The ‘sandwich generation’ in Korean academe: between traditional academic authority and meritocratic culture

Abstract

This study investigates how academics hired during the period of rapid neoliberal reforms differ from the senior academics hired before the reforms and the junior academics hired after the reforms were institutionalized. The faculty members who were employed in a period of radical reform may be impacted by the additional requirements and tasks caused by the reforms while they are also expected to do more traditional duties. They could be regarded as the ‘sandwich generation’ and may be suffering from overloaded. Through the survey data and interview data of this article, however, the authors found that the younger generation (the ‘new generation’) is overloaded, and their job stress is higher than either old generation (the ‘academic boomers’) or the sandwich generation. Although the new generation has a stronger preference for research than other generations, they spend less time on research and more time on administration than the others. Accordingly, the new generation is highly stressed. In addition, the authors found that there are differences between hard and soft disciplines in dealing with generational effects. In soft disciplines, the new generation spends more time on administration and less on research than the others, but they are not as highly stressed. On the other hand, their colleagues in hard disciplines feel more stressed though they do not spend more time on administration than their colleagues in soft disciplines.