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Little attention has been given to the mental and physical health impacts of COVID-19 on the academic public health workforce. Academic public health is an important support mechanism for public health practice, providing expertise and workforce training, conducting research, disseminating evidence-based scientific information to both public health and lay audiences, and serving as a supplementary workforce when additional resources are needed. These roles become more important during a public health emergency, particularly during a prolonged public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the COVID-19 response, the roles of academic public health have expanded to include developing and implementing contact tracing, surveillance, testing, and vaccination programs for universities and their surrounding communities, all while continuing to prepare students and support the public health practice workforce in their ongoing efforts. As in other responder groups, this has resulted in significant mental health effects and burnout among public health academicians. The authors suggest important steps that can be taken to improve the resilience of the academic public health workforce and to support their contributions during prolonged public health emergencies.

The purpose of this study is to assess the current level of education qualifications of the workforce working in academic libraries in Botswana. The study also aims to determine the current and required level of continuing professional development (CPD) of librarians working in academic libraries in Botswana.

The study adopted positivist research paradigm and quantitative research design using a structured questionnaire to collect data, where survey questions were developed based on existing, tested and verified NeXus1 and NeXus2 instruments developed in Australia.

Findings revealed that majority (41 or 35.3%) of the academic workforce in Botswana had first degree professional qualification, while those with diploma qualification were 28 or 24.1%; about a quarter of respondents had obtained master’s degree qualification. Most of the CPD activities undertaken were workshops and other workplace training programmes. While about half of the total respondents had attended conferences, less than half of them had published or presented a paper, and mentoring, that should have been given a pride of place in the libraries, largely suffers near neglect. Some knowledge and skills have been acquired on the job and have beneficial impact in the service rendered.

The study seems to be the first of its type in Botswana as a thorough search of literature did not yield any result in the field. What is more, it combines the librarians in public and private universities, colleges of education and institutes of health sciences. Recommendations generated from the findings are likely to improve the services rendered and interest of the librarians in the profession.

We are the midst of accelerated change in the academic workforce. Academic roles, being a resilient mixture of research and education, are differentiating. An education-focused academic role, rather than one solely focused on disciplinary research, is gaining credibility and value. With the rise of the education-focused academic roles, questions are being raised about whether this new form of education-focused academic will continue to be overly represented by women in a new form of “women's work.” In the next decade, as academic roles continue to differentiate, care needs to be taken not to repeat the practice of the last 100 years which has seen gender bias continue. We will present four profiles of education-focused women academics, the snakes and ladders in their careers, and the strategies needed to ensure that women progress with equal recognition in these complex but exciting times.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the development and challenges of doctoral education in Korea. In particular, it focusses on the differences between overseas and domestic doctorates in terms of training, supply and demand in the academic workforce, their academic entry-level jobs and employment status.

This study applied document analysis to mainly secondary data sources. The data were drawn from the Statistical Yearbooks of Education, Annual Science and Technology Statistics, the Database for Overseas Doctorates Registration and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The findings indicate that the doctoral education system in Korea, in terms of both size and quality, has demonstrated significant development for last four decades. However, the results also show that overseas doctorates have relative advantages for their academic job entry over domestic doctorates, and the major research universities are more likely to hire those with overseas doctorates than domestic doctorates.

This study presents the evolution of the doctoral education system in Korea, which has not yet been considered in the international research.

Asheim concluded by noting that the need for change was the thread that connected almost all discussions of library education during the decade; change was not just accepted but anticipated, encouraged, and even instigated at an increasing pace. The accompanying effect on professional education was that “… the stress in education … fell upon education-for-change rather than upon the history, the heritage, the tradition.”(1975, p. 178) Wisely, perhaps, Asheim declined to predict whether or not this particular stress on change would continue, but he did raise the possibility of a respite, a period when change would be placed to the side in favor of reaction and retrenchment. Thirty years later his words sound almost wistful:The next few years may be a period of synthesis following the antithesis of the past decade—not a complete return to an earlier and more leisurely past, but not so violent a wrench as was feared by some, and sought by others (1975, p. 178).

