The Hidden Tension in Academic Sabbaticals
An academic sabbatical is often viewed as dedicated time for research or creative work. Productivity matters on sabbatical, but the most meaningful sabbaticals also make space for rest, reflection, curiosity, and experiences we can’t usually fit into academic life. Sabbatical is a rare opportunity to step outside our routines long enough to return with new ideas, renewed energy, and a broader perspective – not just a longer publication list.
Naming the tension
As academics, we begin the sabbatical process by writing a proposal to our institution that outlines what (work) we plan to do while away. With an institution proposal as the first step in the sabbatical process, this almost immediately sets us into a pattern of thinking about sabbatical in terms of work and productivity. It’s not wrong to think this way, but I also don’t think it does us or our institutions any favors by only thinking about sabbatical in this way.
Several months ago, I had coffee with a friend about to head out on sabbatical. They told me they’d be spending the first part of their leave resting, before resuming research. More recently, another friend mentioned all the work on their plate, and how they could use a sabbatical to recover.
Notice those two examples. Two academics thinking about sabbatical as a means to rest and recover from work, primarily. Work was secondary.
Now, of course, not every academic approaching sabbatical is centering rest or recovery. But most of us are at least considering it part of our sabbatical goal set. This creates a tension when we’re prompted by our university to detail what we’ll do in terms of institutional goals if granted a sabbatical, when in reality some of our biggest sabbatical priorities might be aligned with individual needs: rest, recovery, exploration, creativity, or something else without a tangible benefit to our university.
This can leave us feeling guilty about doing anything besides work on sabbatical, even if our institutions would be happy to see us taking time for ourselves.
University expectations
For sabbatical requests, my university asks faculty to answer the following questions, which I consider fairly standard for research universities:
- Briefly describe the purpose of the proposed sabbatical.
- Briefly describe the objectives (such as publications) you expect your sabbatical to achieve or directly lead to.
- When do you estimate your sabbatical project(s) will be completed, including publication/production/dissemination?
- How will the University benefit from the work you do during this sabbatical?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these questions. When you think about an academic sabbatical, we’re stepping away for an entire semester (sometimes an entire academic year) and still receiving a paycheck while away. While I’d love to live in a world where universities pay us to roam the world for six months with no expectations, I understand that in 2026, sabbaticals come with expectations, namely that our (paid) time away will benefit them.
Still, as evident in the questions listed above, sabbatical proposals leave little (often no) room to describe how our time away might serve individual needs or produce more intangible outcomes.
If someone spends their sabbatical living in another part of the world (a classic example), they may return with a broader perspective that shapes how they teach.
Maybe you plan to spend part of your sabbatical doing no work at all because you’re recovering from burnout. That time away to heal will allow you to return as a better employee, teacher, and person.
But there’s not much space for this kind of intangible, individual work in a university sabbatical proposal. And because expectations of research and scholarly output on sabbatical are institutionalized, we can feel guilty if our main aim on sabbatical does not have a tangible work-related output attached to it.
Balancing the tangible and intangible
Our universities understandably ask us to define the scholarly outcomes of our sabbaticals. That’s appropriate. But if we only plan our sabbaticals through that lens, we risk missing what makes them transformative in the first place.
Alongside research plans and project timelines, we also need to ask: What do I need from this time away? What kind of scholar, teacher, colleague, or person do I hope to become when I return?
These questions may not fit neatly into a sabbatical proposal, but they often shape the quality of the sabbatical just as much as the publications it produces. Indeed, some of the most important outcomes of sabbatical are not easily captured in institutional language, but they still shape our scholarly work.
A meaningful sabbatical requires holding two conversations at once: one shaped by institutional expectations, and one shaped by personal and professional needs that don’t always fit neatly into proposals.
