The ‘Boomerang Effect’: How Outsourcing Impacts on the Workload of Academics

Abstract

This paper is part of a bigger research project undertaken at UNISA (University of South Africa) to understand the changing roles and workload faced by UNISA academic staff in the present period of transition where UNISA changes from a correspondence institution to an institution which makes full use of the affordances of digital technologies. Two major reasons are cited as motivating the change: Firstly, the labour market expects university students to be digitally literate; secondly, UNISA hopes to improve the support for its students to increase retention and throughput rates (as requested by the Department of Higher Education & Training, DHET).