The academic sabbatical as a symbol of change in higher education: from rest and recuperation to hyper-performativity

ABSTRACT

The sabbatical provides an important illustration of the changing nature of academic life and is a symbol of the growing demands of performativity. Drawing on historical literature and archival sources concerning university sabbaticals at Australian and English universities, the paper demonstrates that underlying assumptions about its purposes have changed slowly, but markedly, over time. A shift has occurred from a conception of the sabbatical as a period of rest, recuperation and academic travel to one of hyper-productivity. This change is linked to the emergence of the so-called research university, the rise of performativity, and the increasing demands of an audit culture. The academic sabbatical is also an often forgotten but significant indicator of the internationalisation of universities in the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century.

KEYWORDS:

• Sabbatical
• neoliberalisation
• performativity
• internationalisation
• audit
• academic travel

Introduction

Along with tenure, decision-making, the selection of students, and research, the sabbatical has been identified as one of the five ‘traditional preserves of university autonomy’ (Clarke & Edwards, 1980, p. 505). It has been a feature of academic life since the late nineteenth century in universities in Australia and the United States, and in England from the 1920s. The term ‘sabbatical’ conventionally refers to a period of full or partially paid leave taken at intervals during an academic career as a privilege rather than a right. A tenured or permanently employed academic would be able to apply for a sabbatical every seventh year. Its origin is closely connected with its etymology as a period of rest in one year out of seven, in parallel with one day of the week in the Christian calendar. During the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, the sabbatical has undergone a gradual transformation from a period of rest, recuperation and academic travel to an activity more narrowly configured as research productivity in both publications and grant-getting. Arguably, its distinctive nature has been eroded as a result.

This paper will use university archive sources and historical literature at a small number of Australian and English universities which are now perceived as old and research-led institutions in order to explore the assumptions underlying the nature of the sabbatical and how its purpose has altered over time. In doing so it will seek to illustrate how the history of the sabbatical provides a deep insight into the changing nature of university and academic life itself. These insights include the growth of internationalisation, issues concerning inequality, the rising importance of research in the university, and an audit culture. While the so-called ‘neoliberalisation’ of higher education is widely perceived to have started during the late 1970s, the evidence from the history of the sabbatical points to an earlier and more evolutionary shift in university culture.

A short history of the sabbatical

The original meaning of a sabbatical in academic life was as a period of renewal linked closely with the religious roots of the term (Yarmohammadian, Davidson, Yeh, & Wahab, 2018) According to Christian beliefs, the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week designated for rest after God created the world, as in Leviticus 25 (King James Bible). The word sabbatical derives from the Hebrew verb shabath which means ‘to rest’ a period when usual activity ceases. In the Jewish tradition this stretches from Friday to Saturday nightfall. In Christian convention the Sabbath is synonymous with Sunday as a day of rest. Sunday is considered the seventh day and, hence, a sabbatical occurs in the seventh year which, according to agricultural tradition, is when land is left fallow to rest and recover from the previous six years of productivity. The etymology of the word ‘sabbatical’ is vital to understand since it indicates its original intent: as a period of rest from work and of physical, and to some extent mental, recuperation.

The academic sabbatical has a long history in the university. Harvard University first formally instituted sabbatical leave in 1880 under the leadership of its President Charles Eliot (Sawer, 1967). Other elite private US universities including Cornell, Brown, and Wellesley College followed Harvard’s lead in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, along with prestigious state institutions such as California and Illinois, by establishing their own sabbatical schemes (Eells, 1962). Harvard’s policy was intended as a means of attracting new academic appointees and to provide existing faculty ‘with a respite for career renewal’ (Carraher, Crocitto, & Sullivan, 2014, p. 296). Before 1880 the policy on leaves of absence was ad hoc but from this date Harvard decided to introduce an approach that was ‘more liberal’ (Harvard University, 1880, p. 19) in the mutual best interests of both the institution and the professoriate. The new policy would provide leave for a year on half pay for the purpose of ‘health, rest, study, or the prosecution of original work in literature or science’ and was deemed to occur no more often than once every seven years (Harvard University, 1880, p. 20). Hence, the historical purpose of the sabbatical was to facilitate rejuvenation and restoration of academic faculty connecting closely with the etymological roots of the word (Zahorski, 1994) and was taken during the seventh year after six years of continuous service in a university (Eberle & Thompson, 1972; Eells, 1962). This opportunity would usually only be available to academics in positions above the rank of instructor and they would either take a whole year on half pay or 6 months leave on full pay (Campbell & Lyon, 1936). In contemporary times, as the pace of academic life has quickened, it has become common for a shorter, one term or semester long study leave to be taken after a period of three or four-years continuous service.

