Can a new government overcome university marketisation trends?

A decade of Conservative government higher education reforms and underfunding have contributed to a general deterioration in working conditions and remuneration for academic staff in Australia.

Surveys of staff highlight the chronic casualisation of the workforce, long hours, stress, job insecurity and poor work-life balance, experiences not unique to Australian universities.

While four decades of reforms have seen considerable success, in research innovation, rankings and student enrolments, the corporatisation of the sector has put a squeeze on working conditions and created an over-reliance on attracting international students for funding.

The organisational culture of universities as workplaces, and as academic labour, is being reshaped by the marketisation and commodification of higher education in Australia.

COVID-19 increased the strain on Australian universities, which had to scramble to make up for significant and immediate fiscal shortfalls largely caused by the collapse of international student enrolments. The Conservative government’s inaction to financially support more than 17,000 public university employees left without work, and international students left without jobs, placed considerable pressure on an already stressed sector.

Moreover, the Conservative government’s ‘Job Ready’ package changed the funding of student places and increased fees on some courses (for instance, humanities) to channel enrolments to more ‘employable’ courses. Alison Barnes, national president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), observed that the package would result in a 9.3% overall funding cut that would leave universities to shoulder the funding shortfall.

There is some optimism that the 2022 election of the Anthony Albanese Labour government will usher in a new policy direction that values the sector’s significant civic and economic contributions to the nation.

A better future for universities?

Will the Albanese government bring a better future for the Australian higher education sector?

That very much depends on who you ask. We are conflicted.

As two academics, working in a world-class and well-resourced Australian university, we have hope. Our university was not immune to the impacts of the previous decade. Like our colleagues around the world, we experienced significant organisational change and academic and fiscal rationalisation, resulting in colleagues and friends losing or leaving their jobs.

When it comes to the future, on the one hand we are optimistic, hopeful, and welcome the newly appointed Minister for Education Jason Clare, whose ministry is responsible for higher education. On the other hand, being realists who have worked in the Australian higher education sector for two decades makes us less optimistic.

Industrial relations – A less bright future

In 2021, Karen MacGregor reported in University World News that more than 40,000 casual and permanent academic jobs were lost between 2020 and 2021. MacGregor observed that the conservative government “made matters worse by ‘arbitrarily excluding universities from the JobKeeper wage subsidy programme’, which was originally budgeted at AU$130 billion and meant to support six million jobs”, when the borders were closed and lockdowns enforced.

Universities negotiated with their staff and the NTEU to ‘temporarily’ cut wages by up to 15% to protect jobs from being cut. Universities across the country (ours included) are engaged in enterprise bargaining.

The NTEU is battling universities for better pay, conditions, safe workloads, work-life balance, inclusive workplaces and just Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commitments.

Wage justice to eradicate underpayment and systemic wage theft are further issues the NTEU is fighting for to address an exploited academic workforce. As reported in The Age, the University of Melbourne alone is repaying AU$22 million to underpaid staff, while 21 universities have been under investigation for wage theft over the past two years.

Enterprise bargaining is protracted. Universities are pushing back against collective agreements and are unwilling to increase wages, or seriously address workloads and casualisation. Industrial action looms on the horizon as dissatisfaction with university management increases.

The Universities Accord

Jason Clare, the education minister, announced the Australian Universities Accord on 16 November 2022. The Accord is presented as “an opportunity to build a visionary plan for Australia’s universities and higher education sector”.

AU$2.7 million has been committed over two years to deliver the Accord, which comprises a 12-month review of the higher education sector chaired by Professor Mary O’Kane AC.

Universities Australia calls the Universities Accord “the most significant opportunity for policy reform in higher education in almost two decades…[and] a chance to reset our relationship with the government”.

In the Bradley Oration, Clare declared that the Accord will look “at everything from funding and access, to affordability, transparency, regulation, employment conditions and how higher education and vocational education and training can and should work together”.

A central feature of the Accord is the intention to increase participation in higher education by 20,000 for students from low socio-economic groups, indigenous Australians, people with disabilities and regional and rural Australians. The Albanese government will also review higher education funding and review the Job Ready Graduates fee introduced by the Liberal government in 2020.

Some, like Lucy Carroll and Adam Carey, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on 16 November, view this as “the biggest overhaul of the higher education sector in more than a decade”. The final report was delivered to Clare in December 2023.

Whether or not this will be a lasting reform and result in positive outcomes for those working in the sector, remains to be seen.

A change for the better?

The Universities Accord promises to produce positive outcomes for students from disadvantaged, rural and remote backgrounds. The focus on inclusion, by creating opportunities for students for whom a university education has largely been unattainable, is positive.

It is difficult to know what impact the change of government will have on the higher education industrial relations landscape. An increase to university funding will be welcomed as will be the cessation of the ideological assault on the humanities.

However, whether a change in government and its agenda to bring about “real long-lasting change” will result in improved industrial relations, pay and conditions for academics who will teach the 20,000 extra students, we will have to wait and see.

From our vantage point as academics, the massive government budget deficit and the continued corporatisation of universities temper our optimism, yet we remain hopeful.

Craig Whitsed is associate professor and Brad Gobby is senior lecturer at the Curtin University School of Education in Perth, Western Australia.