Does workload and institutional pressure on accounting educators affect academia at Australian universities?

Abstract

This paper examines accounting academics’ perceptions as to whether institutional pressure has increased in the previous 5–10 years subsequent to changes in the higher education environment, encouraging universities to adopt private sector managerialism. Results from 87 respondents indicated that workload pressures have increased and they experienced pressure to perform acts related to a student‐as‐customer model, which have negatively affected their well‐being and work quality. The majority are not actively seeking to leave academia, but believe it is not a good time for others to aspire to such a career. This paper contributes to the debate about the sustainability of accounting academia at Australian universities.

Does emotional intelligence matter to academic work performance? Evidence from business faculties in Australia

“…The past two decades have witnessed seismic changes in the environment for universities world‐wide. Globalisation and commercialisation of the higher education sector, accompanied by greatly reduced government funding and rapidly evolving technology, have placed pressure on universities to become more competitively aggressive, more accountable through formal quality assurance mechanisms and research performance metrics, and more business‐like and market‐driven (Steenkamp and Roberts, 2018; Vesty et al , 2018; Hancock et al , 2019).…”

“…These changes have resulted in equally seismic shifts in the job demands of academics, including heavier workloads, greater numbers of students with ‘customer‐status’ expectations, burdensome administration, increasing pressure to publish, and the need to fulfil multiple, and potentially conflicting, job demands of research (including producing high‐quality research outputs and raising funding through grants), teaching (including face‐to‐face and on‐line teaching and teaching‐related administration), and service (including service to the university and professional/practitioner communities and community engagement) (Modell, 2005; L’Huillier, 2012; Steenkamp and Roberts, 2018; Vesty et al , 2018).…”

Sustainability of the accounting and finance academic profession: students’ and supervisors’ views about the PhD supervision process

“…Current data reveal that senior academics (those in professorial or associate professorial positions) represent 25.58 percent (31.06 percent) of the Australian (New Zealand) accounting academic workforce . This drought of senior academics is arguably due to a marked increase in recruiting competition and mobility in the sector (Go8, ), with evidence indicating that accounting academics do not believe it is a good time to aspire to a career in Australian universities (Steenkamp and Roberts, ). Despite sustainability issues for the Australian accounting academic profession (Irvine et al ., ), the focus has been on supervisory practices (Kiley, ) rather than PhD candidates (Baldwin and Brown, ).…”

“…Similar concerns relate to the adverse consequences of institutional pressures to focus on increasing the number of PhD students, whether current programmes are producing academics, who are fit for the purpose in terms of teaching and producing relevant research, and the barriers to recruiting professionally qualified accountants to academia (Beattie and Smith, ). In Australia, increased workload and institutional pressures have negatively affected accounting academic's well‐being, work quality and the attractiveness of accounting academia as a career (Steenkamp and Roberts, ). Similarly, Vesty et al .…”

“…Managerial practices, increased workloads and governmental funding pressures related to timely PhD completions (i.e. Steenkamp and Roberts, ), place pressure on quality doctoral supervision.…”