future of the sector conference only come to universities if there are Indigenous staff with positive stories to tell, and if universities are seen to value and facilitate learning and teaching and research with Indigenous communities.
Workers in the ‘education revolution’ Chairing the panel on staff, President of the University of Queensland NTEU Branch, historian Dr Andrew Bonnell cast an expert eye over the evolution of the work of the modern university worker over the last twenty years. University of Central Queensland Vice Chancellor, Professor Scott Bowman, then addressed the core issue of academic identity and how to account for teaching, research and scholarship. After listening to PhD candidate Robyn May’s paper on her research findings on academic casuals, Bowman commented that he was reconsidering the common assumption that many casuals are content with their current employment arrangements. It was agreed that this discussion attested to the importance of using sound data as the basis for policy making, rather than relying upon anecdote and opinion. Professor Glenda Strahan spoke in relation to the survey undertaken in universities last year, for the ARC funded project Gender and Equity in Employment, which she expects will shed light on the ongoing barriers to gender equity for academic and general staff. Researcher and editor of Australian Universities’ Review (AUR), Dr Ian Dobson drew upon his long career as a university administrator to account for the growth in general staff to deal with compliance issues and marketing imperatives in a competitive higher education sector, rather than to support the core activities of teaching and research. He, too, focused in on the issue of the need for teaching staff to focus on teaching rather than administration, whilst also valuing the professional skills and knowledge of general staff.
Underfunding, understaffing and SSR Speaker after speaker returned to the core themes of underfunding, understaffing, rising Student to Staff Ratios (SSR) and the squeeze on quality experiences and outcomes. Arfa Noor and Erima Dall had emphasised that SSR was a key issue for students. Noor also emphasised that international students want the opportunity to mix with domestic students in and outside of class, which also necessitates a level of academic and general staff support. Also speaking on the panel on students, the University of New England’s Vice-Chancellor, Jim Barber, gave a provocative presentation exploring the future of teaching and the rise of digital communication. Barber argued that students expect and can access individualised instruction anywhere, anytime, through digital learning technologies and pedagogies, yet the conference discussion remained around traditional face to face teaching which emphasised SSRs, workloads and modes of staff employment. Is the discourse over the educational application of communication technologies in parallel rather than overlapping with that on the funding and organisation of teaching, except when posited as a juxtaposition on replacing academic teachers with pre-recorded products?
Above: The panel on staff, featuring Dr Ian Dobson, Robyn May, Prof Glenda Strahan, Prof Scott Bowman and Chair Dr Andrew Bonnell. Below: The panel on governance listen to audience feedback: Prof Marian Baird, Dr Julie Wells, John Kaye, Prof Margaret Thornton and Chair, Dr John Byron.
Education to Education International, opened the second day of the conference, observing that Australia is an incubator of the changes that we are seeing around the world. In his presentation, ‘The Vandals at the Gates: The Global State of Higher Education’, Robinson addressed the plight of teaching and non-sponsored research in universities across many countries. He reported that precarious forms of employment of teaching and research academics are endemic and are coupled with increased attacks on intellectual freedom, independent governance of universities and on collective bargaining. Robinson also noted that international students are increasingly seen in terms of profit and as a remedy for domestic underfunding, with Australia as the leading example. Dr Sandra Grey, President of New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Union (TEU) outlined what has happened to tertiary education in NZ, where rather than funding public universities, the Government now ‘purchases’ tertiary education from undifferentiated public and private providers. Leading higher education researcher and commentator, Professor Simon Marginson, took up Grey’s theme that these trends cannot be allowed to engulf us without looking to alternative ways of concep-
Global state of higher education David Robinson, Associate Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and Senior Advisor on Higher 18
NTEU ADVOCATE vol. 19, no. 1