Uni Sydney upped casual teaching numbers over a decade– good for the university, not great now for the teachers

As the learned Frank Larkins reports, there were 398 casual academic staff at the university in 2018, an 11.5 per cent increase on 2009. This was the biggest increase among the research-strong Big Five (unis Melbourne NSW, Sydney, Queensland and Monash U).

Sessional teaching staff make sense for universities – a flexible workforce that management can increase to meet need, or decrease as, for example, international student demand disappears.

But what is good for management is terrible for sessionals – as the Uni Sydney Casuals Network sets out in a new report on the circumstances of people in the precariat in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. “Many casualised workers will be forced out of employment so as to reduce labour costs for universities. Workloads will be intensified for the remaining staff who pick up the slack,” the report states.