Is one's age in academia a burden or a blessing? On this, the evidence is equivocal. However, the evidence is unequivocal on the increasing importance of age in the policies and administration of higher education; the workforce is ageing and what are people to do? This article contributes to existing literature by examining the role of age and experiential factors in perceptions of academic work in South Africa. It reports on research that was precipitated by an attempt in a South African university to distribute workload fairly. It became apparent that a limited and quantitative approach was inadequate, because what seemed to matter was people's personal and social biographies. This led to nation-wide research which attempted to correlate biographical and situational factors with "inter alia" opinions on how workload should be distributed, what should determine teaching load, and what should determine remuneration. In this article, the author presents a series of contexts in which to discuss the findings; the general context of age and work, the specific context of age in universities, and a consideration of academic work "per se". This is followed by an outline of the South African context. (Contains 5 tables and 76 notes.)