What happens to doctoral supervision when university departments have high levels of precarious academic employment?: An Australian case study

ABSTRACT

Attention to precarious employment in higher education settings been growing in the last two decades. Discussion of this form of employment in higher education has focused on impacts on the quality of teaching and student experience, particularly in undergraduate courses where the majority of casual staff are employed. However, little has been written about the impact of precarity on doctoral supervision. This article reports on a case study into supervision of doctoral studies in Australia. The study highlights the effects of precarious employment on doctoral supervision in a research-only department of a large Australian university. Working from grounded theory, in-depth interviews were conducted with participants from different levels of responsibility within the department (n = 4). Findings indicate that precarious employment presents challenges to the provision of quality supervision. The policy for team supervision mitigates the impact for students, but has career development impacts for short-term contract and postdoctoral researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• Casualisation
• contingent employment
• precarious employment
• supervision
• co-supervision
• doctoral studies
• collegiality
• postdoc
• academic researcher

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margaret J Robertson

Margaret J Robertson is an Early career researcher with a specialisation in postgraduate research supervision. Her thesis investigated team supervision as it is practiced in Australian universities, and particularly in the ways that power is used within the supervisory relationships to enable or silence members of the team. Subsequent work has focused on developing ideas on how power in its various forms can be used to enhance or constrain team function and open opportunities for the rich development of new knowledge.

Jeanette Fyffe

Jeanette Fyffe is the manager of the Research Education and Development team in the Graduate Research School which is responsible for research education across all career stages at La Trobe University. She is interested in researcher development, most especially the role of intellectual climate in the formation of scholars, and is currently actively and collegially studying the ‘idea of the university’.