Early conceptions of the sabbatical were strongly linked to the notion of a study tour through travel enabling academics to refresh or renew their intellectual knowledge and direction. In a paper published in 1932, Bennett and Scroggs (1932, p. 196) reported that nearly all of the 166 US institutions that they had surveyed agreed with their questionnaire’s definition of sabbatical leave as ‘the practice of permitting persons to absent themselves from duty for the purpose of advanced study or travel for not more than 12 months, during which time they receive all or a part of their regular salaries’. The words ‘study’ and ‘travel’ are significant here. There is no mention of specifically writing for publication, bidding for research grants or other directly productive types of activity. In the late nineteenth century, when sabbatical leave was first introduced into higher education, it carried the same meaning as a break or leave every seventh year implying that ‘the professor ploughs and tills himself, but is not expected to produce a crop of students that year’ (Eells & Hollis, 1962, p. 5). Studying for an advanced degree or travelling either in the US or abroad appear to be the predominant activities of those enjoying a sabbatical reported in a survey from the 1930s (Campbell & Lyon, 1936, p. 77). A paltry proportion, representing just 3% of the survey sample, reported either ‘writing a book’ or ‘doing research’. The emphasis was on study and travel reinforced in a statement about the purpose of a sabbatical issued by the committee of the trustees of Columbia University in 1907. They explain the purpose by deploying the metaphor of ‘refurbishing’ while emphasising the need for international travel to understand the progress of knowledge beyond the boundaries of the nation state (Eells, 1962, p. 253).

In an Australian context, the development of the sabbatical can be also traced through institutional histories (e.g., Linn, 2011; Williams, 2002). A.P. Rowe, the vice chancellor (VC) of Adelaide between 1948 and 1958, was particularly influential in arguing for the importance of sabbatical leave. He believed that seven years was, if anything, too large a gap between visits to overseas institutions and sought to institute more financial support for study leave. A year after becoming the VC of Adelaide in 1948, he managed to obtain the then not inconsiderable sum of £7,000 for a study leave scheme despite objections from some members of the state parliament (Rowe, 1960). Defiantly Rowe asserted that far more than this sum was in fact needed ‘if the geographical isolation of Australia is to cease to be prejudicial to its universities’. (Rowe, 1960, p. 46). Rowe further realised that, as well as preventing intellectual isolation, study leave was crucial for recruitment to Australian universities through the networking effect of getting academics out and about internationally (Duncan and Leonard (1973). There was also, of course, the corresponding risk that academics would not return to Australia something that was normally a condition of a sabbatical (Sawer, 1967). It was a form of intellectual renewal that, according to Sawer (1967, p. 70), ‘shakes people out of ruts’.

In the British literature, the essential purpose of the sabbatical was seen as broadly the same enabling ‘travel and independent investigation’ in order to ‘combat the cramping effects of isolation’ and permitting time for ‘contemplation and meditation’. (Herrenden-Harker, 1935, p. 110, 114 & 121). The evolution of the sabbatical at Cambridge, and then, later, at Oxford, needs to be understood as part of the belated development of the research university model in England compared with Germany and the United States (Jöns, 2008). The benefits of broadening the horizons of academics would also, it was thought, act as a positive influence on students as a by-product of such travels. Here there is a link with the aristocratic educational notion of the Grand Tour as a sophisticated finishing school for elite gentlemen (Heffernan & Jöns, 2013). In a time long before the internet and international travel became a commonplace experience, foreign travel was seen as an essential means for academics to maintain their understanding of the latest developments in their fields and to converse with colleagues in distant parts of the world. The philosopher Bertrand Russell saw the virtue of an academic sabbatical as spending time in foreign universities helping him stay in touch with knowledge development. He illustrates the need for this by citing the fact that his own mathematics tutors at Cambridge knew nothing of the work of the ground-breaking German mathematician Karl Weierstrass when he was a student (Russell, 1926). While the British conception of the sabbatical existed long before the rise of university research, some highly talented academics have used it as a means of producing publications. Alan Turing, for example, wrote a seminal paper on Artificial Intelligence whilst on a year-long sabbatical at Cambridge between 1947 and 1948 (Lavington, 2012). Few ordinary academics in post-war Britain focused on research and publication though much before the 1960s and 70s. The PhD was still a comparatively rare commodity and the existence of an elite aristocratic tradition closely connected with notions of the English gentleman persisted. Publication was even seen as something of a conceit for an ordinary academic, perhaps indicative of a class-based sense of inferiority (Halsey & Trow, 1971). It was regarded as an unnecessarily narcissistic indulgence unless someone had something of exceptional originality to contribute.

