Shifting Sands: Observing Academic Workloads Over Time

Abstract

Individually, academics have seen significant changes to their traditional workload, for example, heavier teaching loads, larger class sizes, greater administrative responsibilities, increased competition for research grants and the loss of academic autonomy through increased day-to-day management and accountability (Houston et al. 2006). As a result, academics feel they have three full time jobs at once and daily must manage the multiple and changing roles associated with today’s academic workload (Santoro and Snead 2012). Such changes, over the last two decades, have highlighted the need to investigate workload issues (for example, McInnes 2000; Santoro and Snead 2012).