Monster with many heads

One of the unanswered questions of the past decade is how and why (and, perhaps, whether) the levels of stress and anxiety experienced by many have grown so significantly.

This is often discussed in the context of students, who can easily find themselves isolated at just the wrong moment for their mental – and sometimes physical – well-being.

But it has become clear that something is also happening, or more likely a number of things are happening in combination, to supercharge levels of stress and anxiety among university staff.

It is highly likely that some of this is down to changes to our lives and the world that have nothing to do with the inner workings of higher education.

Our 24/7 digital lives, for example, and the impact of social media and instant communication; the effects of a decade of economic turmoil; social and family pressures as more of us care for both children and elderly, ailing parents; concern about a world facing the existential threats of climate change. You will have your own worries to add to a list that could go on and on.

But it would be too convenient to put all this baggage outside campus walls.

In our news pages this week, we have the latest study pointing to a serious deterioration in the well-being of academics in the UK, which is new only in so far as it benchmarks levels of “workplace psychological risk” against official standards set by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive.

The study’s conclusion is that universities are failing staff on almost every measure – indeed, the only HSE category in which universities do not fall below the acceptable level is the “control” that scholars feel they have over their work.

However, even in this area, which has been core to academic life and which is often seen as a pressure valve for the profession, academia is found to have deteriorated over time.

This, for the authors of the study, is a particularly worrying finding, since academics have often told themselves that “although your job demands are high, your time control and autonomy are also very high and this has acted as a buffer between job demands and psychological distress”.

Anyone who reads Times Higher Education regularly will be aware of the anecdotal evidence to be found almost weekly that supports the findings, and demonstrates that it is a monster with many heads.

The breakdown in collegiate relations is one aspect that is documented regularly in these pages (and the HSE study finds evidence of a significant decline in workplace relationships over time).

Our most-read article in 2019 was a bitingly satirical take on how to get ahead in academia, offering 10 rules for upward toxicity. “Universities sing the song of meritocracy but dance to a different tune. In reality, they will do everything to reward and protect their most destructive, abusive and uncooperative faculty,” wrote Irina Dumitrescu, professor of English medieval studies at the University of Bonn.

Her experience clearly struck a chord with the tens of thousands of people who read and shared it online.

In another recent opinion piece, a contributor described the decline of their mental health as their employer failed to deal with a bullying manager. “Our university boasts of being committed to harmonious working practices, but our bully’s boss frequently enabled rather than questioned their behaviour,” they wrote. “We also found our university’s reporting procedures woefully inadequate, [relying] on mediation. We should, in short, meet with our bully to sort things out.”

I mention these because they are the tip of the iceberg. Article pitches along similar lines come in to THE with greater frequency than perhaps any other topic – and far more than they once did.

Managers may dismiss some of the complaints as unfair – some no doubt are – and will have their own views about issues of fierce dispute, such as the ongoing question of pay and pensions. It is also undoubtedly the case that universities are not a homogeneous lump, nor are managers or leaders.

But the evidence that all is not well in the state of academia mounts up – and is not going to disappear simply by waiting for people to get used to the new normal, or for some notional old guard to move on.

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com