The structure of the HE workforce is now decades old and unfit for purpose – the pandemic creates the opportunity for change

“Many of the perceived constraints on nimbleness and flexibility have not been imposed on the sector but have been created or accepted as immutable by people within the sector. The shock and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique circuit-breaker for Australian universities, both individually and more generally,” Elizabeth Baré, Janet Beard, Teresa Tjia (L H Martin Institute) and Ian Marshman (Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education) argue in a new paper for the CSHE.

Building on previous proposals for structural change (CMM September 29) they set out five areas of university employment that need updating.

* employment conditions: the base dates from the ‘90’s, with complexities added to institutions’ agreements as management and unions sought to resolve specific issues. “What were once solutions are now impediments to future responsiveness,” they suggest.

* improvements for casual academic staff: create fixed-term contracts with reward and career structures and update pay structures designed for work in the 1980s. “It is possible that some of the recently reported underpayments to casual staff in universities result not from a deliberate decision to defraud but from the difficulty of aligning outdated payment rates to the work that is required in the contemporary university”

* refine academic career structures: the focus on a PhD and university experience to qualify for jobs, “may limit capacity to understand the broader world of work and evolving developments in commerce, industry and the public and not-for-profit sectors.” There is also a case for formal accreditation of teaching

* career paths for professional staff: structured career programmes, as occur in health administration

* recognise third-space professionals: roles such as education designers, researchers, librarians, student learning support staff and people working in academic partnerships and commercialising research, “face terms of employment that provide limited scope to formally reward them for innovation and creativity.”