What impedes and enables flourishing among early career academics?

Abstract

Early career academics face a rapidly changing higher education sector and too little is known about what helps them flourish in the profession. This paper responds to that gap by reporting research undertaken in a single or intrinsic case study of one Australian university. We invited participation from a full cohort of 1019 academics in one large College. Of those, 41 early career academics or ECAs and 45 more senior academics or MSAs engaged in a 50-question survey. Of those, 18 ECAs and 16 MSAs who had flagged interest then completed an in-depth interview. We learned about: ECAs’ work; what they and MSAs think impedes and enables that work; work-life balance; and experiences of mentoring and career development. We also asked for their perspectives on the future. We found remarkable agreement across the two cohorts that mirrors concerns expressed in a growing, internationally significant literature. Members of both cohorts appealed for strengthened organisational and sectoral commitments to caring career pathways and sought more certainty in challenging times. Our findings led us to conclude that academics have high hopes that universities and those in higher education policy settings can address work overload; enhance professional development across all duties; make leaner systems and processes; have more realistic expectations about research; and better value academics’ profound commitments to higher education. Those findings accord with other results reported in comparable jurisdictions around the world and add weight to an increasingly compelling case to recentre and refocus on people in university organisational cultures and practices.

Defining and Advancing a Systems Approach to Achieving Educator Wellbeing: An Integrative Review of Wellbeing in Higher Education

“…Many papers posited that the dominant neoliberal agenda, founded on metrification, marketisation and the transformation of universities from a teaching-led model to a consumer and profit-led business model has increased stress and burnout in academia (Berry & Cassidy, 2013;Lawless, 2018;Masusuria & Cole, 2017;Stratford et al, 2023;Taberner;. The intensifying ranking, competition and audit culture in higher education (Berg et al, 2016;Sarpong, 2023) trickles down to the educator level, where individual educators are held responsible for organisational reputation through national student surveys, government research and teaching evaluation programs, international university ranking systems, and institutional or discipline accreditation programs.…”

“…The literature reports that while experiences of occupational stress are felt by both veteran and emerging educators (Crome et al, 2019;Naz et al, 2019;Singh et al, 2020, Stratford et al, 2023, intersectional factors appear to play an important role. For example, wellbeing was found to be lower for women and educators of minority ethnic status in a historically disadvantaged university environment in South Africa (Simons et al, 2019).…”

“…Relatedness via disciplinary, professional and union networks are also supportive of wellbeing (Larson et al, 2019). Mentoring relationships and peer networks with educators both inside and outside employing institutions and in other countries are important for academics to share support and effective educational practices, within and between disciplines and between early career and experienced educators (Stratford et al, 2023;Woloshyn et al, 2023). The importance of collective solidarity for educator resilience and wellbeing was particularly evident in COVID-era studies (de los Reyes et al, 2022;Plotnikof & Utoft, 2022).…”