Murdoch U wants academics to teach more – nothing doing says the National Tertiary Education Union

University management wants academic staff to take on more teaching and cut back on research (and presumably service), meaning up to a day a week more teaching, observers estimate.

The university explains that this is necessary, “due to the significant financial pressure” now faced and that while individual loads will vary, “everyone is expected to make a significant contribution”.

It’s not an expectation shared by the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union, which disputes the proposal.

The union says the teaching increase will have a “significant impact” on workloads and in consequence peoples’ health, will restructure roles, having a “significant impact on staff research track records and career trajectories.

And union officials are not convinced that management is solely responding to the COVID-19 caused crunch. Rather, it is, “part of a greater change being foreshadowed to occur post COVID-19 and of a permanent on-going nature. Is the proposed major change to academic workloads quarantined to the COVID-19 pandemic only?”

If it is on-going, the union suggests, there will be “a likely reduction” in employee numbers.