Abstract
This paper examines perceptions by academics of their work in the Australian state of Victoria, and places such perceptions within the context of international and Australian debates on the academic profession. A 2010 survey conducted by the National Tertiary Education Union in Victoria was analysed in light of the literature on academic work satisfaction and on corporatised managerial practice (“managerialism”). The analysis is also placed in the context of neo-liberalism, defined as a more marketised provision combined with increased pro-market state regulation. Factor analysis was used to reduce 18 items we hypothesised as drivers of work satisfaction to four factors: managerial culture, workloads, work status and self-perceived productivity. Regression models show the relative effects of these factors on two items measuring work satisfaction. This analysis is complemented by discursive analysis of open-ended responses. We found that satisfaction among academics was low and decreasing compared to a previous survey, and that management culture was the most important driver. Concern with workloads also drove dissatisfaction, although academics seem happy to be more productive if they have control over their work and develop in their jobs. Work status had little effect. In the open-ended responses the more dissatisfied academics tended to contrast a marketised present to a collegial past. While respondents seem to conflate all recent managerial change with marketisation, we pose a crucial question: whether the need for more professional management needs to be congruent with marketising policy directions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This is a collaborative research project entitled Work and Social Cohesion Under Globalisation, supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC), within which a focus on work satisfaction is part of a more general aim to examine how demands for innovation and productivity gains can be reconciled with fairness in five industries (tourism, health, information and communications technologies and automotive parts as well as higher education).
The exact extent of the small but burgeoning sector of private providers and public technical colleges involved in higher education, part of an increasing marketisation of higher education discussed below, is unclear, as the reporting of student and staff data for non-university provision only became mandatory in 2010 with figures not available until 2012.
A personal communication from a colleague who was an NTEU union official through the period that these surveys were undertaken indicates that their results have not been published previously, although they were used in briefings to university managements and to inform union collective bargaining teams.
In order to allow each of these variable to be included in a factor analysis, as described below, the following were coded as numerical, ordinal variables: form of employment, that is casual, fixed term and continuing were recoded 1, 2 and 3 in terms of increasing job security; academic salary classifications A through E were recoded as numbers 1 through 5. Part-time versus full-time employment, union membership versus non-membership and gender were coded as dummy variables. Note the latter two were found to have no significant effects.
We will not reproduce the correlations here. Most were mutually correlated positively or negatively at the 0.01 significance level.
We will not reproduce here the details of this score, save to say that it accounts for a very substantial 75 per cent of the variance of WS1 and WS2 and that Bartlett’s test is not significant at the α = 0.01 level, which indicates a strong probability that there are significant relationships between the variables.
References
Anderson, G. (2006). Carving out time and space in the managerial university. Journal of Organisational Change, 19(5), 578–592.
Anderson, G. (2008). Mapping academic resistance in the managerial university. Organisation, 15(2), 251–270.
Bellamy, S., Morley, C., & Watty, K. (2003). Why do business academics remain in Australian universities despite deteriorating work conditions and reduced job satisfaction: an intellectual puzzle. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 25(1), 13–28.
Blainey, G. (1957). A centary history of the University of Melboourne. Carlton: Melbourne University Press.
Brule, E. (2004). Going to market: Neoliberalism and the social construction of the university student as an autonomous consumer. In M. Reimer (Ed.), Inside the corporate U: Women in the acdemy speak out (pp. 255–281). Toronto: Sumach Press.
Bryson, C. (2004). What about the Workers? The expansion of higher education and the transformation of academic work. Industrial Relations Journal, 35(1), 38–57.
Coates, H., Dobson, I., Edwards, D., Friedman, T., Goedegebuure, L., & Meek, L. (2009). The attractiveness of the Australian academic profession: A comparative analysis. Melbourne: LH Martin Institute.
Coates, H., Dobson, I. R., Goedegebuure, L., & Meek, L. (2010). Across the great divide: What do Australian academics think of university leadership? Advice from the CAP survey. [Article]. Journal of Higher Education Policy & Management, 32(4), 379–387. doi:10.1080/1360080x.2010.491111.
Coffey, A., & Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data. London: Thousand Oaks.
Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations. (2006). Students 2004 full year. Accessed July 21, 2011 http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Publications/HEStatistics/Publications/Pages/Students.aspx.
Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations. (2011). Students 2009 full year. Accessed July 21, 2011 http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Publications/HEStatistics/Publications/Pages/Students.aspx.
Foster, S. G., & Varghese, M. M. (1996). The making of the Australian National University. St Leonards: Allen and Uniwin.
