The Academic Rat Race: Dilemmas and Problems in the Structure of Academic Competition 1 Xavier Landes, Martin Marchman and Morten Nielsen Centre for the Study of Equality and Multiculturalism (CESEM), University of Copenhagen This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedited version of an article published in Learning and Teaching. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Landes, Xavier; Marchman, Martin; Nielsen, Morten, ‘The Academic Rate Race: Dilemmas and Problems in the Structure of Academic Competition’, Learning and Teaching, volume 5, number 2, pp.73-90 is available online at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/latiss/2012/00000005/00000002/art00005 Abstract The social benefits expected from academia are generally identified as belonging to three broad categories: research, education and contribution to society in general.. However, evaluating the present situation of academia according to these criteria reveals a somewhat disturbing phenomenon: an increased pressure to produce articles (in peer-reviewed journals) has created an unbalanced emphasis on the research criterion at the expense of the latter two. More fatally, this pressure has turned academia into a rat race, leading to a deep change in the fundamental structure of academic behaviour, and entailing a self-defeating and hence counter-productive pattern, where more publications is always better and where it becomes increasingly difficult for researchers to keep up with the new research in their field. The article identifies in the pressure to publish a problem of collective action. It ends up by raising questions about how to break this vicious circle and restore a better balance between all three of the social benefits of academia. This article is an expanded and elaborated version of a shorter article published in Le Monde (‘Les Chercheurs sont 1 prisonniers d’une course à la publication’), Weekendavisen (‘Om forskere og søelefanter’) and in the Journal of the International Institute for Asian Studies (‘On Academia and Sea Elephants’). The authors wish to thank Susan Wright and three anonymous referees for their extremely useful comments. 1