Old professors never die

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the career changing roles of university professors. Design/methodology/approach – Poetic exposition. Findings – Observes the common trend of research and teaching professors to become elevated to university management positions, thereby abandoning their teaching and research roles. Research limitations/implications – Implies the loss of scholarly potential and productivity to managerialism in the university sector and calls for the recovery of a cadre of professorial researchers. Originality/value – Critiques the increasingly administrative role of senior university academics in the world of increasingly corporatised universities.