Friedman, M., & Friedman, R. D. (1980). Free to choose. London: Penguin.
Gaither, C. A., Nadkarni, A., Mott, D. A., Schommer, J. C., Doucette, W. R., Kreling, D. H., et al. (2007). Should I stay or should I go? The influence of individual and organizational factors on pharmacists’ future work plans. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association: Japha, 47(2), 165–173.
Gough, R., Brewer, P., & Foley, P. (2010). Job satisfaction and work intensity in ten acute care Australian hospitals. Paper presented at the 24th Association of Industrial Relation Academics of Australia and New Zealand Conference, Sydney, February 3–5.
Green, F. (2006). Workers well-being. In Demanding work: The paradox of job quality in the affluent society (pp. 150–169). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Harman, G., & Meek, L. (2007). Australia: Adjustment to the new management and entrepreneurial environment. In W. Locke & U. Teichler (Eds.), The changing conditions for academic work and careers in select countries (pp. 127–146). Kassel: University of Kassel.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hayek, F. (1976). Law, legislation and liberty (Vol. 2). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Houston, D., Meyer, L. H., & Paewai, S. (2006). Academic staff workloads and job satisfaction: Expectations and values in academe. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 28(1), 17–30.
Lacy, F. J., & Sheehan, B. A. (1997). Job satisfaction among academic staff: An international perspective. Higher Education, 34, 305–322.
Levi-Faur, D., & Jordana, J. (2005). Preface: The makings of a new regulatory order. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: Globalizing regulatory capitalism, 598(1), 6–9.
Lyons, M., & Ingersoll, L. (2010). Regulated autonomy or autonomous regulation? Collective bargaining and academic workloads in Australian universities. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 32(2), 137–148.
Marginson, S. (2006). Dynamics of national and global competition in higher education. Higher Education, 52(1), 1–39.
McInnis, C. (1999). The work roles of academics in Australian universities. Canberra: Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
Moodie, G. (2009a). Four tiers. Higher Education, 58(3), 307–320.
Moodie, G. (2009b). Types of Australian universities. Accessed August 15, 2011 http://rmit.academia.edu/GavinMoodie/Papers/265078/Types_of_Australian_universities.
National Tertiary Education Union (2007). The funding of Australian universities 1996–2005. Accessed August 1, 2010 http://www.nteu.org.au/policy/submissions/discussionpapers07/fundingunis.
Shaver, K. H. (2003). Job and career satisfaction among staff nurses: Effects of job setting and environment. The Journal of nursing administration, 33(3), 166.
Symes, C. (1999). ‘Working for your future’: The rise of the vocationalised university. Australian Journal of Education, 43(3), 241–256.
Universities Australia (2010). Student to teacher ratio for academic staffwith teaching function. Accessed August 1, 2011 http://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/resources/404/388.
Waitere, H. J., Wright, J., Tremaine, M., Brown, S., & Pause, C. J. (2011). Choosing whether to resist or reinforce the new managerialism: The impact of performance-based research funding on academic identity. Higher Education Research & Development, 30(2), 205–217.
Winefield, T., Boyd, C., Saebel, J., & Pignata, S. (2008). Update on national university stress study. Australian Universities Review, 50(1), 20–29.
Winter, R., & Sarros, J. (2002a). The academic work environment in Australian universities: A motivating place to work? Higher Education Research and Development, 21(3), 241–258.
Winter, R., & Sarros, J. (2002b). Corporate reforms to australian universities: Views from the academic heartland. Journal of Institutional Research, 11(2), 92–104.
Winter, R., Taylor, T., & Sarros, J. (2000). Trouble at mill: Quality of academic worklife issues within a comprehensive Australian university. Studies in Higher Education, 25(3), 279–294.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the industry partners and participating colleagues and institutions in the Australian Research Council Linkage Project, Work and Social Cohesion Under Globalisation, of which this paper is a part. Particular thanks are due to the Victorian Division of the NTEU, a project partner, for making available the data for this paper. Its communications and campaigns officer Alex White deserves special mention. The second-named author discloses an interest as the immediate past honorary president of the NTEU in Victoria. The authors acknowledge the assistance of Richard Gough, Victoria University, in formulating the conceptual direction of this paper. We also thank Leo Goedegebuure, University of Melbourne, and two anonymous reviewers, all of whom made very useful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fredman, N., Doughney, J. Academic dissatisfaction, managerial change and neo-liberalism. High Educ 64, 41–58 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-011-9479-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-011-9479-y