Tenure-track academics often receive a contract where they are told to subdivide their time according to certain percentages between teaching, research and service (service generally can refer to serving on university-wide committees, mentoring students, or serving roles in professional organizations), for instance 40% teaching, 40% research, 20% service. While academics do not use billable hours and many do not keep track of our hours the percentages of time are seen as a guideline on how to structure their labour.

Percentage-based Academic Workload and Time

Time to degree generally refers to the amount of time and institution estimates it will take an average student to get their degree from a specific department - this estimation is used to calculate things like financial aid, is reported in university accediation reports that include how many of their students complete their degree in that time frame, and can affect how a student's academic progression is viewed.

Time to Degree

Some examples of academic time discussed by Price include:
- Temporal Breaks
- Time to Degree
- Time-based testing accommodations
- Sabbatical
- Tenure
- Work broken down by time percentage

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Price uses the term academic time to discuss the rhythms of the workplace of academia - including the timetables of classes and meetings followed by professors and students alongside the nine-to-five schedule followed by academic staff. Academic time also encapsulates practices like the academic clock, sabbatical, tenure, and the temporal breaks that happen with summer and holiday breaks.

Academic Time

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Examples of Academic Time

During the COVID-19 pandemic, women faculty were often expected to take on both increased academic pressures coming from university directive to do more with less time whilst also being forced to take down the brunt of familial care responsibilities during lock-down. Additionally Black and other faculty of color also had pressure to do more work while their communities experienced higher mortality rates from COVID-19 because of racial disparities in healthcare. White male faculty experienced the pandemic as slowing down and thus used this time to develop more professionally - widening the gaps already experienced because of racism and misogyny in academia.

Academic Time and COVID-19

Price discusses how faculty and students have been increasingly pushed to do more with less time, a pressure that as shown by research by Judith Walker, puts responsibility on the individual to justify the time it takes for them to do things.

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