Colleges and universities increasingly employ temporary instructors. Researchers in higher education have voiced strong concerns about this trend because of its impact on educational outcomes, operations of academic institutions, and the composition of academic workforce. To enhance our understanding of this employment practice, this article makes…

There has been extensive research conducted into the plight of casual academic staff, the precarious nature of their work, their limited academic development opportunities, and their heightened risk of being positioned on the periphery of the workforce in academia. Institutions have attempted to mitigate this risk through the provision of academic…

Traditional employment is typically defined as ongoing full-time work for one employer. However, other employment relationships are becoming more prevalent, a phenomenon often called the "rise of the gig economy." As much as one third of the adult workforce may already be involved in gig work, and this proportion is likely to grow. The…

The Explainer Video Project was developed to familiarize management students with evaluating explainer videos for credibility and quality. In addition, it provides students with unique options for creating video content. Today's workplace needs college graduates with entrepreneurial skills applicable to the gig economy enabled by online platforms.…

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…

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the vast opportunities of working and learning digitally. In these exceptional times, where a large part of the workforce has been obliged to work remotely due to home confinement and social distancing measures, gig or crowd-workers have enjoyed a kind of 'home field' advantage: working and…

The workforce of today and tomorrow, particularly graduates are likely to experience more challenges as the availability of permanent jobs are getting sparse. This is partly due to automatisation as well as technological development. However, with automatisation and technological development, new types of occupations have emerged, mainly related…

This paper seeks to deconstruct the place of midwives as professionals using the novel interdisciplinary lens of the Place Model--an innovative analytical device which originated in education and has been previously applied to both teachers and teacher educators. The Place Model allows us to map the metaphorical professional landscape of the…

There is a growing divide between ongoing and precarious academics in Australia. Precarious academics are often exploited, underpaid, and have little hope of gaining permanency. In this article we offer suggestions to ongoing academics on how to improve the working lives and conditions of precarious colleagues. Our suggestions range from easy and…

Vocational psychologists have predicted the utilization of telepsychology in career interventions, yet vocational research have not capitalized on this modality. The purpose of this article is to describe how telepsychology could be used effectively in vocational psychology research to expand the reach and application of the field's scholarship to…

This paper examines the strategic use of temporary employment contracts in dealing with supply uncertainty in the form of employee ability that is slow to reveal itself, for example in academia where there exist significant time lags in demonstration of research ability. A temporary contract is modeled as a real option, specifically as a…

Despite decades of dependence on sessional teaching staff, universities in Australia and internationally still find it difficult to support the teaching work of this large, casual workforce. A significant consequence of casually-employed teaching staff is risk; sessional academics' professional identity is compromised, quality assurance of…

Consistent with quality enhancement, we report on how we used a continuous improvement cycle to formalise and embed an academic development and support programme for our School's sessional staff. Key factors in establishing and maintaining the programme included: local change agents supported initially by institutional project funding; School…

In a tight job market, visiting professorships can be appealing way stations for new Ph.D.'s while they search for permanent posts. Unlike adjunct positions, which are often renewed semester by semester, visiting professorships are set by annual or even multiyear contracts, with most capped at three years. The visiting jobs often come with health…

This summary document highlights findings from CNA's study, "Manufacturing a Way to Career Readiness: How Industry Measures Student Readiness" (ED612988). In the study, CNA Education examined how central Kentucky employers in a high-wage, high-growth industry--advanced manufacturing--determine the readiness and additional training needs…