Government dangles another sword over universities

The Howard Government has signalled its intention to further tighten the 
financial straitjacket in which Australia's universities and other higher 
education institutions are now forced to operate.

The Government's latest paper on university funding, Governance, Management 
and Workplace Relations, produced as part of its long-term review of higher 
education, was launched last week.

It contains a number of recommendations for "flexibility in employment 
profile".

This would be achieved by "workforce planning to help keep academic 
workloads reasonable and achieve flexibility".

The report quotes officials from universities and colleges of higher 
education arguing for more "flexibility" in the ratios of continuing, 
fixed-term contract and casual staff. It also advocates hiring academics 
for nine months only, not the 12 months currently offered.

However, more than one third of higher education staff are already casual 
employees and approximately one fifth are on fixed-term contracts.

The strain of work has also mounted for higher education staff since the 
Howard Government came to office.

According to the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, student to staff 
ratios have risen by 38.6 percent over the last eight years, and a national 
survey has revealed that some 50 percent of university staff are at risk of 
psychological illness from their work, compared with 19 per cent for the 
general workforce.

National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) General Secretary Grahame 
McCullough noted that "the government's paper ignores all these problems in 
favour of floating a narrow definition that would tie staff performance to 
their ability to generate revenue, and measures to further increase casual 
and contract employment."

Without the union

Significantly, while recognising the strain under which most university 
staff are labouring, the report nevertheless foreshadows an attempt to do 
away with union representation in the tertiary education workplace.

The report objects to the involvement of unions "in a range of ongoing 
workplace management issues, including change processes and outsourcing, 
which require consultation and communication with unions prior to 
management decision making."

In an attempt to justify excluding the union, the report implies that union 
members employed in universities are not representative of the staff as a 
whole. It does so by comparing the 26,0000 members of the National Tertiary 
Education Union (NTEU) with the total of 83,000 employees within the 
tertiary education sector.

In so doing it ignores the members of other unions with coverage of 
university employees.

More importantly, however, it omits to mention that regardless of the size 
of their membership, the unions are the only organisations offering a 
collective defence of salaries and working conditions for those employed 
within the tertiary education sector.

In short, the report comprises a carefully-worded but pernicious argument 
for eliminating the organised defence of the wages and working conditions 
of university employees.

The NTEU has responded to the report with a rebuttal of its 
recommendations, but also with concrete suggestions for improving the work 
of the universities and colleges.

As the NTEU itself notes, its submission to the Higher Education Review 
highlights the need to support co-operative specialisation in partnerships 
that serve their own institutional needs and those of the wider community 
in which they operate, and to consider the terrible plight in which many 
students now find themselves.

Last week NTEU President Dr Carolyn Allport commented that "universities 
are suffering from the combined effects of funding cuts and inappropriate 
competition. We need reform that encourages universities to share their 
expertise to benefit the many communities they serve ....

"It is ... time for government to provide the core funding necessary for 
our universities to be innovative without the fear that they won't be able 
to pay the bills. Between 1995 and 2001 universities faced a shortfall of 
$767 million in attempting to maintain competitive salaries.

"The choice of the Government to force universities to find savings to pay 
for this is affecting their ability to maintain high quality resources for 
research and teaching.

"With Australian universities already more reliant on student fees than 
just about any comparable system, the answer is not the higher student fees 
that would follow deregulation. (The) government needs to recognise that we 
are at the limits of what students are able to pay."

Dr Allport added: "... buried within the paper is the prospect of further 
reductions in public subsidies to universities that will only shift the 
burden of maintaining a vibrant higher education system onto students and 
their families. ... Australian students contribute a higher proportion of 
university funding than everyone else except their counterparts in US 
private universities ..."

According to the NTEU, further cuts in funding would be exacerbated by the 
extension of the existing funding to some 86 private tertiary institutions, 
by the introduction of a voucher system for students, and by placing all 
research funding into a competitive pool while "encouraging" universities 
to apply for commercial loans for the purchase of capital equipment.

All of these measures — privatisation by stealth — are recommended in the 
report.

And finally, the NTEU has noted that a report by the Independent Commission 
Against Corruption (ICAC) has issued a report of its own which warns of the 
potential for corruption in commercial activities within universities.

Dr Allport noted: "It is concerning that the same day that ICAC is warning 
of corruption risks in universities, (the Minister for Education, Science 
and Training) Dr Nelson is releasing a discussion paper canvassing a 
reduction in accountability of universities' commercial ventures. ...

"It is essential to recognise that there can be conflict between the need 
to generate a buck and the academic quest for truth. Regulation that 
ignores this inherent conflict is inevitably flawed."