Academic capitalism and faculty burnout: evidence from the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the factors that affect burnout of faculty, which we refer to as “academic fatigue”, in the context of the business professors in the highly competitive and globalized market of the United Arab Emirates, which, unlike the United States, does not offer tenure to professors. It is the first paper to addresses an increasingly important area in the higher education sector in the UAE where increasing competition between institutions, the financial pressure on universities, and government funding cuts are having a knockdown effect on all parts of the higher education supply chain, including faculty. Data was collected from business faculty in a major UAE public university using a quantitative survey that designed based on Maslach Burnout Inventory MBI Educators Survey (MBI-ES). We find that while purely aspects of financial compensation (including satisfaction with pay, pay for performance sensitivity, and merit pay allocation) are not significantly related to faculty burnout, faculty satisfaction with the research and teaching workload reduces burnout significantly.  Our results do not support the academic capitalism paradigm in a strict financial sense, but rather in a holistic sense that incorporates non-financial compensation. Key Words: Academic Capitalism; Faculty Burnout; United Arab Emirates; Higher Education; depersonalization; stress; tenure.