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Inside Higher Education
Burning Out
Professors say faculty burnout is always a real threat, but especially
now, and that institutions should act before it’s too late.
By Colleen Flaherty
September 14, 2020
As a frequent commentator on all things higher ed, Kevin McClure likes
his predictions to be right. But in the case of a recent article he
wrote about the growing threat of faculty burnout, he wanted to be
wrong.
“Basically what I heard over and over again was people saying, ‘That’s
me. This is how I feel. This gives words to the way that I’m feeling
walking into fall semester,’” McClure, an associate professor of higher
education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, said about
feedback he received. “So it’s a situation where many people confirmed
my argument that there will be a wave of burnout -- but it does
increase my level of concern.”
Others are sounding the alarm about faculty burnout, too. It's always a risk in academe, they say, but now more than ever.
"Faculty burnout -- exacerbated by pandemic-related stressors, absent
childcare and school, and unrelenting or even accelerating work
expectations from colleagues -- poses real and serious risk for mental
health challenges of unprecedented scope," said June Gruber, associate
professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado
at Boulder.
Gruber co-wrote a column for Science last month saying that academe
needs a "reality check" regarding expectations for faculty this
semester.
"To be absolutely clear: This. Is. Not. Normal," Gruber and her
colleagues wrote. Elsewhere, Gruber has described flattening the
"mental health curve" as the "next big coronavirus challenge."
Lisa Jaremka, assistant professor of social-health psychology at the
University of Delaware, and co-author of a recent paper on "common
academic experiences no one talks about" -- including burnout -- also
said that the main consequences of burnout include mental health
issues. Disillusionment with work is another danger.
Jaremka experienced burnout as a graduate student and again as an
assistant professor, but she said last week that "I would absolutely
expect that burnout is worse during the pandemic, particularly for
women with school-aged children."
What Is Burnout?
In his recent EdSurge piece, McClure said he was at such a low point at
the end of the spring semester -- drowning in Zoom meetings, grading,
advising and 24-7 daddy duty -- that he asked some colleagues if they
really needed to find a way to recognize their graduating master’s
students.
“My immediate response was: ‘Do we have to?’” McClure wrote. “It was
uncharacteristic enough for another colleague to say they were worried
about me.”
According to the World Health Organization, which includes the
occupational phenomenon in its International Classification of
Diseases, burnout is a "syndrome conceptualized as resulting from
chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." The
primary symptoms are feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion,
increased mental "distance" from or cynicism and negativity toward
one's job, and reduced professional efficacy.
While burnout is sometimes used loosely -- think "Zoom burnout" or
"pandemic burnout" -- the WHO says that burnout "refers specifically to
phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to
describe experiences in other areas of life.”
Christina Maslach, professor of psychology emerita at the University of
California, Berkeley, who developed the Maslach Burnout Inventory, said
that there is a "widespread tendency to add the word 'burnout' to all
kinds of topics." Yet it's "not at all clear that the word means the
same thing in all of these instances. In some cases, burnout is being
used to mean exhaustion, but burnout is actually much more than that."
Jaremka and others describe burnout as feeling "at the end of one's
rope." Recalling her first experience with burnout, when she was trying
to finish her dissertation, Jaremka wrote that her "to-do list was
getting longer each day rather than shorter. I started an unhealthy
sleeping pattern in an effort to catch up; I would nap from about 9 to
11 p.m., get back up to work from about 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., and then
sleep again from about 3 to 8 a.m."
The lack of sleep only made her feel more overwhelmed and burned out,
making for a cycle of reduced productivity. "I was so fatigued that I
worked inefficiently and made needless mistakes along the way, often
spending more time on a task than I would have in a non-burned-out
state," Jaremka wrote. "Being a first-generation college student, I
also felt an intense pressure to succeed, which further fueled the
imbalance I was experiencing between work and the rest of my life."
Jaremka had a reprieve as a postdoctoral fellow, where her supervisor
encouraged working 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and general work-life balance. But
burnout happened again during her assistant professorship, when the
demands of working toward tenure left her little to no space to deal
with the deaths of several family members and infertility.
Much of the research on burnout involves the medical field. But Maslach
said burnout can occur "in all kinds of occupations, professors
included." One pre-pandemic study of faculty members from Brazil, for
instance, found that more than one-third suffered from burnout, that
women were more exhausted than men, that burnout was negatively
associated with quality of life and that burnout rates did not seem to
vary with field of study.
Not an Individual Problem
Both Jaremka and McClure are in a better place now, for now. Jaremka's
paper highlights some individual-level coping skills for burnout: know
you’re not alone but don’t compare yourself to others, recognize that
more work doesn’t always equal enhanced productivity, have space to
recharge away from work (harder during a pandemic) and identify “what
your burnout is telling you.”
McClure is trying to practice the art of saying no to more tasks, more
frequently. He’s also re-acquired care for his young children, a big
help. But he and others agree that navigating and surviving burnout
territory shouldn’t be up to individual faculty members and that
institutions need to step in.
