The business of universities
By Pat Brewer and Jeremy Smith
Since Labor education minister John Dawkins launched his infamous green paper on higher education in December 1987, public education has taken a battering from governments of both parties. HECS, up-front fees, funding cuts, over-crowded classes, privatisation, cuts to Austudy and Abstudy, and curricula determined by business needs — all these together have changed the face of Australia's universities.
Under John Howard's Coalition government, the transformation has gone further. Education has been corporatised, in every sense of the word: the business of universities has become profit-oriented and post-secondary institutions have steadily adopted the practices of corporate governance.
For students, quality in general has slid and access has narrowed. For academic, teaching and general staff, conditions have also worsened significantly. Talented graduates and academics are looking for work overseas in ever greater numbers.
Worsening conditions
Class sizes have grown. Under Labor, the average staff-student ratio increased from 11.8 to 15.3 between 1984 and 1992. Since then the ratio has worsened, particularly as a result of funding cuts. The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee estimates that class sizes have increased by 40% in the last decade.
Genuine course choice has become more restricted. Research which makes a general contribution to public welfare is being displaced by projects designed for the needs of capital. Collegiality, a form of organisation in which staff make the important decisions, is being replaced by corporate-style management.
Privatisation has been at the heart of this process. The 1996 cuts created the impression that universities would be financially worse off. But this is not the case.
Since the mid-1980s, the private component of university funding has increased from around 10% of total revenue to close to 40%. The introduction of the graduate tax, HECS, in 1989 and the growth of fee-paying courses has furthered the capacity of most institutions to expand their sources of private money.
According to calculations by the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU), the sum total of university revenue from private income has increased by $900 million since the federal government's cuts to projected grants took $800 million out of the system.
But this greater private revenue has not fed a general improvement in either access and quality or working conditions. Quite the opposite — university administrations have only become more ambitious to squeeze greater revenue from students and greater productivity and efficiency gains from staff.
The division between "us" and "them" is now more visible and union consciousness is growing accordingly. NTEU membership has grown 7.9% since 1995.
Heightened union consciousness is also reflected in the willingness of university workers to act. Universities were hit hard by the first national strike in 1996. During the current third round of university enterprise bargaining, the level of industrial action has been unprecedented.
General decline
The introduction of enterprise bargaining in universities has certainly aided corporatisation.
Government refusal to provide extra funds to cover salary increases has meant that wage justice has come at the expense of jobs and the quality of teaching and research. The NTEU has focused on pay rises because of the real decline in wages between the late 1970s and early 1990s.
The cuts to public funding have also resulted in worsening conditions of work. The emergence of performance measurement, greater workloads, casualisation, the erosion of intellectual property rights, the proliferation of summer school semesters and TAFE conditions creeping into the universities are all aspects of a general decline.
Institutions are now subject to quality performance indicators, intensifying the competition between universities. Student numbers, demographic profiles, the spread of disciplines, work force profiles, retention and completion rates, sources of research funding and student satisfaction are all means for comparing universities. In future, this may determine the allocation of funding.
Staff performance review has also taken off. It is touted as a tool of managerial prerogative and can be a form of subtle surveillance. Government bureaucrats and many vice-chancellors want it extended under the pretext of "quality assurance".
Their approach individualises the issue of quality teaching and research and takes no account of the lack of resources, the diversity of the student population or other influences. However, performance review mechanisms do furnish management with another means with which to control the work force. Combined with a greater will and capacity to sack staff, it is a significant threat to job security.
Workloads
Burgeoning workloads are a foremost concern. There is no industry-wide set of standards for academic staff. Halfway through 1998 only ten institutions had formal agreements on workloads. Others operate with a variety of policies.
Some areas have no regulatory mechanism at all. The "unspecified hours" provision for academics allows easy increases in the working week when cuts hit. Workload blowout is driven by the increase in class sizes, time-consuming "flexible" modes of delivery, class times that trail into nights and weekends, burgeoning administrative work and travel between the many campuses of the mega-universities.
Much of this affects general staff also, as cuts force multiskilling and more stressful workloads. The notion of "unspecified hours" has started to creep in for middle- to senior-level general staff.
The growth in staff workloads is difficult to keep tabs on, as it occurs at the individual, departmental or faculty level. There is no industry-wide audit of workloads and many universities do not have a good idea of trends within their own workforces.
Neither are academic freedom or intellectual property rights properly regulated in awards or agreements. Direct capitalist influence in departments and faculties (in, for example, the form of industry-funded chairs) and in research (through such things as industry-partnered research grants and scholarships) compromise the independence of research.
More flexible delivery has also aggravated disputes over who owns academic ideas. Some universities offering courses online have moved to secure ownership of the teaching materials, which have been produced by academics. It's then quite possible that less skilled and cheaper sessional tutors can be hired to teach with materials written by others but owned by the universities.
Most university CEOs are keen to market courses internationally and place considerable emphasis on putting a greater and greater proportion of courses online. Protecting those staff involved in flexible delivery is an area that the NTEU has neglected and a number of institutions are taking advantage of the situation.
The one area of improvement in award conditions is that of security. The Higher Education Contract of Employment award (HECE) was a big win for the NTEU and has clearly benefited the industry. Thousands gained permanency as a result.
However, the gains are partial. HECE was not accompanied by increases in public funding.
Although the union's case preparation emphasised casual and contract employment, the gains in award provisions are limited to contract employees. More than any other aspect casualisation has undermined working condition; it is also the hardest to monitor.
Women workers lose the most
Research done by the NTEU in 1995 revealed those areas in which women clearly bore the brunt of the decline. Three more comprehensive studies produced similar findings.
Career advancement was limited, job evaluation was a source of frustration, relations with academics, supervisors and management were often tense and biased recruitment practices discriminate against women. Nearly 20% of women workers in a survey at the University of NSW reported harassment.
Male domination of senior management compounds the inequalities. Recent research conducted by Belinda Probert illustrates how women are hit hardest.
In 1996, 76% of women academics held appointments below senior lecturer level, while 56% of women general staff held positions below HEW level five (on a scale of 10). On average male academics earn $440 more per fortnight.
The inequity affected other areas: seniority of first appointment, age at entry into employment, impact of family responsibilities and highest qualification achieved. Much of Probert's argument points to structural barriers and a lack of opportunity for women.
General staff experience similar forms of inequality. On average, men earn $265 more per fortnight. Lack of representation of women in senior positions is even greater than for academic workers.
The impact of the slide in conditions is concentrated on the women workers of the industry. Given the paucity of women in decision-making positions it seems unlikely that these issues will be treated as a great priority.
A future battleground?
At least one study plots the manner in which trends in higher education follow those of the wider working class. Today's hot industrial issues are portents of tomorrow's battles.
Universities now unashamedly assert "managerial prerogative" in recasting their structures of governance and decision-making. Education minister David Kemp, with the support of his workplace relations colleague Peter Reith, has pushed consistently for a radical overhaul of conditions in the industry. Both have done little to conceal their wish to sideline, if not destroy, the NTEU.
So far, five universities have given in to NTEU claims in enterprise bargaining negotiations. The negotiations at the other universities promise to be tougher.
In the past, universities were easily characterised as "ivory towers". However, Australian education has always been a capitalist industry. Now, its capitalist character is unmistakable and the lines of conflict between workers and students, on one side, and management and the federal government, on the other, are clearer than ever.
[Jeremy Smith is an NTEU member at the University of Ballarat, Pat Brewer is a member at the University of Canberra.]