WORKFORCE
campusreview. com. au
Loyal and tested
University professionals have approaches and careers that differ from academics – but they’ re still seeking similar ends.
By Paul Abela
This year, I have had occasion to talk to a number of professional staff who are facing some kind of employment dislocation due to restructuring or cost cutting. A common theme in discussions has been the extraordinary anguish they face in losing not only their positions but also their links to programs and tertiary institutions they have long held dear.
Leaving aside individual circumstances and work pressures, I will make the sweeping statement that professional staff in universities and tertiary institutions are a loyal bunch. My belief is that this fundamentally stems from a real belief that tertiary education benefits people. Tertiary management professionals define their selfimage from working in an organisation that is respected, prestigious and beneficial to society as a whole.
The staff who are the victims of restructuring or large-scale cost cutting( however necessary it is), often lose twice. It is not just their personal careers that are placed on hold; it is also a loss of this selfidentity. It can be devastating, especially for professionals whose projects help society as a whole, such as one professional who confided to me that her award-winning project for Aboriginal and disadvantaged programs was cancelled. Motivated administrators invest just as much of their soul in projects as academics.
We know that the tertiary institution of the 21st century comes in the form of a staffing partnership between academic and professional staff. In Australia and New Zealand, the relationship between the two has always been to co-exist and at its optimum to co-operate, leading often to exceptional results for the institutions, faculties and schools concerned. These are seen every year when we award the ATEM /
Campus Review Best Practice awards for Tertiary Education Management.
This co-existence does not mean, however, that the two come at the same problems in the same ways.
The success of co-operation stems from a fundamental understanding by professional staff that academics and professionals are coming at the problem from two different motivations. With the emergence of the massification of higher education, the tensions that emerge relate mostly to an attempt to keep the fundamental mission of the university while at the same time coping with the practical issues of running a multibillion-dollar enterprise. Managerialism is trying to order a process that is complicated, regulated and potentially unwieldy, simply due to the size of institutions.
Some insight into this co-operation or lack of it in some people’ s eyes, is given by the registrar of RMIT University, Dr Maddy
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