Performativity and the sabbatical

In contemporary academic life the purpose of the sabbatical has become practically synonymous with the pursuit of research quantified as ‘outputs’ such as publications in high-quality journals and applying for competitive research grants. These expectations powerfully illustrate what Marcuse (1966, p. 45) called the ‘performance principle’ (Marcuse, 1966, p. 45). Exacting performance expectations are now at the heart of university sabbatical policy statements containing phrases such as ‘tangible outcomes’. These performative ‘outputs’ or ‘outcomes’ are not concerned about the nature of the research itself but about a commodification of what is tangible or measurable (Leathwood & Read, 2013).

By the end of a period of sabbatical leave, academic staff are expected to produce tangible outcomes in furtherance of their research or teaching.

UCL (2019, p. 21)

The University of Sheffield’s study leave procedure, established in 2011, provides the following guidance as to what is meant by ‘objectives/expected outcomes’:

These could include: a list of intended publications (with dates/name of journal/publisher), grant applications (with potential income generation values), development of new techniques, IP, KT, collaborations, etc. Please also record any potential difficulties/dependencies in achieving the above and your plans to mitigate/address them.

University of Sheffield (2011, np)

The focus of sabbatical studies is now very much on ‘effectiveness’ and ‘outcomes’ (eg Carraher, Crocitto, & Sullivan, 2014). Universities commonly use a performance-based lexicon to describe their contemporary expectations with words such as ‘tangible’ and ‘outcomes’ as in ‘to produce tangible results’ (Rhodes College, 2020) or ‘a clearly identifiable outcome, such as a publication’. (University of Huddersfield, 2019, p. 1). One of the explicit purposes of the academic sabbatical leave policy at Newcastle University, another UK research-intensive university, is to ‘respond and contribute to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)’ and the achievement of ‘clear outputs that are of benefit the University’ as well as the individual (Newcastle University, 2016, p. 1).

Increasing anxiety about and emphasis on academic productivity whilst on sabbatical is evident from literature in the 1990s. Kang and Miller (1999) state that the sabbatical is a means for academic staff to improve their performance but note that there is a lack of evidence about ‘the outcomes of the sabbaticals’ which tend to be framed in general terms without ‘empirical assessment data procedures’ (Kang & Miller, 1999, p. 2). In the 1990s other publications start to appear providing tips on how to make the sabbatical leave period ‘more productive’ with associated assumptions connected with grant writing (eg Zahorski, 1994, p. 1). This stress on productivity has only increased over the past 20 or 30 years. A contemporary study drawing on interview data at a research university in the United States powerfully illustrates the pressures of performativity now felt by tenured faculty on sabbatical (Gardner, 2022). Faculty members in this study reported feeling guilt and shame that they were not being productive enough despite their already high levels of publications and grant getting activities as a condition of leave. Although desiring the opportunity ‘to breathe, get space, and recharge’ the reality was ‘in the Seventh Year You Will Not Rest’, representing a direct reversal of the original intent of a sabbatical leave (Gardner, 2022, p. 14 and 1).

Methodology

Studies about the sabbatical are limited and tend to draw on either empirical surveys or historical sources. To a large extent this reflects the interests of the academics who conduct sabbatical studies. Researchers with an interest in higher education as a sociological field with disciplinary-specific interests rely mainly on contemporary empirical surveys without drawing on the historical context (eg Eberle & Thompson, 1972; Sorcinelli, 1986; Spencer, Clay, Hearne, & James, 2012) while university historians and human geographers principally deploy archival resources (e.g. Heffernan & Jöns, 2013; Jöns, 2008). The latter group offer more depth of analysis but are less interested in linking historical studies with contemporary higher education policy and practice. There are few studies that marshal archival resources as a means of exploring key contemporary trends in global higher education, such as performativity.

