Whither the Australian academic workforce

Jeannie Rea, National President, NTEUHigher Education Reform Summit12-14 November 2014, Melbourne

Australian university

workforce• Increasingly precarious

• Characterised by

▫ Restructures and Redundancies

▫ Replacements casual or fixed term

▫ Outsourced

Only one in four (24%) new jobs at Australian universities since 2005 has been an ongoing or continuing job.

Three out of four have been insecure

Note: 76% of total new insecure jobs are insecure

Just over one in two staff employed at Australian

universities had continuing employment in 2012

The composition of the academic workforce is

changing

Taylorisation of academic work

• Proportion T&R declining and numbers of T-O and R-O are increasing. Is this in the name of higher productivity.

• “It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.”

• Frederick W. Taylor (1911) Principles of Scientific Management

Employment (in)security is very much a

function of type of work

Teaching & Research academic model

- 1/3 teaching, 1/3 research, 1/3 engagement

- 40% teaching/40% research/40% admin

• But this ‘traditional’ model disappearing

• AND practitioners declining

• Balance of teaching and research hard particularly for mid career academics

• Enrolments have increased by 52% alongside teaching workforce by 26.7%

• Ageing (e.g. half of HASS FoEs >50% staff over 50)

Research-only• 52% increase from 2002 (35,590) – 2012

(35,590)

▫ Latest DoE HE stats show Monash and Univ of Qld now have more research-only than teaching/research positions (FTE)

• 4/5 on fixed term contracts

▫ Many for many years & contracts

▫ Recognised and promoted by no job security

▫ ‘Lives on hold’ (ACTU report on Insecure Work 2013)

Teaching-only• 80% casual and 10% fixed term

• Half of teaching done by casually employed staff

▫ In the HASS disciplines 43% increase in proportion of casual staff compared to full and part-time continuing (Mapping the HASS in Australia, 2014, p77)

▫ Long term casuals + recent PhD graduates “awaiting fulltime employment”, but frustrated and leaving raising “significant concerns about the future quality of the academic workforce as the pool of qualified applicants diminishes”.

Casually employed academics say• They are exploited and taken for granted and get

paid the same however many years they have worked

• Relied upon to hang around, but readily replaced and their knowledge and experience ignored

• They teach what others have written and/or left to develop course materials without direction

• They don’t get asked to course reviews – or even subject meetings

• They worry about their students and spend many unpaid hours with them

•Move to ‘blended learning’

means more unpaid work ▫ Down and uploading usually on their own hard

and software

▫ Ludicrous marking rates

▫ No training, or at their own cost

▫ No input on subject design or content

▫ Only point of contact for many students, but they too, are alienated from the university

▫ Cannot critique or will not be employed

High levels of precarious work

undermine academic profession• Too few in ongoing positions to maintain course

advisory boards, external accreditation, journal reviewing and editing, conferences, courses committees, readers of colleagues and students drafts, postgraduate supervisors, mentors, school visit, media comment……..

• Casual staff without disciplinary ties – nor collegial or university binds

• Expansion of ‘teaching only’ and increased status linking to scholarship not open to casuals

• Course writers not teaching, teachers not reviewing and evaluating

• Online tutoring even further alienated from core of course

• Online leakage from official learning platforms into social media – same with student evaluation

• Intellectual freedom -fearless advocates few and far between

• No time and space for experimentation – or short term projects, many in ‘third space’

Administration• Academics do work previously done by

administrative staff• Increased demand for metrics• BUT at the same time• Course advice, student selection – apparently no

longer requiring academic judgement• Third space of academic developers and

curriculum experts• Producers making MOOCs with coaches on the

sidelines

With increased market competition

compounded by erosion of the

academic role• Students paying more will be demanding• Govt want to ensure their investment

justified• Employers/industry wary of turnover and

work readiness• Professional accrediting bodies worried

about standards & adequate preparation• Discipline leaders concerned about integrity

courses and research training and Australia’s academic and research international reputations

Workforce planning• Develop workforce development plans that accord with

university’s strengths and aspirations

• Do not assume the current staff are the problem – bring them along and use their knowledge and loyalty

• Try new things – experiment and pilot with existing staff

• Decrease proportion of

casual and contract staff• Will improve productivity

• And student outcomes

• And university reputation