This book offers a unique grounded analysis of recent crises and transformations in academic work. It charts international and Australia-based efforts to overcome academic fragmentation and precarity, and to advance agendas for the public university. It is based on extensive qualitative interviews with academics and managers across several universities in Australia. It finds new grounds for ‘universal’ universities, with decent jobs, to serve the public good. The book is aimed at students and scholars from sociology, education, politics and industrial relations, and a wider readership concerned about the future of universities. Analysis centres on a trade union-led initiative in Australia aimed at decasualising universities, and ensuing debates about the impact of academic fragmentation. The authors argue for strengthening the teaching/research nexus as the foundation-stone for public purpose universities.

James Goodman is Professor of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. He has investigated changing concepts of academic work and was a lead researcher for the project that led to this book. He is co-author of Academic Casualization in Australia (2010) and Hope and Activism in the Ivory Tower (2006). He researches political sociology and social movement politics and is co-author of Beyond the Coal Rush (2020), Climate Upsurge (2014), and Global Justice (2013). 

Claire Parfitt is Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney, Australia. She writes about the social studies of finance, value theory, intellectual property, social movements, and labour rights. Her latest work is a critique of ethical investing and corporate sustainability.

Keiko Yasukawa is Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. She researches in the areas of adult and lifelong education, and adult literacy and numeracy with a focus on the tensions between policy, practice, and pedagogy.

Harnesses the perspectives of a wide variety of stakeholders on how to overcome precarity in academic work Offers a uniquely grounded analysis of recent transformations in academic work and attempts to chart alternative agendas Provides insight into the wider crises in the public university sector and possibilities for overcoming them