Hence, this study draws on university archival sources with the intention of providing a more historically informed analysis of current university sabbatical policy. Conceptually, the study will draw on the notion of academic performativity in neo-liberalised systems of higher education. The term neoliberalisation is used to refer to the role of government in legitimising the import of auditing, accounting and management techniques from the business and commercial sector (Olssen & Peters, 2005). This has occurred in both England and Australia, and is reflected in the choice of three ‘old’, elite public universities in Australia (ie Sydney founded in 1850 and Adelaide in 1874) supplemented by one in England (ie Cambridge, founded in 1209). The archival material on which this study draws is in the public domain and therefore does not require anonymisation.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the evolving purposes of the sabbatical in a historical context and, therefore, administrative arrangements such as eligibility, pay and benefits, pension, tax obligations, the leave period and special conditions (eg the ‘return or repay’ condition imposed by some Australian universities, see Sawer, 1967) will be excluded. One of the challenges in researching the academic sabbatical is that this term is not used consistently by different universities. The phrase ‘leave of absence’ is applied by many institutions to describe a period of leave incorporating a sabbatical among other reasons for taking leave such as a secondment or ill-health. The terms ‘study leave’ and ‘sabbatical’ have been treated as synonymous although occasionally some institutions do distinguish between them.

This study deployed thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012) using data from archive sources in the form of Senate and committee minutes, and memoranda from senior academic management together with numerous study leave reports at Sydney and Adelaide universities between 1895 and the mid 1970s, the draft report of the Tertiary Education Commission in 1978 and university reaction to it. Following initial coding and recoding, the analysis generated 14 themes including travel, study, overseas, expenses, budget, visits, transport, committee, report(ing), financial support, conference, research, and publication. These were then narrowed down to three overarching themes. The first of these - the sabbatical as academic travel – represents a conception of sabbatical leave that has largely disappeared over the last 30 years as sufficient grounds for being granted by institutions. The second theme – the rise of research – has essentially taken the place of academic travel which is now an almost taken-for-granted but ancillary aspect of sabbatical leave rather than its main purpose. The third theme – audit and internationalisation – illustrates the way in which the purpose and the assumptions underpinning the sabbatical have steadily changed in line with the rising influence of neo-liberal regimes of performativity.

The sabbatical as academic travel

In Australia, the sabbatical may be traced back as far as 1860 when the University of Sydney granted a professor pay without leave for a year to visit laboratories in Europe and the UK (Tertiary Education Commission, 1978). The geographic location of Australasian academics meant that travel-based sabbaticals were seen as essential due to ‘remoteness from centres of learning in Europe and North America’ (Tertiary Education Commission, 1978, p. 34). This meant that sabbaticals for Australian academe were tied even more closely to the tradition of academic travel. For example, it is significant that under 1% of sabbaticals from Australian universities taken in 1970 were spent in Australia (Tertiary Education Commission, 1978). With travel costs from Australia invariably calculated either in British pounds or US dollars as a standard part of application procedures these can also be viewed as part of a post-colonial intellectual legacy.

Archival evidence indicates that in an Australian context there is a long history of the sabbatical being understood as a form of academic travel primarily designed to enable university teaching staff to maintain their currency by staying in close contact with North American and European colleagues and institutions. Documents from the University of Sydney archives indicate that the early rationale for sabbaticals was firmly linked to this objective. At Sydney, the sabbatical was known as a ‘leave of absence’ and a statement from the Professorial Board (cited by the university’s finance committee) dating from 1919 states the need for it is due to:

1. the geographical isolation of Australia from other educational centres

2. the consequent difficulties attendant upon university teachers maintaining the necessary relationships with corresponding teachers in Europe and elsewhere

3. the great and increasing importance of Heads of Department keeping practical touch with contemporary progress on matters bearing on the subjects for which their departments are responsible

University of Sydney (1919)

