The emotional labour and toll of managerial academia on higher education leaders

ABSTRACT

Higher education has seen a shift that means its leaders are no longer only being recruited and perceived as senior academics who lead teaching and research. Leaders are now sometimes recruited and viewed as managers who oversee the operation of their institution, college, faculty, or school. This paper analyses the initial findings of an international cross-institutional project focusing on the emotional labour and personal toll experienced by university leaders taking on these changing roles. The study begins by using largely unpublished interview data from 2004, and combines these findings with interviews from current university leaders conducted in 2019. Thirty-five interviews were carried out with participants ranging from university Vice-Chancellors to deputy heads of schools. The paper examines existing literature of the changing shape of higher education leadership and contrasts it with how university leaders view the largely unsustainable emotional labour and toll required to carry out their work..

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• leadership
• university
• teaching
• research
• manager

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Red brick universities are the nine civic universities founded in the major industrial cities of England in the nineteenth century.

2 U15 universities are the top universities in Canada relating to research income.

3 Russell Group universities are a collection of 24 universities in the UK that are renowned for the quality of their research and aspire to have significant connections to the business and public sectors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 501 2002 103].

Notes on contributors

Troy A. Heffernan

Troy A. Heffernan is a Lecturer in Leadership at La Trobe University, Australia.

Lynn Bosetti

Lynn Bosetti is a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of British Columbia.