Highly Qualified, Yet Insecure: Experiences of Casual Academics in Higher Education Compared to Tenured Academics

Susan Blackmore

doi:10.25907/01053

Casual academic staff are among the highest qualified workers in Australia yet are still subject to hourly payment with no guarantee of future work. Previous research has identified the negative effects of casual work on well-being. This research program aimed to develop understanding of the lived experience of casual academics in Australia and how workplace relationships are managed. Specifically, how they make sense of their workplace experiences in a small, rapidly growing regional university. Further, the factors that influence the interactions between casual academics and their immediate supervisors. Although leadership is well-researched in higher education, it tends to overlook the course coordinator level of leadership. The leadership styles found to be the most effective amongst higher education managers are transactional and transformational, each of these bears a resemblance to task and relationship orientation leadership, respectively. A key difference is the focus on the needs of the work team with the latter, compared to the needs of the organisation with the former. Tenured academic staff who supervise casual academics would likely need to incorporate both leadership orientations in their dealings with academics under their supervision while achieving workplace goals. However, the factors that influence the style of leadership at this level, and how it is received by casual academics wan not clear. This research program aimed to examine the lived experiences of casual academics. Broadly, the research questions aimed to examine how casual academics managed their experiences in the university sector, the levels of inclusion and support they received from their immediate line manager and the broader university community, and how they managed workplace relationships. Additionally, the research program aimed to investigate the influence of personality, attributions, and attitudes on how leadership was given by tenured academics, and how it was received by casual academics. The limited work available and the endless stream of graduate studies makes for a highly competitive workplace environment for casual academics. Thus, a further aim of the research program was to develop a greater understanding of the attitudes and behaviours associated with securing work, understanding why casual academics stay in the job, how they try to improve their chances of another contract within a competitive environment, and how they manage relationships within the workplace. A mixed methods design was used to answer the research questions. Firstly, qualitative data were collected via in-depth interviews with casual academics employed at a regional university in Australia. The second study collected data via an online questionnaire examining the challenges experienced by casual academics, and the levels of instrumental and social support they experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and enforced campus closures. Finally, an online, quantitative survey was conducted to examine the interactions between casual academic staff and the tenured academic staff who supervise them. Inclusion of open-ended questions along with the quantitative survey allowed a more nuanced understanding of the experiences of both tenured and casual academic staff. The findings reinforced that casual academics feel unsupported by the schools, disciplines, and universities in which they work. Social support comes from peers and their immediate supervisors; however, those relationships can be affected by geographical distance and workload demands. Effective supervision and support of casual academics by course coordinators is challenging due to limited recognition of the additional labour required in current methods of workload calculations. In many cases, casual academics felt they lack adequate opportunities for paid training and lack a sense of belonging in the disciplines and schools they represent. A more inclusive workplace would help to support their need for greater inclusion in the social fabric of the schools in which they work. The research program has added to current knowledge in two key areas, the leadership orientation used by tenured academic staff, and the lived experiences of the casual academic staff that they supervise. No research to date has directly examined the influence of leadership style and aversive personality traits (i.e., the dark triad) and attitudes (e.g., employee psychological entitlement) on work engagement, workplace loneliness, and knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding behaviours amongst academic staff within the Australian higher education sector. The research program has contributed to the development of greater understanding of the factors that may influence the interactions between casual academics and their immediate supervisors. Importantly, it has also highlighted the extra work involved in supervision and support of casual academic staff and how this needs to be recognised and supported by the institution. Furthermore, it contributed to greater understanding of the challenges course coordinators face with the current methods of workload calculations, and the effects on casual academic staff and ultimately, on student satisfaction and retention.

Highly Qualified, Yet Insecure: Experiences of Casual Academics in Higher Education Compared to Tenured Academics

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