Work From Home and Academia
The balance has shifted
There are a lot of benefits to being a professor. Teaching is rewarding. Research is stimulating. Vacation time is plentiful. Generally, professors don’t need to be on campus if classes aren’t in session. That means long weekends during fall break and Thanksgiving, a week for spring break, a month for winter break, and several months for summer breaks. Professors will be quick to point out that they do plenty of work during this time; it’s when we do most of our research, go to conferences, catch up on administrative tasks that have been put off for months, etc. Still, most will tell you it’s a good job, especially once you have tenure.
One of the additional fringe benefits of being an academic is the flexibility during the semester. If I’m not in a committee meeting (2-5 hours a week) or scheduled to teach, I don’t have to be on campus. A professor can lesson prep or do research from home or on an island somewhere. A lot of universities limit the number of classes on Fridays, in part so faculty can all be available for committee meetings, but this in effect allows professors flexibility to be away Friday-Sunday. It’s a great perk for the gig and a major hiring point for people choosing whether to head into academia or the private sector.
It’s also now largely been replicated throughout industry. Since Covid, work from home (WFH) has exploded in popularity. What used to be the privilege of a select few in niche industries has now become the norm in much of corporate America. That isn’t to say most are working from home five days a week, most aren’t. But the vast majority of people I know who work in the business sector are not going into the office every day. In fact, I don’t know if anyone does. The data bear this out. Take a look at this chart from Pew:
Of those who can WFH, only 12 percent avoid it entirely. Over three-quarters WFH at least “some of the time”. That’s a big shift from how things were in 2019. It used to be a common complaint that workers were forced to be in the office when they could do their jobs effectively anywhere. Now, their desires have been granted. For millions of American workers, they go into the office 1-4 days a week and spend at least one day a week elsewhere.
This ties into academia because it means a relatively strong perk of the job is no longer unique. I’ve seen this firsthand. Before 2020, when I would do a weekend trip with friends, I was usually the one whose schedule permitted the most amount of flexibility. As long as I wasn’t teaching, I could go whenever. That meant a lot of freedom during the summer and a decent amount during spring and fall. The working stiffs would have to get approval to take a Friday off, and even then, might wind up stuck in a meeting. In the last few years, however, the script has flipped. Friends will want to do a weekend trip from Thursday-Sunday. For them it’s easy - to the point that they don’t even have to use any PTO. Instead, they just WFH those two days, even if “working” means throwing in an earbud to listen (but not participate) in meetings for a few hours. I, on the other hand, have to work around my class schedule.
For those reading this and scenting a bit of jealousy on my end, you’d be right. I’m happy that the economy has become more efficient; it’s a colossal waste to have thousands of employees spend 40 hours a week in the same building given current communication technology. But I’m also a bit miffed at this reversal of fortunes. I took a much lower paying job in academia in part to avoid having to spend 40 hours a week in the same building. That fringe benefit is now shared by my white collar friends.
The larger point is that between the WFH revolution and the slow but unstoppable destruction of tenure, academic jobs have seen a large relative decrease in work culture compared to those in the commercial sector. That isn’t to say universities are going to have a hard time filling positions; it’s still normal for a single tenure-track position to garner hundreds (literally) of applicants. On the margin, however, some will likely move away from an academic career and toward industry.
There are a few caveats here. First, and I want to make this very clear, academics still have a large amount of freedom. In fact, academics have gained even more freedom in recent years, as many committees that used to meet in person will not meet online, enabling academics some of the same privileges as those in the private sector. My point isn’t that absolute freedom in academia has decreased, but that relative freedom of academia has.
Second, It’s a good thing that corporate America has changed. While I believe strongly in the gains of in-person interaction, it doesn’t need to be five days a week. I think a lot of businesses would hit the sweet spot of both teamwork and freedom by having employees in the office between two and four days a week, depending on the business and time of year. That would prevent too much siloing while allowing employees to do work on their own time.
Third, the WFH revolution may not be as permanent as some think. Things are never going back to 2019; there will always be more WFH now than there was five years ago. That said, the next economic downturn is going to have a lot of unforeseen consequences. American workers have not gone through a sustained economic downturn with accompanying income decreases since June of 2009. Most people didn’t own a smartphone then. A significant recession might spur a lot of companies to start cutting employees who are in the office less frequently, if so, people will go back to their old commuting habits.
WFH has changed how academics view the flexibility of their jobs. What was once a unique perk is now much more common. The long-term effects of this are still unknown, and will likely make academic jobs less appealing to those on the margin.
Summer break is still awesome, though.