In essence this conception of the sabbatical is in the spirit of a study tour and there is no mention of research until 1953 (see Table 1). Here, the language used to describe academics as ‘university teachers’ is significant in signalling their main role and function at a time well before research became a serious undertaking of universities in Australia estimated to be after 1950 (Tertiary Education Commission, 1978). In papers from 1922 the Professorial Board asserts that ‘the principle of the Sabbatical Year is far more important for Australian Universities than for North American Universities’ due to the geographical isolation of scholars based in Australia (University of Sydney, 1922). The message was still the same in 1960 when the Professorial Board re-affirmed that ‘normally sabbatical leave should be taken outside Australia’ and only exceptionally domestically. However, its caveat to this suggestion was that ‘such applications should only be considered if the applicant has already studied overseas’ (University of Sydney, 1960). This recommendation was passed as a motion, having been seconded by the VC, in the Senate on 6 April 1960.

Table 1. The development of the sabbatical at the University of Sydney (1895–1955).

Purpose	Date	Source
‘for the purpose of making himself acquainted with the latest advances in his own particular subject’	1895	Senate papers
‘enable him to keep in practical touch with contemporary progress elsewhere on matters bearing on the subjects for which his department is responsible’.	1919	Senate papers
‘In order to encourage research and to maintain standards of teaching, one year’s sabbatical leave may be granted on full pay every seven years or thereabouts to every full time permanent member of the full-time teaching staff’.	1953	Senate papers and memo to members of the teaching staff entitled ‘Sabbatical Leave’
‘all future applications for sabbatical leave must state the object for which the leave is required, setting out particularly the nature and place of research. At the conclusion of sabbatical leave each member of staff must submit a report concerning work carried out during his leave’.	1955	Senate and memo to ‘All Permanent Academic Staff’

Many study leave reports from the post-war period drawn from the archives of the University of Adelaide illustrate the way in which academic travel frequently operated as a hectic study tour (University of Adelaide, 1954–1962). On his leave of absence B.F.G. Apps, a Lecturer in Physical Education and Chairman of University Health Service at the University of Adelaide, visited 12 countries in 7 months across North America and Europe. This included attending the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. Describing his leave as a ‘constant barrage of stimulating and, I believe, very profitable impressions’ he lists meeting over 150 individuals and visiting a wide variety of institutions, departments and professional associations with a particular focus on evaluating indoor physical education facilities. L.W. Cox who was granted leave in 1962 states that ‘the object of study leave was to visit as many University centres as possible in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe where departments of Obstetrics and Gynaecology have interests in methods of teaching and research projects parallel to mine’. The phrase ‘study tour’ is used by a number of academics to describe the nature of their leave such as H.N. Hoskings, a senior lecturer in architecture, in order to examine prefabrication and new building techniques, factory production, and Schools of Architecture.

The nature of the sabbatical, as a period of between 6 months to a year spent overseas had significant implications for social and family life. Academic staff granted leave would often travel with their families with the encouragement of the university. Travel grants and allowances, for example, were higher for married staff with children than for those who were unmarried. At Sydney the travel grant, in addition to salary, for a staff member in 1959 was £400 for married members of staff and £240 for unmarried members (University of Sydney, 1959). Rates also varied according to seniority. In study leave reports from the 1950s and 60s academic staff often refer to travelling with their families. This carried expectations with respect to hospitality which fell short for Dr B.O. West (Department of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, University of Adelaide) on a visit to the University of Illinois, Urbana in 1960–61 who commented that ‘scarsely any effort was made by staff to make me or my wife feel welcome’. Travel by ship, still common in the 1950s and 60s and cheaper than air travel, often meant that staff could enjoy short leisure breaks on journeys en route in port cities. In 1962, for example, Dr H.B.S. Womersley from the University of Adelaide came back to Australia by ship via Kobe, Hong Kong, and Manila. In 1950 Adelaide’s Study Leave Committee recommended that travel by air should only be approved in exceptional circumstances owing to the cost (University of Adelaide, 1950). This began to change in the early 1960s as staff started to use air travel for one leg of their journey as it became relatively less costly to fly. The time saving in taking a plane rather than a ship meant academics could make more use of their time away but this did not preclude leisure-based stopovers. R.B. Potts, from Adelaide, flew with his wife and children to London via Athens and Rome and reflects on this journey in the following amusing terms:

We stopped long enough in Athens for my wife to sprain her ankle climbing the Acropolis and long enough in Rome for us to recover from the agonies of flying with two young children.

