions while they are away. Two years ago, when a strong petro-pound had put me in the top AHA subscription bracket, I could have joined in an exchange and paid my family’s air fares without feeling the draught, but nowadays I would need to do my sums much more carefully and to write around for funds to cover the air fares. Meanwhile, the position of a potential American exchangee will have registered a comparable improvement. Times change quickly in the era of floating currencies; a note now goes with my annual subscription check to tell the AHA computer that I really have dropped a notch or two and am not deliberately withholding part of my proper dues! All I can say is that, given the goodwill on all sides without which no exchange can approach finalization, some of the financial problems can be resolved. I am sure I am not the only historian who feels that a year’s new experiences for family and self is worth a few hundred dollars; but neither am I the only one who could in no way stand the loss of a few thousand.
Given the difficulty of securing suitable pairings, it is crucially important to set up an efficient machinery for doing so.
Given the difficulty of securing suitable pairings, it is crucially important to set up an efficient machinery for doing so. Some exchanges—and they are often the most successful—are made between individuals who are already in personal or professional contact, and between whom the idea of an exchange arises, as it were, organically. However, these spontaneous exchanges clearly meet only a small fraction of the demand, in that we all have heard of individuals who are frustrated in their individual desire to acquire overseas experience by the lack of a partner. Some of these write countless letters to foreign institutions, and clearly if one makes enough of these approaches one can eventually be successful. However, we have to remember that the already considerable effort expended by the applicant is multiplied by the time devoted to handling his letters in the numerous departments that receive them. As an economic historian I am aware of the considerable drag exerted by transactions costs on all forms of exchange, and where the proffered commodity is as variable in its utility as a university professor, there has to be a better way! Pursuing the analogy, some kind of marketplace is clearly required in which exchangees can be brought into contact with one another.
A possible marketplace is that created by a general exchange agreement between two departments or institutions. Plenty of these agreements exist, and they are clearly extremely valuable in promoting international contact on a variety of levels, particularly in the area of student exchanges. However, subject to correction by those with contrary experience, I would venture the view that they are by no means the perfect way to foster faculty exchanges, simply because the marketplace is too small to generate a significant number of feasible pairings. I base this judgment on the existence since the mid-1970s of an informal exchange understanding between the historical departments at the University of Sheffield and the large and brilliant history department of one of the most distinguished American liberal arts colleges. Despite the goodwill expressed on numerous occasions by both parties, and the circulation of lists or interested faculty, not one pairing has been achieved so far. Equally unproductive have been similar understandings between the Sheffield historians and those of five more North American colleges and universities, even though the Sheffield pool has been complemented by historians from the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. At long last, I managed last year to set up in principle an exchange between a Sheffield historian and a member of our most southerly partner departments in the US (I mention this point because the Dixie climate was quite an important attraction for the British exchangee) to take place in 1984-85. As recently as April, I was able to act as goodwill messenger between the two exchangees when I made a working visit to a number of American universities, but the exchange has now fallen through owing to hitches in the teaching and housing areas to which I have already referred. This experience is not necessarily discouraging; sooner or later one of these exchanges is really going to come to fruition and the extension of the pool of potential exchangees by the creation of consortia of interested departments is clearly a step in the right direction. However, all this is taking too long and it still retains an element of hit or miss. The next step, therefore, is to create national pools of exchangees, and it is my efforts to push toward this goal that have immediately preceded my writing of this article.
Any national exchange initiative can scarcely fail to involve at least one of the national organizations of academic historians. Britain, with its strongly State-directed educational system, possesses a semiautonomous official body financed by the central government, the active and helpful Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges. The bureau has run a teaching exchange scheme for some years, and a very successful scheme it is. However, it caters principally to schoolteachers, with a degree of outreach into further education. The bureau’s staff frequently advises those wishing to negotiate exchanges within the higher education sector, but there is no formal scheme to meet their needs. At the American end there is, as far as I am aware, no direct equivalent of the bureau, but the American Historical Association only recently has set up machinery to facilitate exchanges within North America in association with the Canadian Historical Association. My letter to AHA Executive Director Samuel Gammon suggesting the creation of machinery to link Britain and the US led to my being invited to write this article to explain my ideas directly to the AHA membership.
First of all, I need to make it clear that I represent no one other than myself and that I have not consulted the Historical Association, the closest British equivalent to the AHA and the CHA. about its possible participation in the organization of the British end. This is partly because the AHA could run the British end as well, and its possible extensions to Continental Europe. The machinery I have in mind differs from that agreed between the AHA and the CHA, in that more would be involved than the compilation by the national associations of lists of potential exchangees. I propose the mailing of a questionnaire to all historians in higher education in Britain and the US, to be returned by all those interested in principle in an exchange together with basic information in codifiable format on status, career, teaching and research interests, and family and housing circumstances. Personal and/or computer processing would allow the secretariat to detect pairings that have a high chance of coming to fruition, and to contact both parties to offer its good offices in the detailed negotiation of an exchange. The central organization would thus retain a clear overview of the volume and structure of the exchange flows, which would help it to make a case for any necessary enabling funds such as travel awards and perhaps even salary supplements to government departments and private foundations. Its support could also enhance the credibility of individual exchangees when they approached their institutions to request leave and recognition for the incoming exchangee. Participants would receive an annual questionnaire update and every five years a full circulation of the entire historical constituency would be undertaken. Last, but not least, the central organization would try to ease the exchangees’ path through the thickets of tax and immigration regulations, and negotiate for more suitable arrangements when necessary.
This machinery would require a substantial annual commitment of funds. The larger the organization running it, the more of the cost could be absorbed into overheads. A special subscription could be sought from interested faculty when they put their names in the system. Alternatively, funding for the machinery itself could be sought from official or private bodies, separate from any outside support for travel awards and the like. The secretariat could be contracted out on a tender basis, following the recent example of the Public Historians. None of this would be easy or cheap, but it is arguably the most effective means of maximizing the number of exchanges and promoting a degree of mobility and regeneration in the profession which will stand a chance of enhancing significantly the academic existence of all of us, together with our students and families, during the rest of this century and beyond.
Anthony R. Sutcliffe is professor in the Department of Economic and Social History, University of Sheffield, England.
