An outdated view of how much control an academic has over their own schedule is hampering efforts to address chronic problems with overwork in UK higher education, according to a study.
Many institutions could be breaking the law in the terms and conditions they offer staff because of the assumption – accepted by both unions and employers – that scholars are exempt from the 48-hour cap on a working week, averaged over 17 weeks, because they are “autonomous workers”, finds the paper, published in the University and College Union’s Journal of Further and Higher Education.
Academics – and some senior professional services staff – are being denied the universal protection against what is a still “eye-wateringly high maximum” number of working hours because they are seen as having sufficient control of their working practices, akin to a managing director of a company, author Alastair Smith told Times Higher Education.
“It sounds intuitively plausible: academics do a little of what they want, when they want but I think in reality the technicalities are that that doesn’t apply at all,” said Dr Smith, a former associate professor at the University of Warwick who is now founding director and chair of teaching and learning at a new venture, known as the Community for Alternative Thought, Learning and Action in Nature.
