The Transformation of Academic Work: Fractured Futures? [Hardcover]

This book offers a unique grounded analysis of recent crises and transformations in academic work. It charts international and Australia-based efforts to overcome academic fragmentation and precarity, and to advance agendas for the public university. It is based on extensive qualitative interviews with academics and managers across several universities in Australia. It finds new grounds for universal universities, with decent jobs, to serve the public good. The book is aimed at students and scholars from sociology, education, politics and industrial relations, and a wider readership concerned about the future of universities. Analysis centres on a trade union-led initiative in Australia aimed at decasualising universities, and ensuing debates about the impact of academic fragmentation. The authors argue for strengthening the teaching/research nexus as the foundation-stone for public purpose universities.

1. Introduction.- 2. The Crisis of Higher Education: International and Australian.- 3. Struggles Against the Precariousness and Fragmentation of Academic Work.- 4. The Australian Context and Background to the Research.- 5. From Precarity to Security? Weve got to do a better job for the casuals.- 6. Managerial Motivations and Contexts.- 7. Silence in the Academy? Impacts of Role Fragmentation.- 8. Teaching and Research in the 21st Century University. 9. Conclusion.

James Goodman is Professor of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. He has investigated changing concepts of academic work and was a lead researcher for the project that led to this book. He is co-author of Academic Casualization in Australia (2010) and Hope and Activism in the Ivory Tower (2006). He researches political sociologl³X