In an earlier blog post in this series, David Yates wrote about universities as victims of accelerated existence. In that piece, David sets out the many ways in which acceleration is damaging higher education institutions, governed by capital and a marketised model of education. The result is a state of permacrisis, cuts to spending and staffing, and a focus on task-oriented (rather than knowledge oriented) work with quantification of ‘outputs’ in both research and education remits. One consequence of this is a deleterious impact on staffing levels (through redundancies and increasing use of precarious contracts), hypercompetition between staff for contracts, funding, time and scarce resources, and as a result a decrease in staff health and wellbeing.

Academia is not alone here, but research in 2021 found that, in the UK, HE staff have lower wellbeing than average for other sectors across all of the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) psychosocial hazard categories and more than half of staff report working over 40hrs a week.

In this blog post I reflect further on the human impact of the current crisis in HE in the UK, drawing on data from ISRF-funded research done in collaboration with Dr Alison Allam and Dr Anna Ruddock. Our work explores the experiences of academics with energy limiting conditions. Energy limiting conditions (ELC) are long-term health conditions that involve energy impairment as a key symptom, which has a significant negative impact on all areas of a person’s life. Because the defining feature of ELC is the symptom and experience of energy impairment rather than a particular diagnostic label, the term covers many health conditions.

Managing energy impairment most typically involves ‘pacing’, avoiding boom and bust cycles of activity. Failure to do so often results in ‘payback’. This means that, for people with ELC, working longer hours to meet short deadlines, or frequently responding to urgent issues which disrupt the ability to plan work in advance, or which require pushing through exhaustion, risks significant relapse and worsening symptoms for a lengthy time. Multiple short deadlines and constant ‘firefighting’ are common in a sector operating in permacrisis. Whilst these conditions can lead to burnout in non-disabled colleagues, people with ELC are impacted sooner and the health and safety risks are significant. Such working conditions can also debilitate workers, for some leading to ELC.

I consider the experiences of academics with ELC as a means to reflect on two consequences of work within a sector driven by hyperproductivity and marketisation: first institutionalised ableism, and second the functioning of the sector as an ‘exhaustion economy’, one which frequently demands more energy than workers have to give. These things are connected because “In an age when even the “well” buckle under the demands of academia, the chronically ill or disabled are rarely able to jump the hurdles required.”

What follows are seven images, produced by the illustrator Stacy Bias, to visualise particular aspects of our research findings. These images capture the experiences of academics with ELC, revealing both institutionalised ableism and the operation of higher education as an exhaustion economy. On the latter, we might consider people with energy limiting conditions as ‘canaries in the coal mine’ as we are impacted sooner and more significantly by demands to overwork.

Intensified and unmanageable workload

Our research provides evidence of significant health and safety risks of current academic workplaces for people with ELC. In particular, 94% of respondents said that their work is either never or only sometimes manageable without making their symptoms worse. This is, in large part, due to high workload and cultures of overwork, with 66% of survey respondents saying that their workload had increased over the last three years. It’s worth noting here that this research was carried out prior to the current redundancies affecting the HE sector in the UK, which have resulted in higher workload for those staff remaining. Short deadlines, deadline bunching and little coordination between competing demands relating to teaching, research and admin intensify this overwork. This is dangerous for anyone, but particularly for people with ELC who risk significant relapse.

This is also compounded by institutionalised ableism, in many institutions written into the design of workload allocation models (WAM). Everyday tasks taking longer due to an impairment is an example of a substantial adverse effect in the definition of disability within the Equality Act, yet many WAM have no means to factor this in. In fact, whilst  89% of our survey respondents said that tasks take them longer to complete due to their ELC, only 7% said that this resulted in adjustments to their workload. Whilst additional time is often offered as a reasonable adjustment to disabled students, this is rare for disabled staff. As a consequence, disabled staff with non-adjusted workloads are being asked to work longer hours than non-disabled staff, whilst facing additional health risks from overwork.

In some cases, academics with ELC have been forced to move to part-time contracts and pay whilst still working full-time, due to the additional time it takes them to complete their work. This reflects a broader reliance on overwork in the sector, with workload models rarely reflecting the true length of time that tasks take, often not recording all aspects of academic work, and yet still recording workloads above 100% FTE. The sector is reliant on staff being able to overwork as staffing levels fall whilst expectations of hyperproductivity rise. This all has a significant impact on health and wellbeing.

Materialising overwork in campus spaces

The spaces in which academic work takes place also contribute to exhaustion. Marketisation and the associated removal of student recruitment caps and/or sale of campus property has meant an increased pressure on campus space. Inaccessible campus environments and timetabling systems make evident institutionalised ableism.

People reported being timetabled in rooms a significant distance apart for consecutive teaching sessions, in rooms inaccessible to them, or having no time to rest, eat or use the bathroom between teaching and/or meetings. Accompanied by intensified workload and higher expectations related to administrative work and research, this means there is little time between tasks or opportunities to pause, rest or think during the academic day.