“It’s literally not possible for people to complete this amount of work
in a 24-hour day,” McClure said of faculty responsibilities right now,
especially for those professors caring for others stuck at home. “And
so we have to actively figure out how to cut things out that we would
normally have to do.”
Gruber's "reality check" column recommends three principles for
individuals and institutions: acknowledge that things are not normal,
respect childcare and other personal needs, and triage what work is
"essential and reasonable."
"Expecting the same output as in previous years, even though many
people have less time and more stress than ever, is not a sustainable
or humane solution," Gruber and her colleagues wrote. "The world is not
normal -- so the way we do science cannot be normal either."
Beyond individual interventions, Jaremka's article includes a series of
cultural and structural recommendations for institutions to reduce
burnout, such as not setting “toxic” expectations, encouraging and
modeling work-life balance, valuing quality work over quantity, and
understanding the current limited research-funding environment. Bertram
Gawronski, one of Jaremka's co-authors and a professor of psychology at
the University of Texas at Austin, wrote that burnout is very much
about people feeling like they have no "control over their outcomes."
This is not the same as simply having too much work, he said.
A ‘Perfect Storm’
Amelia Nagoski, associate professor and coordinator of music at Western
New England University and co-author of Burnout: The Secret to
Unlocking the Stress Cycle, said the coronavirus pandemic is a “perfect
storm for professor burnout,” as it presents many new stressors without
taking any old stressors away. Professors are being asked to shift
course content online to new platforms and learn new technologies,
avoid getting sick, following changing health research and guidance,
and deal with their children’s own distance learning.
There is also being “polite to co-workers who think everyone is
overreacting, raging at the administration for making arbitrary
decisions that affect you but don't make any sense to you,” and so on,
she said. To that last point, Nagoski said “one of the greatest risks
for burnout is institutional decisions that professors can't control.
We are accustomed to being experts, in control, having answers, and
knowing what to do. It's very stressful now to be in a position where
your everyday life is turned upside down, and you feel completely out
of control.”
Institutions can help by letting faculty members talk about their
experiences and listening to what they need -- and then providing it in
tangible ways, she said. “Starting every email with, ‘The health and
safety of our campus family are our first priority’ [is] not soothing
or helpful when you follow the words with actions that negatively
impact your faculty.”
Sian Beilock, president of Barnard College and a psychologist who
studies the science of why people choke under pressure, said burnout is
“something we all experienced from time to time, and really, it's the
lack of motivation and feeling of struggle around whatever you need to
do.”
One way people ward off burnout is turning to different “identities”
when one part of life becomes overwhelming, Beilock said -- such as
going for a run after a difficult day of teaching. That kind of
“stepping away” is harder to achieve at the moment, she added, yet she
advises her faculty members to try and do it.
“A lot of us are having to multitask all the time, and as humans, we’re not very good at that.”
From the Top
Beilock said that institutions asking their faculty members to do more
must do more to support them. Barnard revised its curriculum this
semester to better address issues related to COVID-19 and social
justice and moved from a semester format to approximately eight-week
units, which it believes are more conducive to online learning. All of
that has required the faculty to innovate, and the institution’s
teaching and learning, technology, and Center for Engaged Pedagogy
staff members have been working hard to support them.
Barnard is also expanding its student-centered Feel Well, Do Well
campaign for transparency and dialogue on mental health to college
employees.
“Mental health is everyone’s responsibility,” and talking about it shouldn’t be limited to the counselor’s office, Beilock said.
McClure admitted that some of the biggest institutional interventions
would also be some of the most expensive, such as offering course load
reductions to faculty members who request them and hiring new
instructors to pick up those classes. But institutions also could look
long and hard at their course offerings and eliminate “redundancies,”
to reduce the overall number of courses offered where possible, he
said. They could also cut out nonessential meetings, so that professors
aren’t making up for time lost to Zoom at night and on the weekends.
A major overhaul -- one that could last beyond the pandemic -- would be
to change promotion and tenure criteria, McClure said, crediting
Dominique Baker, assistant professor of education policy at Southern
Methodist University, for the idea.
“What difference does it make if we say, ‘Instead of having 20
publications, you need to have 15’?” he said. “We have total control
over what this looks like, and if we don’t want people to be burned
out, why don’t we adjust our expectations a bit in light of what’s
happening around us?”
An ‘Impossible’ Moment
Joya Misra, a professor of sociology and public policy at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, called this moment “impossible”
for academics.
How can institutions help? Recognize how much teaching and
administrative workloads have increased and demonstrate flexibility in
reviewing faculty accomplishments, Misra said. UMass, for instance, has
delayed tenure clocks for assistant professors but promised “tenure
bumps” -- paying them as if they had gone up for tenure on time,
pre-pandemic, so that professors aren't punished financially for
factors beyond their control. Misra’s dean also emphasized taking
summer time off to recharge, she said.
