Occupational Stress of University Teachers of Assam: Does Ownership Status of Universities Matter?

Abstract

This paper aims to measure and compare the occupational stress level of teachers in central, state, and private universities of Assam, a large state located in Northeast India. It also intends to investigate the relative intensity of various stressors among the teachers. Administering a structured questionnaire-based survey, we collected data from 536 university teachers and analyzed it by deploying Kruskal-Wallis H- test. Our findings indicate that teachers in central universities experience a higher level of occupational stress than their counterparts in state and private universities. While teachers’ lack of control and student related issues are the critical stress sources in state and private universities, workload, excessive formalities, and lack of recognition are the major stressors in central universities. While unfolding the relative intensity of various stressors in different types of universities, the paper’s empirical findings contribute to stress research by offering insights into the stress issues encountered by university teachers.