Lecturer’s suicide a ‘wake-up call’ on overworking in academia

Macho-Management don't care about academic staff. Simple as that. They don't even bother trying to hidden the contempt for academics. Nothing will change. They'll be reminders about facilities or websites available to staff suffering from stress, etc, and 'well-being workshops' or 'time-management seminars', but the underlying causes - excessive workloads, lack of adequate resources, too many impossible and conflicting Key Performance Indicators, constantly being made to feel that we're failures because we are routinely told that we need to do more, be more ambitious, raise our game, etc., none of that will change. As always with university management, the problems will be pathologised and attributed to individuals being unable to cope, rather than the institution being dysfunctional.

Some Universities have a long history of suicides and failure to act, one particular stairwell in Cardiff is so well known even some of the occasional English contractors have named it suicide leap, toxic management practices will only change when VC's and governing bodies start facing jail terms. Until then we mere human resources will continue to be used, abused and worn out until we reach the point of disposal or replacement by a new cog in the great university sausage machine.