'Three Decades of Change in Australia’s University Workforce' by Gwilym Croucher - a Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education Occasional Paper - comments
The Australian higher education workforce has been reshaped in recent decades. Changes to management practices and rules around industrial relations, the creation of new universities in the 1990s and the growth of international education markets have all influenced the academic and professional workforce in Australia. This paper examines national level data on university workforce changes from 1989 to 2021. It highlights that despite the relative stability, there have been sector-wide shifts with clear implications for the future of Australian universities.
Between 1989 and 2021 the total growth in the number of academic employees largely followed student enrolments, especially in high growth areas such as medical, health and allied health related disciplines. As the academic workforce expanded during this period it became more polarised. The professoriate increased in number to become a quarter of all academics at the same time as the middle ranks diminished in number. Part of this ‘hollowing out’ of the workforce followed the merger during the 1990s of Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE) that created new universities. The CAEs had a smaller proportion of senior academic staff, many of whom were steadily promoted to the professoriate after the creation of new universities.
The polarisation of the academy has also been driven by the growth in the number of the junior academics, many in teaching focused roles, and largely employed on a casual basis. This trend has been associated with ongoing inequalities for women in the academic ranks. In 2021 there were many more men in the professoriate than women: women constituted 37 per cent of the professoriate despite making up half of the total academic workforce in Australian universities. While the majority of senior academic staff continued to be employed on an ongoing basis (those with a form of ‘tenure’), their proportion steadily reduced from the 1990s. Two decades later few junior staff were employed in ongoing roles and many (if not most) early career academics were employed on either short term or casual contracts. These changes are linked to universities rewarding and promoting ongoing academics, as well as deliberately seeking flexibility and cost reductions.
From 1989 to 2021 there was an ongoing transformation of the professional staff workforce, which is classified as those university employees with a wide variety of roles, including but not limited to administrative functions. Professional and academic staff numbers have grown roughly in proportion to each other, with professional staff remaining the majority. There has been significant shift in the composition of professional staff workforce. After 1989 women came to make up nearly two-thirds of professional staff, marking a departure from academic staffing patterns.
During the same time period professional staff cohorts became more ‘top heavy’. The most junior classifications of Higher Education Worker (or HEW, a classification used to capture cross-university data for employee level) all but disappeared between 1994 and 2020. The proportion of HEW 1 to 3 reduced from a third of workforce to one-thirtieth in this period. Across the sector an increase in the average HEW level appears to reflect the emergence of new professional staff roles, such as third space professionals (those staff whose role is part-academic and part-professional), along with the impacts of technological change reducing the need for less skilled roles and the greater use of external contractors. At the same time there was an increase in the proportion of the most senior leadership roles within universities, with the number of senior executives per staff member more than doubling.
What is clearer is that changes to Australian higher education during the late 1980s casts a long shadow on university workforces, with most of these trends systemwide and not confined to any particular university groups or types.
Summary of key national trends between 1989 and 2021:
Growth in academic and professional staff numbers largely followed patterns of growth in student numbers.
There was a significant increase in the number of academics working in the broad Health disciplines grouping (including Allied Health), while other areas only had modest increases in staff numbers, and Education reduced its staff numbers.
The professoriate made up 1 in 4 academic staff in 2020, up from 1 in 7 in 1989, with the growth mainly in the number of full Professors.
There was a steady reduction in the proportion of academic roles employed on an ongoing basis (tenured) for all levels, with Level C, D and E reducing from around 9-in-10 academics with tenure to 7-in-10. During the period Level B went from 6-in-10 to 5-in-10 and Level A remained at 1-in-10.
On a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis, the proportion of academics employed on casual contracts went from 1-in-10 to 2-in-10, with the vast majority of these casual in teaching focused roles, and a majority occupied by women. On a headcount basis the number of casual staff increased significantly.
In 2020 women were underrepresented in senior academic roles (level D and E) despite making up half of the academic workforce (and making up roughly 60 per cent of the total higher education workforce).
A significant majority, nearly two-thirds, of professional staff were women in 2021 in contrast to academic staff.
A growing proportion of professional staff were in more senior roles in 2020 than they were in 1989, as measured by the average HEW level, with the more junior classifications disappearing.
While the number of deputy vice-chancellors remained consistent, there were more than twice the number of other senior executives per staff member at Australian universities in 2020 than in 1994.
