The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) Sandra Parker recently claimed that wage underpayment has become a systemic issue in Australia’s tertiary education sector. Accordingly, the FWO launched an investigation into 11 of the nation’s universities for potentially underpaying their staff.
A recent report from the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) claimed at least 23 universities and colleges have publicly admitted to underpaying casual staff more than $83 million over the past few years.
Peter Coaldrake, chief commissioner with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, told Senate Estimates in February that “the entire sector has been on notice from both TEQSA and FWO about the challenge of underpayment for some time now”.
“It is doubly uncomfortable that it is nearly always those in junior, casual or less secure roles who are disadvantaged”, Coaldrake said.
The whole wage theft fiasco coincides with recent complaints from the National Union of Students about the decline in the quality of teaching at universities, which was encapsulated by second-year Melbourne University commerce student, Jadyn Lam.
“We continue to pay the same fees as we would in-person, for poor quality teaching and not an ounce of care for our wellbeing”, Lam said.
“Today we are inundated with copious quantities of outdated lectures that we pay thousands and thousands of dollars for – possessing microphone and production quality to that of early 2000s YouTube”.
“Additionally, an influx of demotivated students are apparent due to limited access to on-campus tutorials as well as tutors who fly through content online”, Lam said.
Who can be surprised, given universities have bloated their administrative departments while skimping on teaching staff:
Now a new university scandal has emerged regarding online courses marketed by universities.
Australian universities currently offer over 850 courses where the course management, administration and marketing is outsourced to third-party online program management (OPM) companies, most of which are online.
Staff at a number of universities have spoken out against the outsourcing of academic courses, claiming it results in poor quality standards and high workloads.
One unnamed academic at the University of Sydney contends that its outsourcing arrangements are almost “universally hated” by academic staff there, while National Tertiary Education Union national president Dr Alison Barnes says it is strongly against any moves by universities to outsource teaching:
“Some staff are too scared and clinging to their jobs to share [their] stories,” one academic told Guardian Australia…
An academic at the University of Sydney, who asked to remain anonymous, told Guardian Australia the outsourcing arrangements at that university were almost “universally hated” by academics…
Another academic, who also asked to remain anonymous, said in his experience of developing a master’s course at James Cook University (JCU) for the OPM Keypath Education, “the student learning is very much a lower priority”.
He told Guardian Australia the OPM used aggressive marketing tactics on prospective students. “Usually it’s just about marketing and getting them enrolled. After that they didn’t seem to care about the quality and were hard to work with to fix content”…
Guardian Australia has also been shown several contemporaneous emails from staff at Australian universities complaining about workloads, quality standards and other issues in relation to the outsourcing of courses to OPMs.
In one email, an academic asks for their name not to be used on the OPM platform due to being unhappy with the quality of the course content. In others, students expressed concern over poor standards…
“Universities must come clean on exactly what their arrangements with online program managers are,” [NTEU President Alison Barnes said]. “The dramatic increase in third-party, for-profit companies delivering courses is a massive worry because it’s largely been obscured from the public’s view. The lack of accountability is just astounding.
“Universities owe it to students, staff and the public to be upfront about exactly what’s going on here. The amount of unanswered questions around OPMs should ring serious alarm bells.”
Meanwhile, a whistleblower who works for an OPM contracted to run courses for one of Australia’s top-ranked universities told The Guardian they had concerns that some students may be misled when registering for the courses, which they believe are run by universities:
“I have a [work] email and I also have a university email, even though I’m not employed by the university. I can only use [the university] email with students,” the whistleblower said…
“It’s a very well-kept secret … They think I work for the university, but the way it works I’m hoodwinking them”…
The entire Australian university system has become a marketing scam to lure in full fee-paying international and domestic students while they minimise the wages of rank-and-file academics.
Universities don’t care much about academia or teaching, only running education like a profit-maximising private corporation to enrichen vice-chancellors and senior management.
In turn, our universities have shredded their social contract.
Sadly, the Albanese Government has doubled down on the scam by uncapping international student work hours for another year, while also extending post-study work rights and migration pathways. As a result, student visa arrivals have soared to new heights.
This international student boom will ensure that vice-chancellors and senior executives continue to make pay dirt while rank-and-file staff continue to suffer from poor pay and conditions, and entry and teaching standards are gutted.
Basically, Australia’s universities have been transformed into blood-sucking corporations focused on maximising revenue over quality.
Teaching staff numbers have been cut and entry standards have been trashed in a bid to drive up numbers of fee-paying students.
And this is being helped along by the federal government, which has effectively turned student visas into low-skilled work and residency visas.
Vice chancellors and senior administrative staff privatising the gains while teaching staff, students and the broader Australian community wears the costs.
