workforce
campusreview.com.au
way, and why highly paid staff are a necessity.
Yet in the case of our universities, we still
await a satisfactory answer.
And what about the ‘administrative
bloat’ that now dominates our universities?
Universities have simply abandoned their
traditional collegial structure and become
riddled with bureaucratic managers who are
largely unmoved by dissent and see their
role as not helping academic staff but rather
telling them what to do.
The ratio of administrative staff has
more than doubled over the last 20 years.
In some cases, more than 60 per cent of
university staff are now managerial. Such
large numbers not only cost money – many
enjoying generous salaries – but also often
invent work that requires more of their
kind to satisfy.
The managerial ranks are swollen by a
host of pro-vice-chancellors, deputy vice-
chancellors, deans, directors and the like, all
bolstered by endless ranks of support staff.
This managerial disease has filtered through
all ranks but particularly among those
occupying the higher echelons of university
governance. Now most universities have a
wide array of ‘Business Centres’ including
ones such as People Management, Legal
Services, Marketing and Communication,
Research Integrity and Development and
Corporative Engagement.
Deputy and pro-vice-chancellors,
executive deans, directors of centres, heads
of school, chiefs of staff and the like have
all become divorced from those they are
supposed to interact with and represent. Few
interact with academic staff. In fact, many
would be hard pressed to identify members
of the departments under their control, let
alone understand the pressures, processes
and hardships suffered by academic
teaching staff.
Managerialism rules, and many academics
have become disempowered and isolated,
hidden be hind a carefully crafted and
managed bureaucratic façade.
At the very top, things are even more
remote. When did you last encounter a
vice-chancellor or a deputy vice-chancellor
walking around an academic department,
meeting and chatting with staff?
The higher echelons of management also
tend to act like salesmen, hawking the recent
developments on and off campus as well as
justifying the university’s academic quality.
Most vice-chancellors are chief executives
commanding the salary of a CEO. They and
other university managers have also become
experts in massaging the numbers so their
own university is near the top in some
national or international ranking or other,
even if it’s simply a table of parking spaces.
One could also be excused for thinking
that many university managers simply
identify their university by its physical
campus – its buildings, lecture theatres,
laboratories and student facilities – and seem
to have lost sight of the fact that the real
heart of a university lies in the people who
teach and research and those who closely
support them.
And what about the role and significance
of professors? Once professors enjoyed
some degree of authority, recognition and
respect. Many regularly contributed to the
media, commenting on issues related to
their particular expertise. Over the last 20
years, however, the title ‘Professor’ has
moved away from that of a recognised
and respected academic expert with
an impressive teaching, research and
administrative record and become just
another term of appointment stemming
from the corporate/bureaucratic style of
the modern university.
Universities are now replete with people
bearing the title ‘Professor’. Many have the
title awarded simply to offer a corporative
link to the academic world. Medical schools
are a case in point. There are now many
‘university professors’ who spend no more
than a couple of days a week in the medical
school, often conducting consultations or
operations, and apart from this have little or
no link to the university.
In many ways, as was recently pointed
out by the University of Sydney Association
of Professors, the title ‘Professor’ has simply
become another level of staff appointment.
Why have academics allowed all this to
take place? Most have regrettably been
relegated to the outer fringes and trapped
in a web of self-promotion and research.
In most cases, their opinion has not been
sought by those above, who continue to rule
like colonial overlords.
And what about the significance of
undergraduate teaching? Most universities
claim to recognise and reward academic
staff for achievement and high performance
in a variety of relevant academic areas, one
of which is teaching. But the fact remains
that it is normally only those academic staff
who have won research grants and widely
published who achieve promotion. For the
ordinary academic, there is little choice but
to make an art form of self-promotion, the
pursuit of a research grant, the publishing
of an article in a top ranked journal and,
if lucky, perhaps even a book while at the
same time struggling to teach at least two
undergraduate units.
We could be excused for stating
that there now seems to be an inverse
relationship between good and committed
undergraduate teaching and research.
For Australian universities, high fees, world-
class research and corporative management
structures have now become the order of
the day. In such a world, the everyday trials
and tribulations of ordinary academics are
consistently overlooked. It is a sad situation. ■
Peter Curson is emeritus professor in
population and health at Macquarie
University, and honorary professor in
population and security at the University
of Sydney.
27