Public engagement professionals in a prestige economy: Ghosts in the machine
研究英国大学中公众参与专业人员在声望经济下面临的挑战，揭示他们作为非学术人员难以获得与学者同等的尊重，其专业能力被贬低导致领导力受阻，最终使公众参与在高度分层的大学中逐渐消失。
Over the last decade, there has been significant investment made by the UK higher education policy and funding community in embedding public engagement within British universities. While some public engagement is undertaken by university staff – often on a voluntary and unpaid basis – much is carried out by public engagement professionals (PEPs), typically from within professional services divisions. The following account, based upon a multi-site case study of institutional leadership for public engagement, adopts a Bourdieusian lens to consider the challenges faced by PEPs as ‘non-academics’ working within the UK’s university sector as a prestige economy. It reveals their struggle to gain a professional parity of esteem with academics, and how the discrediting of their expertise by the latter forms a challenge to their leadership and thus their displacement within universities as highly stratified organisations. Ergo, we find the evanescing of public engagement as a formal institutional commitment. 2018 Viewforth Consulting. 2018. An elephant in the room: The hidden economic value of public engagement and knowledge exchange in UK universities. Available from: http://www.viewforthconsulting.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Theelephantintheroom.pdf. [Google Scholar] 2011 Blackmore, P., and C. B. Kandiko. 2011. “Motivation in Academic Life: A Prestige Economy.” Research in Post-Compulsory Education 16 (4): 399–411.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar])t.