University of Adelaide (1954–62)

These excerpts from sabbatical leave reports illustrate the way in which academic travel had social and family purposes as well as purely scholarly ones.

The rise of research

While the sabbatical is now strongly connected with research output expectations archival evidence from the 1950s indicates very few such demands. Study leave reports from the University of Adelaide show that only a relatively small minority of staff referred to research work and often without any explicit mention of any resulting – or likely future – publications whatever. The 1951 study leave policy at Adelaide, for example, makes no comment about the purpose of taking time away from the University (University of Adelaide, 1951). It focuses squarely on the costs and practicalities of what is assumed to be an international scholarly journey to either the UK or the US. Applicants are required to state the purpose of leave, their proposed itinerary, estimated costs, and provide an undertaking that they intend to return to employment at the university following the conclusion of their trip. The paperwork is long on practicalities, such as obtaining vaccinations, tax clearance, and a list of useful contacts in London, among other things. There is no mention whatsoever of publications/outputs or other individual goals and achievements arising out of study leave. However, research outcomes were often disseminated in ways other than publication such public talks and in enhancing teaching.

In England, sabbaticals from Cambridge University were only formally instituted after 1926 by which time around 50 of the world’s top universities had established such schemes. Up until the early 1930s, a university teacher could apply for two term’s leave of absence every seven years but would lose one third of their pay for the year if they took a third term’s leave (University of Cambridge, 1930). However, this situation changed in 1933 when the following sentence was added to statute DXII of the university, acknowledging for the first time that the purpose of a leave of absence at Cambridge is explicitly linked to research.

If, however, a University Teaching Officer undertakes to spend a considerable proportion of his leave in research work the General Board will consider favourably an application that stipend be paid in respect of the third term also.

University of Cambridge (1933, p. 414)

Hence, at Cambridge at least, a gradual shift in the nature of the sabbatical was beginning to take place as early as 1933. This is perhaps indicative of the strength of research at Cambridge, arguably the leading English institution in this respect at this time. Yet the role of research in the sabbatical changed very slowly elsewhere. This is illustrated by the fact that in Australia 28% of all sabbaticals were still being taken to enable a multi-visit tour of institutions overseas as recently as 1975 (Tertiary Education Commission, 1978). Earlier in the twentieth century the proportion of sabbaticals used for a multi-visit overseas tour would have almost certainly been much higher given the limited nature of research work from Australian universities. Sydney, for example, only awarded its first PhD in 1951 and, according to a report published in 1978, ‘before 1950, there was, with a few notable exceptions, little research carried out in Australian universities and almost no research training’ (the first Ph.D. was not awarded until 1947) (Tertiary Education Commission, 1978, p. 35). Although Australian universities were reticent to launch their own doctorates until after the Second World War there was the development of a research culture in Australia during the inter-war years. Colonial ties meant that Australian graduates were sent to Britain to study for a doctorate helping to strengthen the research culture on return (Rae, 2002).

Audit and internationalisation

The funding of the sabbatical involves considerable university expenditure over and above regular salary commitments. Auditing of the sabbatical, analysing its cost effectiveness, has long been of interest to universities and, in more recent times, to government agencies as well. However, the sabbatical also needs to be better understood as a key signifier of the internationalisation of the university well before air travel and globalisation. This fact has always been used to help to justify the costs involved.

Archival and published information about sabbatical leave indicates that at first schemes were largely ad hoc. They quite rapidly became more formalised during the early part of the twentieth century but it was not until the mid-twentieth century that reporting procedures became established. This gradual audit creep is apparent in the tone and recommendations of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) draft report on study leave in 1978. The report contained a number of quite radical recommendations largely aimed at reducing the costs of such schemes for university finances as a result of which savings of between A$1–1.5 million were anticipated for 1980 and 1981. These proposals included the suggestion that the terms ‘sabbatical leave’ and ‘study leave’ should be discontinued and replaced with ‘outside studies programs’. It further recommended that the total number of ‘man years’ allocated to leave should not exceed 7% averaged over a triennium, that leave should be seen as a privilege rather than a right over a period of not more than 6 months, and that staff should be required to submit reports following periods of leave. However, most controversially, the TEC draft report recommended that there should be less emphasis on taking leave overseas due to the growth of facilities for research in Australia. This cut against the conventional view that a sabbatical is normally best spent overseas facilitating and sustaining international levels of scholarship among Australian academics.

