Get a life: academic reflections on the dysfunctions of academia.

Extract: The workaday scenarios described by Richard Hil will be familiar to academics around Australia:'teaching straight jacketed by the diktats of 'learning and teaching' experts; duties determined by workload models of transparent falsity; more students and fewer resources; emails clogged with administrative missives, most of monumental triviality; ceaseless surveillance to safeguard the university's 'brand'; and, research receding into a distant hope. As Hil depicts them, academics today are a disgruntled lot, and at the core of their disgruntlement is a loss of professional autonomy. For the increasing proportion of academic staff on short-term contracts, lack of job security and employment entitlements add another layer of discontentment. Hil's descriptions are laced with hyperbole, but the disillusionment and disaffection he diagnoses among academic staff are undeniable.

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