Academics are suffering from growing stress levels as a result of heavy workloads, management issues and a long-hours culture, a survey has found.Unachievable deadlines, acute time pressures and the need to work quickly were also common complaints identified by an occupational stress survey completed by more than 14,000 university employees.
Staff were asked by the University and College Union about areas that could potentially cause them stress, such as conflicting management demands, workloads and pressures on their time.
Academics experience far higher levels of stress in these areas than employees in other professions, the survey found.
On a scale of one to five, the stress level of university staff is 2.51 (when well-being is assessed on a scale of one to five, with one being the highest stress level).
FULL ARTICLE
2.51 doesn't sound that bad -- just above the halfway mark. The description (accurately) sounds much worse than the number.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I expressed my concerns about what I considered to be an excessive workload, I was told, "That's why you get paid the big bucks." Big bucks, huh? Our institution took great pride in having the lowest or close to the lowest salaries of all related colleges and institutes in our region of the country.
ReplyDeleteWhen we complain about ever-increasing demands, we're told that we should be "grateful for the privilege" of working at Blah Blah Academy.
ReplyDeleteWait, we have stressful jobs? That's not what Forbes said.
ReplyDeleteQuite a few people sent this in to us, precisely because it contradicted the Forbes story which we featured on this blog this week.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to note that the article does come from a foreign paper.
Oh, but the Times Higher Ed manages to contribute to our stress with their tea-partying rankings. My institution has taken a serious slide every year since I've been here (mostly because the THE keeps adjusting their algorithm), and administrative hysteria over this supposed loss of prestige makes our lives as proffies ever more Kafkaesque in serious ways.
DeleteSo thanks for speaking some truth, THE, but could you please either get out of the rankings business or let all of us pretend we're in a global Lake Wobegone of higher ed? kthx.
Yuop, the same at our place! I hate all this ranking nonsense... we're all DIFFERENT. A few RAEs (REF precursor) ago, my Hamsterology Unit at a pretty middling regional university got the same grade as Hamsterology at one of the Top Two Special Unis and a grade better than the same department at the other. Were we praised for this? No... we weren't even allowed to use it as a point in promotional material to attract students. We were told that it was 'just because Top Two Special Uni Hamsterology Departments are not bothering to play the game'.
DeleteWe never win.
Yuop, the same at our place! I hate all this ranking nonsense... we're all DIFFERENT. A few RAEs (REF precursor) ago, my Hamsterology Unit at a pretty middling regional university got the same grade as Hamsterology at one of the Top Two Special Unis and a grade better than the same department at the other. Were we praised for this? No... we weren't even allowed to use it as a point in promotional material to attract students. We were told that it was 'just because Top Two Special Uni Hamsterology Departments are not bothering to play the game'.
DeleteWe never win.
The depressing thing is that UK universities aren't willing to look at the problems and try and do something about it. There is just denial of the existence of the problem, and victim-blaming.
ReplyDeleteMy pressure cooker blew a couple of years ago. After more than a decade of trying to make it work, to make the workload manageable, I realised that it was never going to get better; there was always going to be yet another time-consuming thing, one after another. My health (rapidly declining directly due to the stress and overwork) forced the issue and made me see that any optimism that things would get better eventually was entirely misplaced.
Now I am unemployed, but I have managed to rescue as much as could be rescued of my health.
What you described confirms much of what's presented at:
Deletehttp://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com/
It's a UK-based website, so many of the examples cited are for institutions there. However, much of what's given could easily have been said about the place I used to teach at.
Hey, C, glad to hear your health did improve on escaping the institution...
Delete"Stressed academics are ready to blow in pressure-cooker culture."
ReplyDelete"Well, dur-hey." - Mike Nelson, MST3K
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