Academic experience of temporal governance in an in-house online program manager

Increasingly, public universities are partnering with online program managers (OPMs) to develop and deliver online courses. These partnerships are characteristic of academic capitalism (Connell) and, as such, provide case studies for investigating ways of working for academic staff in the corporate university (Ludwig). This research focus aims to contribute to the limited work undertaken on the experiences of academic staff, especially their experience of time, in academic capitalism (Walker). Drawing on interviews with eight academics, who worked within an in-house OPM, we examine their experiences of ‘temporal governance’ (Tierens et al.). Our findings reveal that the academic staff experienced confusion, disorientation, and significant stress due to the temporal acceleration and a loss of autonomy characteristic of work with the in-house OPM. Further, we argue that as the OPM style of working is expected to permeate the university more widely, this will lead to a greater erosion of academic autonomy through the further embedding of OPM temporal orderings.