Academics ‘face higher mental health risk’ than other professions

I applaud the report urging universities to work with the Health and Safety Executive to address the epidemic of poor mental health among academic staff. In universities where there are high rates of burnout, managers are well aware of the stress that their unrealistic expectations place on staff, and these constitute a deliberate but ineffective strategy for ‘improving performance’. Academics are routinely scheduled for full teaching loads with large classes and multiple assessment points, regardless of other commitments to research or scholarship such as journal editing. There are also teaching-related and administrative tasks, and rather than seeking to mitigate these, managers instead prefer to cut the hours allocated for their completion, even as these proliferate. Academics have contracts which specify maximum workloads, but this can be easily circumvented. One colleague of mine reports that they were allocated just 30 hours to write a book, as the only way to fit in all their assigned tasks into their workload. Add to this unrelenting pressure to ‘perform’ in management-defined ways, such as ‘capturing’ research grants with a success rate of perhaps 12-30%, ‘improve’ teaching and NSS scores, produce 3* or 4* ‘outputs’ and an impact case study for the Research Excellence Framework, and you begin to see how stress can become overwhelming. It is not enough to specialize in just two or three of these areas, success in all categories must be demonstrated at each appraisal. The causes of unacceptable stress are no mystery and enough people have tried to point them out. I was among those who raised a voice in my own blog and the pages of the Times Higher. I was subjected to disciplinary procedures as a result, despite having my own diagnosis of work-related stress. I have since chosen to leave academia, and have quickly recovered my health. Liz Morrish Nottingham https://academicirregularities.wordpress.com

Liz is right, excessive workloads are a major cause of the increasing incidences of mental health conditions amongst academics. The rise in stress related sickness, including physical ill health is also alarming. In many universities workloads are so heavy that academics cannot take leave, in the worst cases for years. To many good people are leaving the profession for the sake of their health. It's a damning indictment of the sector.

Liz is right, excessive workloads are a major cause of the increasing incidences of mental health conditions amongst academics. The rise in stress related sickness, including physical ill health is also alarming. In many universities workloads are so heavy that academics cannot take leave, in the worst cases for years. To many good people are leaving the profession for the sake of their health. It's a damning indictment of the sector.

Unfortunately, the Health and Safety Executive is an increasingly toothless tiger, having been subjected to huge budget and staff cuts under the coalition and Tory governments. Many physical industries can now expect to go for many years without a workplace inspection from the HSE. At this year's Hazards conference for union safety reps, an HSE worker (and Prospect rep), Neil Hope-Collins, said that "Working in the HSE is getting harder and harder. You have a workload that makes you sick". Irony, much? Stress is an even tougher nut to crack from an enforcement point of view, because of the difficulty of establishing a definitive causal link between an individual's poor health and undue workplace "pressure" (though not impossible in certain cases). For anyone who wants to remain in higher education and improve conditions there, I recommend joining UCU and - ideally - getting actively involved, and encouraging others to do so too. Historically, it is unions that have fought for, and achieved, better terms and conditions, but a decent strength of membership is essential. HE staff can't rely on someone else to sort out their problems for them. As Liz Morrish indicates, there is life outside of HE too. As someone made redundant last year, I am now working as a senior analyst at the Rail Safety and Standards Board, where I find my working day - despite its own pressures - positive and fulfilling. I have, of course, joined the union. David Hardman Former Secretary of UCU London Region and former Branch Secretary at London Met Uni.

As in all facets of neoliberal life, there are the haves and have nots. For the haves (mobile, good contracts, good unions), things are just peachy. But they're also trapped "you move, you lose". For all of us the pressures of the gig economy are unrelenting. The world is changing and our institutions aren't coping. Nor are we - we're burning out and dying - we're writers, not fighters. The academic value proposition, just like the higher education VP, is eroding fast. The millennials know it. We know it. Most of us are so specialised (and let's face it, some of us are plain weird) that we're not much good outside HE. If you're 40+ that's really bad luck. In an adjunct/ gig world, specialisation + idiosyncrasy + age + over supply = Very. Bad. Karma. The traditional model, whilst inefficient and flawed, was kind and allowed upward mobility. Not quite sure what this one does.

liz is indeed right. taking the facts she has listed, which are bang-on. Now let's cut to the chase: Evil, greed driven blood-sucking managers of the #CultofManagerialism are greatly harming and killing academics in our universities. That's the real headline here. These "people" stink, they often don't write, don't read what the staff under their jack-boots publish, can't tech and can't actually manage anything properly at all other than a spreadsheet.

I wonder how many of the senior staff imposing these ever-increasing performance requirements on their more junior colleagues would have been able to meet them themselves? Answers on a postcard please…