campusreview. com. au
NEWS
Next government’ s duty
Whoever takes the next election will be tasked with securing the future of higher education, panellist argues.
OPINION: Handcuffed by job insecurity
Academics can’ t provide the innovation universities need as part-time, casual employees.
By Jeannie Rea
Regardless of which party takes the next election, the new government will face the challenge of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the higher education sector, a senior departmental official has warned.
Speaking as part of a policy debate at Futureproof Now, the acting deputy secretary for higher education, research and international, at the Department of Education and Training, Jessie Borthwick, said the growing demand for higher education has made sustainability a key issue.
Borthwick said regardless of whether the Coalition was able to legislate all or even some of its proposed higher education reforms, any future government would be required to“ find answers to that sustainability issue”.
National Tertiary Education Union president Jeannie Rea said that while she agreed with the need to address the long-term future of the sector, her union remained completely opposed to the Coalition’ s plan which, she said, unfairly relied upon students picking up the bill for the withdrawal of Commonwealth funds.
Earlier in the discussion, Grattan Institute higher education program director Andrew Norton had suggested that a hostile Senate made it highly unlikely that the government’ s plans would be passed in any form. However, the chief executive of the Council of Private Higher Education, Adrian McComb, said he remained hopeful that at least some of the reforms could be passed for the benefit of non-university education providers.
McComb said with cross-bench senators – with the exception of the Greens – seemingly agreed with the need to better support TAFEs and private providers, he believed some progress could still be made prior to next year’ s anticipated federal election.
Daniel Edwards, principal research fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research, said the repeated failure of the Coalition to pass its reforms should be seen as an opportunity for fresh debate on how to secure the sector’ s future for all players. ■
Campus Review’ s recent Futureproof Now conference focused on the ways university education needed to change to fit with the jobs and employment patterns of the near future.
University educators were called upon to be innovative and responsive to the rapidly changing demands of students and employers. However, time ran out before we got onto the reality of current university jobs and the bleak future for innovation and creativity in university education unless institutions start committing to the next generation of university educators – academics.
Half of teaching is now done by highly qualified staff employed for a few hours a week, often semester after semester but with no progression in status or salary or job security.
Sessionally employed academics have no space, time or authority to be disruptive or innovative.
Subject and course co-ordinators cannot disrupt and up-end the way a subject is taught when their teaching team are hourly paid casuals who would be donating their labour to participate in planning or moderation, or even team teaching.
We are already relying upon casualised academics to give their time for free because they want to be noticed if / when any more secure jobs come up and because they are committed to their discipline and to the students.
The academic profession is being broken down in Australia, with rapidly increasing numbers of teaching-only and research-only positions. Of teaching-only positions, 80 per cent are casual, while the same percentage of research-only jobs are short, fixed-term contracts.
There are more than 100,000 fulltime equivalent positions in higher education and many more people employed across academic and general staff jobs. This is an important area of graduate employment in itself.
It was a pity higher education jobs were not part of the conference agenda. But, hopefully, they will be part of the ongoing conversation. ■
Jeannie Rea is national president of the National Tertiary Education Union.
7