Academic workload allocation: equity, accountability, transparency,

futility?

Janice MalcolmCentre for the Study of Higher

Education

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1960s academic work

Robbins survey (diary based) 1961:Average direct teaching 7.6 hours per weekAverage working week 40.5 hours, of which:

Teaching Research ‘Private study’

Admin Other External

Term-time

33% 28% 11% 11% 11% 6%

Vacation 8% 45% 15% 10% 15% 7%

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Halsey et al 1964-5

‘Staff/student ratios in British universities are high and formal obligations light. There is freedom in the sense of personal autonomy of an order to be found rarely, if at all, in other occupational groups. These conditions permit the essential elements of what is considered a ‘gentlemanly’ way of life … Reputation largely, though not wholly, depends on professional standards.’

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Teichler CAP survey 2007

average weekly working hours (increases shown in black)

Australia Germany Japan US UK

Jun Sen Jun Sen Jun Sen Jun Sen Jun Sen

1992 47 51 46 51 48 51 45 50 46 51

2007 46 50 40 54 47 51 44 48 42 47

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Teichler CAP survey 2007

average % of work time spent on teaching and research(increases shown in black)

Australia Germany Japan US UK

Jun Sen Jun Sen Jun Sen Jun Sen Jun Sen

Teaching

1992 36 25 20 33 20 22 32 27 28 24

2007 29 19 20 26 29 32 38 28 26 31

Research

1992 38 32 54 39 53 51 41 43 45 37

2007 41 42 55 36 41 41 37 38 43 35

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Changes in average teaching hours: CAP survey 2007(increases shown in black)

Country DE UK US JP KR HK AUS BRZ MX

1992 16.4 21.3 18.7 19.7 23.1 19 21.8 21.9 16.9

2007 12.3 15 21.6 21.8 21.4 19.9 17.6 18.9 21.5

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Expansion of HE 1992-2007

1992 2007 1992-2007TertiaryStudents

Teaching Staff

Tertiary Students

Teaching staff

% Increase Students

% Increase Staff

UK 1,385,072 89,500 2,362,815 129,930 71% 45%

USA 14,360,965 826,000 17,758,870 1,310,453 24% 59%

Aus 559,365 28,417 1,083,715 34,413 94% 21%

Japan 2,899,143 286,166 4,032,625 515,732 39% 80%

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Changing staff-student ratios:

1957 1:7.2 (source: UGC)1980 1:9.4 - Polytechnics 1:8.1 1995/6 1:16.52003/04 1:18.12008/09 1:16.3

Sources: UGC; Shattock; UCU

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WAM critiques• academic work defined as a problem which needs managing to

increase efficiency ; actors transformed into manageable entities that can be transported through space-time (Malcolm and Zukas 2009)

• The paradox of ‘collegiality’: academic resistance to greater central regulation devolves power and discretion to senior individuals in departments, reinforcing unequal power relations (Hull, 2006)

• ‘With apparently unconscious irony, many academics reported that they particularly valued the flexibility of their working week, in terms of both time and space … in the same breath as reporting working weeks in the order of 60 hours’ (Anderson, 2006)

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Working time?

Kent: No hours of work; no holidays(but 1650 hours for funding purposes)

Leeds: 1650 hours of work; 30 days holiday

Oxford: ‘to engage in advanced study or research; to give …not less than 16 lectures or classes a year; and to take part in university examining and graduate supervision as and when requested … it is expected that CUF lecturers will limit their total commitments, and colleges their demands on them, so that time will be available for advanced study or research.’

DIT: ‘Teaching up to 560 hours p.a. including supervision … a norm of 16 class contact hours per week’

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‘The Work Allocation Model (WAM) allows staff to concentrate time on their areas of expertise’ (from REF documentation).

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Further issues …• Dearth of research on what everyday academic work actually is (except in

labs); labels cover a multitude of different practices and mutual incomprehension

• Focus on individual as unit of analysis; though research on scientists and other professions points to distributed and collective nature of much knowledge-work

• Reliance on ‘billable’ and easily-quantifiable ‘outputs’

• Obscuring of ‘inputs’ and what falls outside institutional categories (so shift from disciplinary to institutional definitions of valuable work)

• Failure to account for the transformed practices that comprise academic work

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• Equity• Accountability• Transparency• Futility

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ReferencesAnderson, G. (2006),’Carving out time and space in the managerial university", Journal of Organizational Change Management 19:5 578 – 592Cummings, W. (2012) ‘The conditions of continuity and the drivers of change’, Paper presented at CAP Conference, BerlinHouston, D. et al (2006) ‘Academic staff workloads and job satisfaction: expectations and values in academe’, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 28:1, 17-30Hull, R. (2006) ‘Workload allocation models and “collegiality” in academic departments’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 19:1, 38-53Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (2nd edition) Ewing, NJ: Princeton University PressMalcolm, J. and Zukas, M. (2009) ‘Making a mess of academic work: experience, purpose, identity’, Teaching in Higher Education 14:5, 495-506Teichler, U. (2009) The Employment and Work Situation of the Academic Profession: Findings of Comparative Surveys: A Report submitted to the International Labour OfficeShattock, M. (2012) Making Policy in British Higher Education 1945-2011, Open University PressTight, M. (2010) ‘Are academic workloads increasing? The post-war survey evidence in the UK’, Higher Education Quarterly, 64:2, 200-215

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