Generational Relationships in the Academic and Teaching Community: A Problem Statement

The relevance of studying generational relationships in academic and teaching communities stems from significant gaps in sociological research on higher education. The academic community of university academic and teaching staff has a complex structure, the generational one being one of the variety. Its current state and changing dynamics influence the functioning of modern Russian universities, raising concerns among both academic and teaching staff and university administration. The problems of generational relationships within the academic and teaching community, caused by imbalances in its generational structure, form the subject of this article. The purpose of the study is to determine the content and nature of generational relationships within the academic and teaching community. The article presents an analysis of academic and teaching staff's understanding of the problems of generational relationships, including signs of crisis and their orientation toward the ideal of intergenerational relationships. The article considers the reasons for the relevance of the problem, its theoretical and practical significance, scientific novelty, and outlines the possibilities of using the research results to solve important problems of university development. Along with a review of the literature on this issue, an analysis of the theoretical foundations of the study is presented with an emphasis on the conceptual substantiation of generational issues in the works of K. Mannheim. The empirical basis of the article is formed by the data of two sociological studies (2023-2024), obtained in the course of semi-structured interviews with representatives of different generations of scientific, pedagogical and administrative-managerial workers of Russian universities. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the focus on the contradictions of generational relations among scientific and pedagogical workers and the identification of potential zones of intergenerational tensions and conflicts. The main results of this study are as follows: interpretation of the orientation of scientific and pedagogical workers on achieving a balance in generational relations; characterization of the "rejuvenation policy" as a factor in the actualisation of negative age stereotypes; the definition of scientific schools and scientific mentoring as conflict-free zones of generational relations. The authors point to the risks of exaggerating the role of the younger generation, that are generated by state policy in higher education. They conclude that managerial assessments of a university's generational structure based solely on quantitative parameters of the ratio of representatives of the younger and older generations of academic staff are weakly justified.