Learning from public administration faculty: emotional labour, burnout, and solutions

Higher education is confronting how faculty burnout has affected employee morale and job satisfaction. To better understand the implications of a pandemic on higher education. we survey over 900 public administration faculty to determine if they are burnt out and what motivates them to come to work. We apply emotional labour theory to the burnout measure system to understand the job experiences, level of satisfaction, well-being, and benefits of the respondents. We argue that the emotional labour framework allows us to understand why women, BIPOC, and assistant-level public administration faculty are disproportionately impacted.