Made to measure: early career academics in the Canadian university workplace

ABSTRACT

While Canada lacks explicit central directives towards research productivity, academics experience frequent and intense reviews of their research, teaching and service through mechanisms such as elaborate tenure and promotion procedures and annual performance reviews. Given that newer academics are sometimes thought to be especially susceptible to contemporary performativity pressures, this article considers seven early career academics (ECAs), interviewed as part of a larger qualitative study, and the nuances of their reactions to evaluative processes, especially the tenure review. On the whole, the ECAs create and deploy strategies to ensure that they meet ever-rising standards, because they love their work and believe they are ‘lucky’ to be on track to secure a permanent position. They hope for more freedom in ‘life after tenure’. However, all have trenchant criticisms of the corporatized university and the ways in which evaluation proceeds.

KEYWORDS:

• Tenure
• early career academics
• neo-liberal university
• academic work
• audit culture

Acknowledgements

We thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for support and Dr Victoria Kannen for research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. At times, North American terminology will appear in this article, that is, faculty for academic staff, professor for academic or lecturer and administration for management.

2. SSHRC (pronounced ‘shirk’) is an acronym for Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the granting body that provides most of the funding for research in the participants’ subject fields.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 410-2009-0581].