What does it mean to be an academic in the twenty first century? Clearly there is no one answer to this question as the diversity evident in the following chapters reveals. Elite research universities often tend to join with others of their kind so that a professor from an elite US institution may well undertake a Japanese sabbatical (if at all) at the University of Tokyo a UK semester at Oxford or Cambridge or an Australian semester at the University of Sydney or perhaps Melbourne. At each they can expect to have at their disposal well-stocked libraries replete with requisite books journals and databases (many now available electronically) as well as highly regarded specialist peers in their research areas with whom they can discuss their work in detail. How can this academic lifeworld be compared with that of a member of the South East Asian professoriate for example or many in Latin America and Africa where inadequate wages often necessitate taking on a second job often at a lower quality private institution (which however likely offers better remuneration) and/or perhaps conducting a small business on the side (Welch 2003 Tipton Jarvis and Welch 2003) and where the lack of basic infrastructure as well as research training means that teaching and perhaps some administration is perhaps the limit of one s activities? The story of differentiation however is not limited todifferences between elite institutions in OECD countries and more modest institutions elsewhere.