How many hours a week should academics work?
Chair’s blog No. 6
By Julia Charlton, Branch Chair, Northumbria University
How many hours a week should academics work? How many hours do you work in a week? Many academics feel overworked and exhausted by their jobs. But there is little evidence that long hours lead to better results, while some research suggests that they may even be counterproductive. The research on how long academics work is patchy, but on the whole it shows that scholars are putting in longer hours than the average worker, and certainly more than the 9-to-5 norm that in any case seems to be disappearing from Western workplaces.