Neoliberal Universities and Academic Capitalism: Job Insecurity and Stress in Liberal Market Economies

This seminar has been organised by the Management and Organisation research community.

About the speaker

Our guest speaker is Professor Greg J Bamber.

Professor Greg J. Bamber is based at Monash Business School and leads the Future of Work research theme at the Monash Data Futures Institute, Monash University, Australia. He is also a Visiting Professor at Newcastle University. His interdisciplinary research spans aviation, healthcare, and higher education, focusing particularly on the implications of new technologies. Professor Bamber has authored over 200 academic publications, including notable works in the "Human Resource Management Journal" and "International & Comparative Employment Relations: Global Crises & Institutional Responses."

He actively collaborates with international organizations, various sectors of government, and both public and private enterprises, including the International Labour Organization. His extensive service roles include positions on editorial boards, arbitration panels, and directorships on non-profit boards. Additionally, he has held presidential roles in several academic associations, including the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management. For more information, visit his Monash profile or connect with him on LinkedIn at gregjbamber.

Research title

"Neoliberal Universities and Academic Capitalism: Job Insecurity and Stress in Liberal Market Economies"

Abstract

Higher education (HE) has been transformed; it has been neoliberalised, and adopted forms of “academic capitalism” in such Liberal Market Economies as Australia, Canada, USA, and UK. This includes HE organisations adopting practices from New Public Management and the private sector, for example, commercialisation, economisation, financialisation, and marketisation of universities in the form of competition for grants and students' fees. An aim is to maximise their reputations and surpluses, relying on “soft income” from fees, especially from international students, with a reliance on contingent academics, with managerialism, low trust, and insecure work.

What are the implications for academia and academics? This study analyses employment precarity, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. We contribute to the literature on academic capitalism, which hitherto has been published mainly in HE domains. Drawing on two unique cross-national sources of survey data, we compare academics’ experiences with job insecurity and related stress in Australian and Canadian universities. Although these two countries are similar to the UK as liberal market economies, Australian and British HE have become neoliberalised and adopted academic capitalism to an even greater extent than Canadian HE.

Our findings show that academics in Australia faced more negative outcomes than those in Canada. Changes in HE have reduced the prevalence of decent work in universities, and this in turn has increased subjective stress. Australian universities’ bigger reliance on volatile sources of "soft income", played a key role in explaining the variations. When explaining cross-national differences, we also consider the role of institutions and areas for future research.