Equitable Workload and the Perceptions of Academic Staff in Universities

: Workload is the overall assignments to be completed by individuals in a given time. In academia, the number of instructional hours, credit hours, contact hours, class sizes, non-instructional schedules, student-teacher ratio, scholarly activities, and administrative and community services will determine the workload of faculty members in a semester. Any discrimination, favoritism, partiality, or managerial biases in the distribution of the workloads would lead to misconceptions among the academic staff that will affect the work culture of educational institutions. In this context, this paper examines the perceptions of 256 academic staff chosen by stratified random sampling from ten universities in Saudi Arabia by using a questionnaire on the general practices of universities for the allocation of the equitable workload in three variables such as teaching, research, and academic administration. Study results revealed that the academic staff positively responded to all the practices in the three variables. This paper answered the questions of what are the significant differences and significant correlations in the perceptions of academic staff concerning equitable workload distribution in the three variables. Firstly, it was found that the academic staff as groups by gender, nationality, type of university, and tenure has a significant perceptional difference in the three variables. In Saudi Arabia, foreigners work on contract basis, therefore, this study revealed that foreign staff members place more emphasis on teaching instead of research and administration. This result was found in college faculty members in science, arts, and other college faculty members. The study further found a relationship among three types of faculty departments/disciplines as far as teaching and administrative work is concerned, but there is no relation between research and administrative work. In conclusion, the authors have recommended, some practical suggestions for equitable workload among academic staff.