In responding to the draft report many Australian universities took issue with these proposals including Sydney and Adelaide. At Sydney, the Academic Board of the University expressed its opposition in the following uncompromising terms:

The Academic Board of the University of Sydney believes that this University stands and should seek to stand at the forefront of international scholarship.

University of Sydney (1978a, p. 449)

Research is no more a ‘special’ activity than any other aspects of university work and should not therefore be singled out with a distinguishing title such as ‘special studies program’. A university in which research does not permeate through all its activity is no university at all.

University of Sydney (1978a, p. 449)

Sydney’s VC Professor Bruce Williams (1967–1981) led the opposition to the TEC draft report arguing against dropping the terms study leave and sabbatical leave in favour of ‘outside studies’ programme. He also saw no justification for the report’s recommendation that overseas leave should be reduced. Here, he suggested that jingoism lay behind the recommendation by stating bluntly that ‘Xenophobia is out of place in universities’ (University of Sydney, 1978b, p. 932). At this time, during the late 1970s, it is notable that Williams was also chairing the Committee of Inquiry into Education and Training set up in 1976 which went on to report in 1979. The report includes an analysis of study leave and is critical of the TEC’s proposals to lessen the emphasis on study leave taken overseas. It also rejected the efficiency savings argument which is central to the TEC proposals finding that the cost of study leave is comparatively modest at less than 0.3% of recurrent expenditure and represents good value for money. The establishment of the National Board of Employment, Education and Training in Australia in 1987 is widely viewed as a watershed in bringing direct ministerial intervention to university affairs in Australia. However, back in 1978 the TEC was a newly formed entity flexing its muscles for the first time. The draft report on study leave was seen by many Australian universities as an affront to university autonomy and representing a level of interference not previously experienced in their internal arrangements for granting academic leave.

Geoffrey Badger, who became the VC of Adelaide between 1967 and 1977, was another strong spokesman for the sabbatical. Prior to his appointment as VC he was responsible for a submission on study leave to the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee in 1964. In the submission Badger made the case for the importance of study leave because of the geographic isolation of Australian Universities from centres of scholarship in Europe and the US (University of Adelaide, 1964). Badger further emphasised that leaves of absence of this nature were ultimately in the best interests of both the university and the individual. Drawing on the example of the University of Western Australia he saw study leave as ‘a duty’ rather than a right or a privilege. The role of academic leaders and vice chancellors, such as Rowe and Badger of Adelaide and Williams of Sydney during the post-war period, is important to note in relation to their strong support for the principle of sabbatical leave and wider understanding as to how such schemes were critical in building and retaining the international reputation of Australian higher education. In today’s terms the determination to protect the role of the sabbatical as a period of leave spent overseas might be considered as an early example of an internationalisation strategy.

Conclusion

The origins of academic travel are intimately intertwined with the sabbatical at a time when intellectual tourism was key to understanding the latest in scholarly developments. Over the last 100 years or more the sabbatical has evolved from a contemplative period of respite and largely non-audited opportunity to travel for educational purposes into a frenzied burst of productive scholarship squarely aimed at grant-getting and publication. There is an ever rising institutional expectation as to what constitutes a satisfactory ‘return’ for granting a leave of absence. However, the transformation of the sabbatical has been gradual rather than sudden and its changing nature illustrates many of the major trends that have occurred in university policy over the last 50 years. In British and Australian higher education literature a common claim is that neo-liberalisation of higher education began in the 1980s under Thatcher and Dawkins, respectively (e.g., Marginson, 1997; Phipps & Young, 2015). In reality though elements of this slowly changing culture may be detected in universities from at least as early as the 1950s. The sabbatical is a case study illustrating how this has occurred. It also helps to show the way in which research intensity and internationalisation has developed. It is also ironic that the sabbatical, and the way in which it has altered over time, is rarely remarked upon in analysis of these global trends.

In many ways the modern sabbatical, as a period of intensified research productivity, represents the very opposite of its etymological purpose since it is a continuation of now routine demands of academic life rather than representing a break from them. This begs the question as to what, if anything, makes the sabbatical special anymore? The distinctive link between the sabbatical and academic travel has also been eroded by the increased opportunities for communication and collaboration afforded in the internet age and, most recently, by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Disclosure statement

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