Union representatives have slammed universities’ whining over the loss of international students, citing mass casualisation of their workforce while they built-up massive financial reserves:
Some of Australia’s most prestigious and cashed-up universities are being accused of hypocrisy, as data reveals almost 70 per cent of staff are employed insecurely while “thousands” have been laid off as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic…
…a record 68.74 per cent of staff [in Victoria] are employed as casuals or short-term contracts…
And senior university industry figures say the Victorian figure is reflected nationally in information sent to the Federal Department of Education.
“[The numbers] are terrible,” National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) president Dr Alison Barnes said.
“They [the teachers] have no financial security and that means it’s difficult to take holidays, get mortgages, plan a family but it’s also that chronic insecurity leads to stress and problems of emotional wellbeing”…
The rush towards insecure work has been led by the University of Melbourne, Australia’s richest tertiary institution, which listed reserves of $4.43 billion while employing 72.9 per cent of staff on insecure terms.
Monash University was a close second on the list, with 72.8 per cent of staff employed casually or on short-term contracts but it had much smaller reserves of just over $1 billion…
The rise of insecure work has coincided with a decade of record revenues…
Universities Australia said the 39 public universities faced a combined revenue loss of between $3 billion and $4.6 billion from the fall in international students on the back of COVID-19 travel restrictions…
Disgraceful stuff.
Australia’s universities enjoyed an unprecedented $44 billion windfall in international student fees over the five years to 2019:
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Australia’s elite Group of Eight universities were the biggest beneficiaries, enjoying the highest growth and concentration in international student numbers:
In addition to shafting their workforce via mass casualisation, our universities also reduced the ratio of academic staff to students, in turn eroding teaching quality:
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Our elite universities have also wasted copious billions on gold-plated buildings and campus upgrades.
The entire Go8 is a marketing scam to lure in cashed up international students while minimising wages of rank and file academics. Not one of them genuinely cares about academia, only running education like profit-maximising private enterprises to fatten the wallets of senior management.
They have no right to cry poor to taxpayers over the loss of international students.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
