Antecedents and consequences of Burnout in Visiting Faculty

Abstract

During the past decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of part-time faculty in academic institutions. In the current climate of decreasing funding and increasing enrollment for academic institution, it is likely that contingent faculty will continue to play a major role within these institutions. One common feature of such temporary academic jobs is the lack of support and commitment from the hiring institutions. Although there is much debate in developing countries regarding work and employment conditions of this contingent academic labour force, relatively less is known about the situation of these academics in developing countries like Pakistan, where decades of market-driven managerialist reforms have changed the entire landscape of higher education. Not many studies have explored the antecedents and consequences of stress in academia and the number of studies focusing on visiting faculty is even less. This study intends to fill this gap in literature by focusing on this understudied group. We conducted a qualitative case study to get an in depth understanding of the problem. A group of 30 respondents, consisting of both males and females, was selected for in-depth interviews using purposive sampling from a newly established public sector university of Pakistan. The findings of this study clearly indicate that visiting teachers are not paid fairly, have almost no job security, have little or no institutional support, and are treated as “second-class citizens” of academia, resulting in burnout.