Despite the diversity of entry points into academia, little research exists examining the experiences and impact of precarious employment at different life stages. Drawing on interviews with 19 academics employed casually or on fixed-term contracts in Australian universities, this paper illustrates how precarious employment is experienced at…

Through multilevel regression analysis, we examine the impact of managerialism, particularly accreditation practices, on the increasing job insecurity in universities. We find that universities that are accredited, private, secular or non-Catholic are more likely to offer insecure jobs, but that the relevance of these factors depends on each…

Internationally, changes to university funding arrangements have put pressure on the workloads of tenured academic staff and increased the reliance on casual academics to backfill teaching and research positions. Limited research has focused on the effects of casualisation on research academics and the institutions in which they work. This paper…

This article analyses the attractiveness of Polytechnics (PTs) in India, which are part of the country's Vocational Education and Training (VET) system, from the perspectives of individuals. PTs as institutions of Higher VET are an essential part of the Indian VET system. As no findings on their attractiveness are available, interviews based on an…

The increased reliance of universities on a pool of highly skilled but poorly paid casualised academic labour for teaching and research has emerged as a defining feature of higher education provision under neoliberal New Public Management. Based on seventeen visual timeline interviews with academics in the North East of England, this article…

The pursuit of tenure in higher education is arguably the dominant focus of tenure track faculty throughout the United States' higher education environment, if not a world-wide phenomenon. By applying Vroom's Expectancy theory of motivation, this study intends to investigate the relationship between research productivity and motivation to conduct…

Purpose: Although faculty members are regarded as one of the main agents of internationalization in higher education (IHE), research has focused on the upper levels of analysis (e.g. country or educational institution) rather than the individual. The purpose of this paper is to draw from social exchange theory (SET) to examine how the perceptions…

The literature on the lived experiences of early-career researchers (ECRs) has not fully leveraged the analytical potential of the concepts of 'sponsorship' and 'gatekeeping' when examining the importance of senior scholars in their work lives. This article conceptualises the micro-politics of seniors' sponsorship of ECRs based on 19…

Significant world events such as the COVID-19 pandemic have shifted the way that people of all ages view their careers and the meaning of work in their lives. While campus career services hold a mandate to facilitate student career readiness and success, it cannot accomplish this ambitious goal alone. "Career influencers" are student…

Precarious employment is considered a social determinant impacting the health of workers, families and communities. The Academy is known to utilise non-standard employment contracts, coming under widespread criticism from its social partners for exploitative practices. Whilst there is much research suggesting certain groups (e.g. early career…

The COVID-19 pandemic amplified existing inequities in higher education. This paper documents the stories of four precariously employed communication instructors in their transition to emergency remote teaching in March 2020. Through collaborative autoethnography, the instructors share their stories of reliance and compliance within the gig…

This research investigates the attitudes, working conditions, experiences, and job satisfaction of academic staff employed at offshore campuses. An online survey questionnaire was completed by 72 academic staff in 10 different countries, which included China, Malaysia, Qatar, the UAE, and Vietnam. It was found that the desire for adventure and…

Positive attributes stick to higher education internationalisation, and it is a policy paradigm with performative effects. Internationalisation draws on imagined virtuous flows of knowledge production and exchange, and is presented as an assemblage of detraditionalisation, expansiveness and epistemic and cultural opportunity for individuals,…

This paper intervenes in debates on Chinese higher education and social (re)production strategies in the contemporary African diaspora, developing the link between 'Chinese' capitals, social status and spatial mobility. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with both disadvantaged and middle-class African international students, I unpack how…

The Higher Education sector has been through an array of changes, such as globalisation, massification, lack of job security, decolonisation and a number of technological advancements. These changes have impacted academic workload and have increased work pressure with resultant effects on family and work life balance. A review of the existing…