The South African Academic Profession: Job Satisfaction for a Besieged Profession?
This chapter investigates the job satisfaction of the South African academics using data procured by means of the international CAP (Changing Academic Profession) survey of the academic profession. While on aggregate they are mildly satisfied with their p
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The South African Academic Profession: Job Satisfaction for a Besieged Profession? Charl C. Wolhuter
This chapter investigates the job satisfaction of academics in South Africa using data procured by means of the international Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey of the academic profession. While on aggregate South African academics are mildly satisfied with their profession, they do feel that working conditions in higher education are deteriorating. It is also disturbing that one-third indicated that they would not enter the profession if they could have it all over again. Academics feel the stranglehold of managerialism. The differences in male–female job satisfaction and between teacheroriented and research-oriented academics point to the persistence of the historical organisational set-up and cultures of South African universities. All these should be subjected to follow-up research as a basis for rectification.
11.1 Introduction In the competitive globalised world, and in the rising knowledge society and knowledge economy, higher education in South Africa is of pivotal importance just as it is elsewhere in the world. Any education sector can only be as good as its teaching corps (the customary metaphor is ‘a stream of water cannot rise higher than its source’); therefore, the well-being of the academic profession is of critical importance for any higher education system. Urban legends of the South African academic profession are not out of touch with Teichler’s (2009:58) allegation: ‘We hear not only stories about ascetic hardworking academics, but also of those who spend half of the year gliding across their yacht’.
C.C. Wolhuter (*) Graduate School of Education, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, Potchefstroom, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] 209 P.J. Bentley et al. (eds.), Job Satisfaction around the Academic World, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 7, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5434-8_11, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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C.C. Wolhuter
The aim of this chapter is to assess the job satisfaction of the South African academic profession, using the results drawn from the Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey.
11.2 Contextual Background Factors That Have an Impact on the South African Academic Profession Salient societal forces that have an international impact on the academic profession are globalisation; the information, communication and technological revolution; the neo-liberal economic revolution; and democratisation (Wolhuter et al. 2010). These factors are all active in South Africa. On top of these, South African higher education is also under the influence of the national context, where it is both the subject of fundamental reforms and has been selected (by government and by society) to be an agent for the accomplishment of the desired societal reconstruction. After 1994, the government took a decision to build an education system upon the principles of desegregation, equal opportunitie
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