Part-Time Professors in the Netherlands: Old Wine in New Bottles?

Abstract

Dutch universities have traditionally conferred the title of buitengewoon hoogleraar (extraordinary professor) on those professors who are engaged in occupations outside as well as within the university. As early as 1636, the year of its foundation, the University of Utrecht had both extraordinary and ordinary professors (Kipp, 1955), and the title is known in other countries, like Switzerland and Belgium where the corresponding designation is professeur extraordinaire. In Holland, the extraordinary professor holds a part-time chair (typically one or two days a week) and is now looked upon as a valuable contributor to education and research because of his experience outside the university. In 1949, the Commissie Reinink, a governmental commission to reform the university system, recommended the appointment as an extraordinary professor only of someone who elsewhere fulfils the main task from which he derives his importance as a professor. The commission intended to change the lower status of the extraordinary professor in the academic hierarchy. Moreover the institution of extraordinary professor has more recently come to be a subject also for science policy and thus seen as a means to increasing and intensifying relations between university and industry. Set out in the next section is the science policy perspective which led us to take a closer look at the history of the extraordinary professorship in the Dutch university system, in an attempt to answer how and why the institution emerged and to determine the extent to which it has in practice been employed as a means of improving university/industry relations.