jumping ahead of, you’re probably going to ask these sorts of questions a bit later, but in terms of work life balance, if you’re either a male or you’re single, then what you can do
and how much time you can devote to your work is totally different than if you are a female and you’re married. So yeah, so the day, my day is quite truncated and there’s not,
by the time I’ve picked up my son from school and organised homework and cooking dinner and everything else there’s, yeah, I don’t typically do work at night time. Plus some nights I’m here teaching, so yeah. (Research Assoc. Professor, Melbourne) (Interview 24, p6) New academics, particularly females with young families, suffer added stress and anxiety as a result of spending longer hours at work. In order to cope there is a greater reliance on extended family to help with family responsibilities, but this is not always possible and so the added financial burden of childcare can add to the pressures new academics have to endure. The added responsibilities of raising a family, being relatively new and in a constantly changing work environment combined with having to cope with young families, make new academics particularly vulnerable.
Work commitments
Apart from the pressures of dealing with family commitments, new academics have to endure the strains of having to teach full time teaching loads, continue to maintain a high
How academics respond, adapt and cope with the transformational changes in the
level of research output and most importantly fighting to secure tenure or promotion. Universities reduce time spent teaching in line with research output with research output and workloads models. As a result, new academics, who do not have a track record of high quality publications, are expected to compensate for this lack of publications by teaching more classes. Further, teaching more classes requires dealing with more students, grading more student work and spending more of one’s work time in class. The result of this is that less time spent on research, and so the heavy teaching commitments continue. It is difficult to break this vicious circle, unless a new academic forges a link with an experienced research partner and begins to produce quality publications. Having quality research publications not only sees the slow reduction of teaching commitments, but also benefits the new academic’s bid for tenure or promotion.
The pressures faced by new academics are captured in the following views of older academics:
I think that there is too much strain upon academics, particularly junior academics coming in where a lot of the workloads appear to be piled up upon people. (Law Professor, Monash) (Interview 1, p16)
I think it puts people, I think trying to secure tenure puts enormous pressure on people.(Accounting Senior Lecturer, Melbourne) (Interview 18, p16)
In line with the experience of many new workers, who arrive in a workplace for the first time, new academics are usually unaware of the custom and practice of their new workplace. They do not have the benefit of past experience and presume what is asked of them is normal, although it isn’t what they expected. Being new to the workplace makes them vulnerable, and so it is not likely that they would question or even try to negotiate better working conditions. This situation is reinforced because many new academics are on probation for sometimes up to three years, and so they have even less incentive to question their working conditions. Hence the pressures to conform to work requirements are greatest among those academics who are most vulnerable. In contrast, seasoned academics are in more powerful positions and are better placed to defend themselves.
The comments of the following Monash academic reflect differences between new and seasoned academics:
Younger staff – understand this is a completely personal view. Younger staff, who have, of course, been continually exposed to evaluation – that is, evaluating staff and the rest of it – are more – well, they’re more trained and inculcated into those things. They don’t
How academics respond, adapt and cope with the transformational changes in the
question it … But we’re also in quite senior positions now. Which means that we can, to some extent, fight against those systems. You know, in the end we just become
grumpy old – grumpy old academics, right? That’s what it means, I – dinosaurs is another way of describing it. So – so, we’re more robust to those sorts of measures. (Engineering Assoc. Professor, Monash) (Interview 33, p9)
The increased pressure that new academics experience in the workplace has meant that they find it harder to achieve work life balance. This is particularly true for young, vulnerable academics, who may blame themselves for not coping, because they do not have the experience, confidence or personal motivation to defend themselves (Hull 2006; McWilliam 2004).
A young Monash academic commented about the pressure that:
If you wake up in the morning and you can’t take it anymore, or you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, leave. This is a job not for everyone. (Accounting Lecturer, Monash) (Interview 16, p26)
A senior Monash academic reinforced these views by observing that:
… I am not optimistic. I think that universities have become too targeted towards, I
don’t know, product or whatever. …I think that there is too much strain upon
academics, particularly junior academics coming in where a lot of the workloads appear to be piled up upon people. (Law Professor, Monash) (Interview 1, p15)
New academics are the most vulnerable to the pressures of a changing environment. They have the least number of defence mechanisms, such as a position of authority and experience in the workplace to enable them to defend themselves against difficult workplace pressures and demands. Furthermore, because new academics are less likely to question workplace demands, they tend to become the ones who are most likely to suffer the added pressure of these demands.