The tertiary education system has become an international phenomenon in recent decades, and, increasingly, Australian institutions are employing academic staff and postgraduate students from other countries. This now poses a number of challenges. International academics are reporting that cultural differences and stresses are impacting on their work. This has required an examination of both curricula and assessment practices in the tertiary sphere. Having academic staff from diverse backgrounds working in tertiary institutions arouses interesting patterns of interaction with other personnel, students, learning materials and learning contexts. This chapter examines a large number of international academics from Non-English Speaking Background (NESB), who are working in various Australian university faculties and disciplines. The study analyses the key factors influencing the NESB international academics’ employment. Seventy-five participants working in six Australian universities participated in this study.

The purpose of this study is to explore the human resource development (HRD) implications of perceived higher education (HEd) leadership effectiveness on academics’ quality of worklife (QWL) in the context of COVID-19. Drawing on conservation of resource theory, this study explains the mediating role of resource adequacy (RA); then this study investigates the moderating role of COVID-19-related risk perception (CRP) on the relationship between university leadership (UL) and both academics’ turnover intention (TI) and academics’ QWL.

This study used a quantitative research exploiting the pandemic experiences and perceptions survey, PEPS, to collect data from 300 academic staff in private and public HEd institutions in Lebanon. The analyses include the test of the mediating effect of RA as well as the moderated mediation effect of CRP through regressions, PROCESS and bootstrapping.

The findings suggest that by enhancing RA, effective UL positively influences the QWL and mitigate the TI in Lebanese HEd. Furthermore, this study found that CRP weakens the direct relationship of UL on RA and the indirect effect of UL on the QWL and TI via RA such that the relationships are weakened when COVID-19 risk perception was high rather than low.

The results imply that HEd HRD professionals could think of effective human resource interventions of how to maintain good working environment where academics are facilitated to acquire high level of resources which lead to improving their QWL and mitigating the negative outcome (TIs).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research has been made to investigate the moderated mediation model of the “pandemic experience and leadership perceptions” (PEPS) in the HEd sector in Lebanon, addressing academics’ experiences in business schools. This study is unique because it was conducted during the utmost pandemic outbreak (mid academic year 2021) collecting data in real time. This research contributes to the HRD literature by showing empirical evidence of the relationships in the context of Lebanese HEd institutions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the impact of the marketisation of the English HE sector on academic staff and the nature of their professional work is felt to the same degree in different English universities. The study was conducted between November 2015 and April 2017.

Using the interpretivist paradigm, a qualitative, inductive approach is adopted. In total, 12 semi-structured interviews of 60-90 min each were conducted with academics of six English university types (ancient, old and new civics, plate-glass, technological and post-1992). Participants who were identified by non-probability sampling included professors, principal, senior and lecturers and associate lecturers.

Six key themes emerged regarding the impact on academic staff and their work: efficiency and quantity over effectiveness; autocratic, managerialist ideology over academic democracy and debate; instrumentalism over intellectualism; de-professionalisation and fragmentation of the academy; increased incidence of performativity, bullying and workplace aggression; and work intensification. The ancient university is least impacted by marketisation in terms of academic staff and the nature of their work. Next are the old and new civic universities, followed by technological, plate-glass universities. The most impact is felt by academics (and the nature of their work) in the post-1992 universities.

There is a relatively small number of interviews in this study; therefore, it is difficult to categorically correlate an academic biography with their opinion in the context of their university type. More male than female participants were interviewed. International staff were not interviewed, and this could bring a varying perspective to the narrative found in this study. A mixed approach in further research would aid this objective. Some of the questioning in the pilot study was not as focused as any further primary research would have to be.

A further area of study, which could have practical implications, add originality and value would be to investigate how good practice in “employee engagement” in the university context might pave the way forward. This has the potential to benefit academic staff directly and the institution, a win–win solution for all stakeholders.