Farzana Haniffa
On 7th May 2015, the University Grants Commission released a circular, entitled Ethics and Academic Accountability for Academic Staff in the Sri Lankan University system. The circular was prepared by the Quality Assurance Council of the UGC and included a section called Academic Freedom and accountability for mapping of workload and work norms.
Accountability has been a cornerstone of quality assurance that has institutionalised itself as a compliance process that mainly asks if universities are “fit for purpose” as in whether they respond to market needs and employability requirements, whether programmes are consistent in their content delivery and designed in a manner that is recognisable to accreditation agencies and to standardised qualification frameworks. Quality assurance has been introduced into the Sri Lankan context through World Bank loan cycles that have been in operation since 2003. Compliance has institutionalised an audit culture, self-assessment processes and formalised organisation of syllabi. Part of this accountability, in the Sri Lankan context, has been to ensure that academics adhere to the minimum hours as stipulated in the Quality Assurance circular mentioned above and other similar documents.
Accountability processes set in place through quality assurance cells have been understood for the most part as necessary as a means of reigning in straying academics who use their “freedom” to not show up to lectures, not complete syllabi and leave their students and often their junior colleagues to address their excesses. This figure of the renegade academic taking advantage of the system is one that is common, especially outside the academic community, and it has enabled a “quality” culture committed to policing academic workloads. Accountability processes have spawned the production of attendance registers, student feedback forms, peer evaluation and minimum required work norms regulations to supposedly bind academics to their commitments. Therefore, academics inform the administration of how many contact hours, how much time is spent on assessment and supervision and how much time is put into research and publishing to ensure that they are not ‘caught-out’ in audit processes for not adhering to the minimum requirement. Considerable time is required to record tasks with evidence in addition to actually doing them.
It is now well documented that the “quality” that is required from quality assurance processes is not something that emerged from academics or one that is supported by most academic communities across researched countries. It is, in fact, seen as a victory of a managerial process that has no actual commitment to improving quality that most academics understand as a transformative learning experience for students. Quality as mobilised by the Quality Assurance regime means only a surveillance process by which academic institutions can be more “efficiently” managed.
One of the processes that this new managerial method has spawned globally has been the workload allocation model (WAM) used to map and assign academic work. However, it has been established that such workload allocation models seriously underestimate the actual time required for academic tasks resulting, for example, in UK academics generally working 50-60 hour weeks well beyond the contracted 37. The University College Union (UCU) has worked to highlight the failures of the WAM across UK universities. The Sri Lankan system currently does not have a WAM process and relies on the annual audits to monitor academics’ time use.
In addition to the primary responsibility of teaching, marking research and publications about which the audit process asks academics there are many other responsibilities within the university system. The quality and ratings requirements has led to an explosion of journals at the University level, the faculty level and at the level of the departments that require at least one round of peer review that takes time to both coordinate and carry out. At the faculty level there are conferences for students as well as university wide academic conferences. Most departments have their own department conferences annually in addition to the faculty conference. In addition, certain course units, within the main degree programmes, have regular field placements that require lecturers to be with students on Saturdays as well, not to mention field training programmes. All honours degree students in the Faculty of Arts have an independent study dissertation component that is done over a two-year period, during which supervision, presentations and marking are carried out. In the past few years internships have become the norm across faculties. Academic staff are generally responsible for all coordination, including identifying institutions and monitoring student progress, as well as for grading field journals and internship reports. At the faculty level there are additional tasks related to student mentoring, and many committees, including ethics review committees, research committees, various grievance committees, IT committees, environmental committees, the periodic faculty review committees, curriculum review committees, post-graduate committees and committees formulated to deal with emerging issues. Staff are also expected to teach on the weekends in their department’s post graduate programmes. The quality assurance process does not currently map time used in such work or ensure an equitable distribution of such tasks.
In the UK the UCU workload surveys conducted between 2016 and 2023 reported distressing results. Most academics work beyond their contracted 37.5 hours per week with some reporting 70-80 hours during term time. In the Southampton UCU branch survey 72.3 % said their workload was very high or unmanageable requiring working on evenings and weekends and 75% reported that overwork had impacted their mental health. We currently do not have the information regarding the wellbeing of academics in the Sri Lankan system. It is likely, however, that academics in Sri Lanka, too, are facing similar challenges.
Several issues, related to the particularities of the Sri Lankan context, must also be taken into consideration in the discussion about workload. The difficulty with dealing with the administration is one such issue. The productivity culture that academics have been compelled to commit to – particularly through the several World Bank loan cycles – has not been institutionalised to the same extent at the level of the administration. In fact, certain tasks, formerly taken up by the administration, are now done by academics (entering marks into the system, for instance). The administration’s requirement of multiple signatures for what seem to be simple permission processes, the inability to rationalise procedure to ensure speed, the complexities of accommodating activities that the system is not familiar with and where processes are not already in place, are exigencies that academics have to constantly navigate. A junior colleague recounted how she rarely finds the space to eat lunch on time on any given workday and how she is compelled by stress to often work late into the night to keep up. It was frustrating for her to have to work around an administration, for whom lunch hours are sacred and leaving work at 4.15 is the rule. Another colleague recounted how junior staff leave letters must be carried from the Department to the Dean’s Office and then from there to the VC office by the staff members themselves to ensure that they are processed on time.
Managing research grants within the university remains nightmarish and will be the subject of another column. Within the administration, too, however, there are figures who carry a major part of the coordination load who must be recognised. Yet, for the most part, academics are compelled to find workarounds to ensure that their own work is not hampered by administrative inertia.
The prevalence of hierarchy within departments that compels junior staff to carry out much of the service tasks mentioned above is also an issue. Junior colleagues stated that in addition to service tasks that they apply for themselves there are many others that they are compelled to “volunteer” for and others that are assigned to them without their consent. One junior colleague stated that some of their peers are better at avoiding service responsibilities, while others are compelled to carry a greater load. Therefore, often, it is the same faces that one sees in many of the committees. There are also reports of Heads of Department refusing to accommodate junior staff service responsibilities by reducing their teaching load and by insisting that they carry out work tasks even during time that they have taken university-approved leave. Although such excesses are rarely the norm the absence of a culture of accountability to the staff, particularly the junior staff, leaves room for such excesses to occur.
Among the problems identified in the Quality Assurance processes, the absence of any consideration for academics’ working conditions is only one. Any reforms to the higher education sector must take cognizance of the harm created by the quality assurance processes and revisit the notions of both quality and accountability with staff wellbeing and a transformative learning experience for students at its center.
