Australian academics are being squeezed from all sides, facing ever-intensifying bureaucratic expectations around research output, coupled with increased teaching commitments and mounting administrative duties. These demands are occurring in an environment where most academics are still employed under traditional arrangements whereby, notionally,…

In this paper, we discuss findings from a research project in which barriers to and facilitators for promotion with women academics were explored. Four focus groups of women academics at an Australian university were held. Data including responses to semi-structured questions were analysed and interpreted using coding and thematic analysis. We…

This paper addresses the important and linked questions of how to manage academic performance and workload effectively. It highlights the need in a modern, corporatised university to consider the nature of academic work and optimal ways to develop workload allocation and performance management processes. This paper complements two previous papers…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had broad ranging impacts on the delivery of education at universities. In this context, hybrid-flexible teaching, or HyFlex (HF), has been offered at my university as a mode of delivery ostensibly suitable to what is ultimately a disrupted teaching environment. HF involves the delivery of a subject simultaneously in…

This article provides insight into the nature of research workload allocation for Australian academics. It explores the distinction between research performance and research workload allocation. Research performance can be judged at an institutional level, a work group level or an individual level. The process by which an institution's research…

Attraction and retention of highly qualified employees has become an area of concern for Australian universities. It has been suggested that flexible work arrangements can be utilised to achieve this goal once the factors affecting their uptake have been identified. This mixed-method study of 495 academic and general staff at an Australian…

This paper presents a detailed case study of the development and implementation of a quantifiable academic workload model in the education faculty of an Australian university. Flowing from the enterprise bargaining process, the Academic Staff Agreement required the implementation of a workload allocation model for academics that was quantifiable…

Successive waves of neoliberal reforms to higher education have taken their toll on the academy. This paper uses the zombie metaphor to discuss the causes and consequences of organisational change on Australian academics as a background to exploring zombiefication as a form of passive resistance and survival. The paper uses the literature and…

In this essay, the authors talk about higher degree supervision as a human relationship, and shares how to supervise a PhD. There's a tendency now to talk about supervision as if it's a technical process one needs to learn the rules of. This paper urges educators to think about this as a human educational relationship, which has all the ups and…

Many universities have introduced team supervision as a means of intervening in the intensity of the traditional supervisor-student dyad. This policy is intended to provide students with a great support during their candidature and to share the burden of sole supervision. It is also a pedagogy that seeks to support students' engagement with new…

The loss of collegiality and the loss of academic integrity were key themes raised during forums, personal interviews, a survey and focus groups conducted with University of Western Sydney academic staff as part of a research project into academic work load agreements. In this paper the experiences related by participants are placed in the light…

Commonwealth funding formulae have caused Australian universities to become obsessed with maximising external research funding. Considerable pressure is applied to faculties, departments and scholars to apply for funding, and relative success in attracting it is given excessive weight in evaluating research performance. This may be productive in…

Academic environments for Australian faculty in Australia and Hong Kong are compared, and the likelihood of job satisfaction for Australians in Hong Kong is discussed. Career conditions under which Hong Kong employment will be most satisfactory are noted. (MSE)

Examines models of academic work in terms of the concepts of "residual, dominant, and emergent" discourses and practices, and in light of changing roles of universities, particularly in Australia. Models discussed include those viewing the academic as bureaucratic professional, market professional who defines his own work but produces…

Two distinct but related issues in Australian higher education are noted: the apparent spread of overseas campuses of Australian universities seeking a competitive advantage in international education, and the emergence of new information technologies that enable packaging and delivery of interactive educational services on demand over long…