Chapter 15: Sticky Campuses or Hybrid Hubs? Getting (Un)stuck in the Academic Workplace

Continuing a trend that began before the global economic crisis of 2008, and extending through the COVID-19 pandemic period of 2020–2022, the academic labor market worldwide is marked by employment precarity that is related to the economic rationalizations of government austerity programs. Much has been said about the neoliberal academy and constraints facing faculty and staff as they attempt to do more with less. In recent years, so-called “World Class” universities and globalizing institutions have aimed to recover from the pandemic's negative impact on tuition and auxiliary services revenue by highlighting their “sticky campus” amenities to attract in-person student enrollments. Meanwhile, academic staff may prefer to think of their employing campuses as “hybrid hubs” that permit them to retain some of the work/life benefits they managed to achieve during the pandemic's work-from-home era. Students and academic employees may thus find themselves stuck between the push-pull of sticky campuses and hybrid opportunities. This chapter utilizes a comparative, visual approach to theorize “stickiness” and “hybridity” as relevant themes for the digital/physical campus in this transitional era.