Another consequence of the increased pressure on campus space is seeing, in many universities, individual academic offices being phased out and open plan offices phased in. Sensory sensitivities are common amongst people with ELC. As this image illustrates, time spent in open plan or shared offices therefore results in intense symptom exacerbation and pain. Many of our participants reported being unable to effectively do their jobs in open plan offices, which are too loud and busy for the levels of thought and concentration needed. Presenteeism also contributes to overwork and exhaustion. 

One of our participants reported that they ‘pretend’ to work whilst in the office and then work all evening at home to make up for the time they’ve lost . Whilst this is particularly a problem for people with sensory sensitivities, participants also pointed out that shared or open plan offices work for almost nobody. We might see this shift in working arrangements as reflective of the accelerationist shift from academic labour as a pursuit of knowledge to labour oriented towards the completion of tasks which can be quantified and measured and an associated drive for faster and greater ‘output’ over care-full and slow scholarship.

Cultures of overwork and exclusion

Cultures of overwork also shape the formation of community within academic workplaces. Having an ELC can be very isolating. It often means that in order to be able to work, time outside work is spent resting or in significant pain due to symptom exacerbation. Many academic workplaces have cultures of networking and socialisation in the evening, often in pubs, times and places which may be inaccessible to people with ELC. People with ELC are not alone here, some neurodivergent people, people with caring responsibilities and other minoritised academics also find these cultures of socialisation exclusionary. This not only intensifies feelings of isolation, but participants reported being excluded from team grant applications, teaching collaboration or co-authored publications planned outside work time even where their expertise was the strongest fit.

Again, these issues reflect the acceleration of academic timescales and cultures of overwork which mean that work no longer fits within the working day. One of our recommendations is that networking and social events need to take place within working hours, and a reduction in overall workload is also needed to make time for these. Academics without ELC can also show solidarity to colleagues with ELC by ensuing that they are included in work even if they are not present in social spaces.

Survival of the fittest

Cultures of hyperproductivity and hypercompetition, common in marketised HE, create institutional structures which value quantity over quality and leave behind those who are excluded by these structures. In our research 79% of survey respondents said that having an ELC had a significant, negative impact on their career progression. This illustration visualises this as a broken career ladder.

Unrealistic expectations which require overwork in order to pass probation or be promoted were mentioned by many participants. Having to sacrifice research in order to meet deadlines for teaching and administrative work is also common for people with ELC with workloads that do not account for the additional time it takes to complete these tasks. However, we did speak to participants who, with an inclusive workplace and appropriate adjustments had thrived.

This isn’t impossible but requires better understanding of ELC and more inclusive workplaces. It also requires cultural shifts out of line with the neoliberalised academic workplace. Many of our participants spoke of feeling guilty for not being able to do as much as non-disabled colleagues. Solidarity within cultures of competition is often conditional and this results in cultures of fear in which people are reluctant to ask for the adjustments they need. A ‘race to the bottom’ culture of overwork is harmful for all.

This illustration imagines and compares a ‘day in the life’ of an academic with ELC, the top part for someone without reasonable adjustments and the bottom one for someone with reasonable adjustments. In particular, this illustration demonstrates the ways in which flexible and home working can make a significant difference to people with ELC.

An important point that this illustration is trying to make is that people with ELC bring valuable insights and experiences to academic work. With the right adjustments and inclusive workplaces people with ELC can be leaders in research, teaching and admin. Academia loses out if people with ELC are lost from academic careers.

Hypercompetition

One of the other things we were interested in in this research is how the experiences of academics with ELC can help re-imagine academic work to reduce exhaustion for everyone. What came up again and again in answer to questions relating to this is the need for a cooperative university not a competitive one. As previous blog posts in this series have documented, competition is baked into the current higher education system through marketisation. So much of academic work is competitive and this often intensifies cultures of overwork as people compete to demonstrate they have gone ‘above and beyond’ everyone else, with mistrust, resentment and guilt associated with colleagues seen to be doing less.

This is felt acutely by academics with ELC who cannot compete with others trying to meet these unreasonable standards. Often the only way that universities recognise staff is through awards which pit colleagues against each other. Instead, a vision of a collaborative university which supports people to be able to work together and ultimately to thrive rather than just survive is something to aim for.

How do we get there from the current crisis in HE which has, undoubtedly further intensified the ableism and exhaustion our research documents? As others in this blog series have suggested, a fundamental shift in the way Higher Education institutions are funded, managed and valued is necessary. We also need cultural change to create workplaces that centre cooperation, empathy and teamwork rather than competition. 

This requires a diversity of voices and experiences in academic management as well as valuing alternative, slower forms of scholarship and different ways of doing academic labour. Listening to the voices of academics with ELC, it’s evident that without such changes, the current HE system will not only continue to further reinforce ableist systems but also reproduce debilitated and chronically ill workers.

For guidance on reasonable adjustments for academics with ELC see: https://exhaustioneconomy.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ISRF-Report-Reasonable-adjustments-Final.pdf