A vocation is an individual's sense of being called to pursue a given profession. Vocations are typified by passion, absorption in work, a desire for prosocial work, and a tendency to sacrifice for the vocation. Vocations have been linked to both advantageous and adverse effects, including the propensity for vocational workers to suffer workplace…

Writing Program Administration (WPA) is an interdisciplinary field that addresses the management and development of writing programs in educational institutions. WPA entails writing instruction pedagogy, curriculum design, assessment, and faculty development pertaining to the teaching of writing. Graduate students in Humanities and English-based…

This research contributes to debates on intern labour, particularly preparing young workers for careers in the culture industries and exploitative experiences that may hinder their success. The purpose of this study is to enrich our understanding of the skillsets required by young practitioners and how creative autonomy can be a fruitful…

This study explores the experiences of 30 Latina/o/x faculty navigating tenure expectations at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). The author uses qualitative interviews, guided by organizational theory and epistemic exclusion, to identify organizational conditions, policies, and practices that promote or impede the professional development and…

This study explores the teaching practices and labor conditions of media and communication adjunct faculty at three universities. Since the late 1960s, the number of faculty who are part-time and contingent is increasing and adjuncts are now more than 70% of college and university faculty (AAUP, n.d.). In this study, I examine the neoliberal…

Employing graduate students in undergraduate courses is common practice in higher education. This study focused on the concerns of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) to learn how their work performance could be improved. GTAs (N = 158) at a major research university in Israel provided written recommendations for enhancing their work. Thematic…

Working conditions in academia are generally considered to be deteriorating. Data from surveys which look at the job satisfaction of academics, however, do not clearly support this notion. This appears to be especially true for the case of Japan. Much of the recent literature on academics' job satisfaction globally relies on the comparison of two…

In this conceptual paper, I contend that the soul of academic labour is becoming lost in performativity. Performativity, I explain, is a form of regulation and control that deploys technical rationality and judgements to incentivize and punish academics. Indeed, performativity is central to the culture of measurement within contemporary…

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) represents 72,000 academic staff at universities and colleges across the country. CAUT strives for fair working conditions, compensation and benefits to foster quality teaching and innovative research while advancing equity and human rights within our profession. Many of the institutions where…

'Employers know that they can hire worldwide now … so, there is limitless supply of people … who can do the job … . they're all qualified, most of them are actually over-qualified … . I'm a wage slave basically, I don't think we have very much social status … . we are replaceable workers … I mean, the employer holds all the cards really. We are…

This study details the research practices that were developed to operationalize the guiding principles of the transformative mixed methods design. A transformative, explanatory-sequential mixed methods design was utilized to examine the workplace experiences of academic migrants and findings from the study supported better work conditions for the…

Based on personal experiences garnered through years of adjunct instruction, the authors explore the challenges associated with working in academia without the guarantees of a long-term contract or tenure. Further, adjuncts are desperate to accept any position that is remunerative and this willingness undermines contract negotiation leverage of…

"Building the Workforce of the Future" is an in-depth, independent report on the first eighteen months of Career Pathways, New York City's sweeping new strategy for workforce development. In November 2014, Mayor de Blasio launched a sweeping new approach to workforce development in New York City. Unlike the previous model, which…

This article explores the issues casual academics face in Australia and whether these pose risks to teaching quality. The logic of the rampant casualisation in Australian universities is exposed first (i.e., mainly flexibility and cost saving to offset drops in government funding), followed by a discussion on the theoretical risks casualisation…

This policy brief presents some basic facts about the retention of recent college graduates and changes in retention over time, updating an earlier report on this topic. It shows, for example, how New England compares with other Census divisions, what factors affect its ability to retain graduates, and the reasons why recent college graduates…