policy & reform
The silver-bullet solution of reducing administrative staff is like saying we only need film stars and a camera operator to make a movie.
The program is a two-year diploma being conducted in Kabul, Afghanistan, and it aims to equip young Afghan men and women with the skills to become radio professionals in their country. You can only imagine the benefits of good radio communication in a country where the hearts and minds are constantly being fought over.
Ahern had spent the past year negotiating with an Australian university to find a pathway for his graduates to continue their studies by articulating their program into a bachelor’ s degree.
Speaking from Afghanistan, Ahern confirmed the importance of professional staff in his work.“ When we set up Nai Media Institute here in Kabul, the professional staff were essential to help me write a curriculum compliant with ministry requirements and to support the academics who are teaching it,” he told me.
“ On the other side of the world, when negotiating in Australia, the same was true. A combination of academic and professional staff was needed to steer the process.”
Having been involved in many negotiations to achieve articulation agreements, I knew he would have had to use many negotiating
The 2013 ATEM / Campus Review Awards for Best Practice in Tertiary Education Management
In 2012 the first ever Association for Tertiary Education Management / Campus Review Awards were held.
The awards were a great success and in 2013 we are again seeking entrants to the 2nd annual Best Practice awards.
These exciting awards will once again showcase the wonderful work being achieved by our professionals in tertiary education management
The awards will be presented at the Awards ceremony of the TEMC conference in September 2013 in Hobart.
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The categories are:
u The LH Martin Institute Award for Excellence in Leadership
u Excellence in Student Administration and Customer Service
u Excellence in Marketing, Communication and Public Relations
u The DragonNaturally speaking Award for Excellence in Innovation
u The Research Master Award for Excellence in Research Management
u The HES award Excellence in Financial Management
u Excellence in Human Resource Management
u Excellence in IT Management
u The CPSU award for Excellence in Community Engagement
u The Campus Living Villages award for Excellence by a New Entrant in Tertiary Education skills in order to achieve a win-win situation, which invariably these agreements are. The professionals dealing with it at the university would have had to be across quite a number of portfolios: quality, curriculum, public relations and community engagement.
Steve is both an academic and a professional administrator. In seeking this pathway, he needed to deal with academics at the university who were also administrators, as well as those who fell in one camp or another. The two sets of employees of universities are not mutually exclusive, but they are mutually dependent.
And to test this, you only have to look at the work of Carroll Graham from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. Graham shows that professional staff are crucial in the delivery of the overall student experience, and that knowledge based on many years of developing the profession is extremely important in the quality of that delivery.
Graham gives an example from an IT support professional of the difference between a technician and a professional in tertiary education management. A student might have an issue with email not working, causing them to miss a deadline for submission. An IT professional who understands the way higher education works would have strategies for informing the lecturer of this issue.
“ Someone who’ s only been here for six months can fix an email problem, but might not know what the ramifications are or what to do to make things OK [ for the student ],” says Graham.
The real flaw in the Ernst & Young report is the lack of subtlety when talking about the current professional in today’ s tertiary education environment. The silver-bullet solution of reducing administrative staff is like saying we only need film stars and a camera operator to make a movie.
Governments constantly talk about axing back-room jobs to save money. Don’ t worry, they say, it won’ t affect front-line services. But at some point a manager has made a decision to employ that support person and for good reason. They also needed to evaluate the position and justify its need.
Talking about an amorphous and groaning public service is nonsense, but it plays well to a constituency. Such populist ideas do not need to permeate tertiary education, though. Professionals make up over half of the tertiary workforce for very good reasons.
The Ernst & Young report talks about the importance of increasing efficiencies, but this has always been the case. Yes, the technology, the work and the nature of tertiary education is changing but institutions already know this and are adapting.
Simple outsourcing solutions do not take into account the actual job in hand, the crossovers between academic and professional. The identities of professional staff throughout the sector are changing. As of late last year, Flinders University“ general staff” are now termed“ professional staff”. As vicechancellor Michael Barber put it:“ This change reflects the importance that professional staff play, through their various skills, in the operations and success of the university.”
In the end, universities will continue, but hopefully they will not be forced to cut staff solely in the name of budget slashing but after considering the facts and the contributions staff make to core business, regardless of the ratio of academic to professional roles. ■
Paul Abela is executive director at the Association of Tertiary Education Management.
20 | Issue 2 2013