UMass Amherst is accepting pandemic impact statements as part of the
faculty review process, so professors who hope to be promoted can
explain how their work has been affected, as well. The campus's
ADVANCE: Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic
Professions office, which is affiliated with the National Science
Foundation, also created a tool for professors to track how they’re
spending their time.
Misra said tracking one’s workload may feel like more work and that
“ideally, what we would be doing is hiring more faculty, rather than
laying off faculty, providing more resources.” Many colleges and
universities are of course in dire financial straits, particularly if
they’ve lost revenue from room and board, she added.
“We desperately need the federal government to step in and ensure that
higher education can continue supporting teaching, research and
leadership.”
In response to McClure’s piece, some female academics have said they’ve
been warning their administrations about burnout for a long time. Misra
said her own research supports the idea that women -- who traditionally
face a “second shift” of caring work when they get home from their
workplace -- will feel burned out first, and hardest.
There is “no question in my mind that men are also experiencing
burnout,” Misra said. “But I think it's important to recognize that as
long as women are expected to do more of the care work -- both inside
and outside of the workplace -- women will be experiencing higher
levels of burnout.”
Nicholas H. Snow, Founding Endowed Professor in Chemistry and
Biochemistry, recently wrote an op-ed for Inside Higher Ed suggesting
that professors take a “sabbatical” this fall for teaching,
concentrating their professional energy on instruction over other
duties.
Snow said in an interview that focusing on teaching, not research or other work, could help mitigate the risk of burnout.
“There are not enough hours in the day, week or semester to accomplish
everything on our traditional plates both professionally and personally
with the backdrop of the pandemic and other societal pressures,” he
said. “So faculty should prioritize activities that benefit both
themselves and their institutions the most.”
That includes teaching, especially undergraduates, Snow added. “It’s
what so many of us came into higher education to do in the first place
and the ideal on which most of our institutions were founded.”
For that kind of effort to work, however, Snow said that senior faculty
members and administrators should let junior faculty members know, “‘We
have your back,’ and then act on that ideal.” Teaching well in this new
landscape “requires two or more times the effort by the faculty member
as teaching a traditional lecture,” and professors should be evaluated
that way.
Risks of Inaction
In a 2019 BuzzFeed article, journalist and former academic Anne Helen
Peterson posited that burnout among millennials is so prevalent because
of their precarity, financially and in other ways. This certainly
applies to academe, where the supply of willing and capable professors
vastly outweighs the demand, as measured by stable jobs that pay a
living wage.
McClure agreed, saying, “I do think it’s the case that burnout has
become normalized in academe partly because folks don’t feel like they
have the freedom to go looking for other jobs.”
It does happen, though -- folks turning down jobs because they don’t
see academic life in the U.S. as sustainable. Ross Vander Vorste, an
assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, last
month posted a letter to Twitter from someone who declined a job on his
campus, citing “the way that the U.S. federal government is handling
the COVID-19 pandemic, the troubled economy, the negative prospects for
higher education, the continual changing rights of immigrants in the
U.S.”
Psychologist Amy Summerville left a tenured position at a midsize
public university last year for a research job at a research and
development start-up -- what she's called going "full phoenix." She
recently tweeted about her experiences, advising academics to "Say no.
Ask for help. But remember, most of all, that protecting yourself is
not selfish -- because your burnout serves no one."
Summerville, who studies the science of regret and how people imagine
alternative possibilities to reality, told Inside Higher Ed that she
was on sabbatical the year before she left academe. With “a lot of
reflection about my career and my life as a whole,” she said she
“realized I was unsustainably stressed and unhappy at work.”
Part of the problem was that she became a faculty member in fall 2008,
during the financial crisis, “and it felt like the sky never stopped
falling. I had a decade of hearing from administration that we had to
do more with less, and at some point there just aren’t more notches to
tighten on a belt.” She also felt it wasn't something she could “escape
just by moving to another institution.”
COVID-19 only appears to have made financial pressures on universities
“even more acute,” Summerville said, and many professors are being told
to prepare courses for multiple modes of instruction, representing much
more work. There are also unanswered questions about how scholarship
will be evaluated for promotion and tenure going forward, and the
ongoing childcare crisis.
“So I think that, when you look at the factors that cause burnout --
things like unmanageable workload, unclear expectations -- COVID is
definitely making those things worse,” she said.
McClure said that allowing burnout to go unchecked is “wildly
inconsistent” with higher education’s stated values. But there are more
reasons to intervene, he said. That is, just as the risk of faculty
burnout is real, so too are the risks of institutional inaction.
“What we want to be able to achieve in higher education, being able to
meet the goals we set for ourselves becomes so much harder,” he said.
“You want to enroll more students and graduate more students and start
exciting academic programs and do cutting-edge research? Your ability
to do all of those things, in my opinion, is much more probable if
you’ve got conditions in place so that people can thrive.”
“If you’re running an organization that burns people to the ground,
then I don’t think you can anticipate that your outcomes are going to
be met.”
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