professional burnout, university teachers, institutional resilience, university human capital, staffing stability, quality of the educational process, crisis transformations, wartime context
Abstract
The article examines professional burnout of university teachers as a systemic factor posing a threat to the institutional resilience of higher education institutions. The relevance of the topic is driven by the increasing psycho-emotional burden on academic staff under prolonged crisis conditions, including pandemic-related transformations and the full-scale war in Ukraine, which have significantly complicated the functioning of universities and intensified risks to human capital retention. Unlike predominantly individual-psychological approaches prevailing in the literature, this study conceptualizes professional burnout as a mechanism through which organizational and contextual dysfunctions are translated into systemic institutional losses.
The purpose of the study is to provide a theoretical and analytical substantiation of professional burnout among university teachers as a threat to the staffing, educational, and adaptive resilience of higher education institutions. The methodological framework is based on the analysis and synthesis of scientific sources, comparative examination of international and Ukrainian empirical studies, and logical-structural modeling of the relationship between professional burnout and institutional performance characteristics of universities.
The study synthesizes international and national statistical evidence confirming the widespread and recurrent nature of professional burnout among academic staff, with emotional exhaustion and reduced professional efficacy as its dominant dimensions. It is demonstrated that when burnout affects a substantial share of faculty members, it ceases to be an individual problem and becomes a factor undermining institutional resilience, manifesting in staffing instability, deterioration of educational quality, and constraints on universities’ adaptive capacity. A conceptual model illustrating the mechanism through which individual professional burnout transforms into institutional risks is proposed, and practical implications for the management of higher education institutions under wartime and post-crisis conditions are outlined.
Author Biographies
Svitlana Skakovska, National University of Water and Environmental Engineering, Rivne
Candidate of Economics (Ph.D.), Associated Professor
Olha Liakhovych, National University of Water and Environmental Engineering, Rivne
Candidate of Economics (Ph.D.), Associated Professor
Andrii Fedchuk, National University of Water and Environmental Engineering, Rivne