Benefits of regulating universities

Matthew McGowan, General Secretary

Neoliberalist chickens have come home to roost in the wage theft and academic/intellectual freedom debates on campus. The decisions made in the 80s and 90s to shift the internal culture of our universities to make them more corporate and less collegial in their outlook and practice laid the foundations for many of the problems facing the sector today.

In recent months, we have seen Union efforts return around $30 million of underpaid moneys to casual staff at a number of universities, with more on the way. This crisis is attracting the attention of TEQSA, the Fair Work Ombudsman, and the Commonwealth Senates Select Committee on Job Security, and it has seen thousands of staff finally receive money they earned. How can this be possible across so many institutions? It is not just the act of a rogue manager looking to boost the bottom line and blind to the realities on the ground. It is the act of multiple managers across multiple institutions indicating a systemic failure of internal governance across the sector.

In the 90s, a number of things started to happen. Actively encouraged by Government, universities embraced a more corporate culture. This coincided with the expansion of the international student market as government saw the opportunity to expand the sector at minimal cost.

At many institutions, departmental heads were seen as the interface between staff and senior managements, playing a role in representing up as well as down. In many cases, they were in elected roles. The corporatisation push saw these positions as exclusively appointed roles who were required to implement decisions from the senior ranks. This diminished their role in representing staff and enhanced their role of pushing decisions down.

There was an influx of senior managers in professional staff roles as well with external corporate experience but little university experience. As well, some HRs became more aggressive in their roles and less interested in finding solutions to problems.

With this also came cost centre financial management where local managers were solely responsible for meeting their budgets and there was not much attention paid to how they did that. HR at many universities could not even construct an accurate list of people employed at any given time because all casual employment started and finished at the local level with no accountability up the line other than through the budgetary imperative.

More aggressive HR made bargaining more difficult and contentious and once again, there was not much desire for problem solving at many institutions.

The end result is that at many universities, central administration did not want to know what was going on at the local level. Their bargaining strategy was to reduce regulation and make it easier for line managers to manage their budgets. As a result, the wage theft crisis has been created by thousands of small decisions at a local level designed to meet budgetary pressures.

This is the same culture that has watered down the roles of Academic Boards and Senates, and reduced staff and student voices on University Councils and Senates. This strategy was designed to make decision making easier in its formation and its implementation, but not more robust or accountable.

This dynamic has even impacted on one of the defining features of universities: academic/intellectual freedom.

The role of a university in civil society is more than just as an educational institution. It is a source of independent research, enquiry and debate about almost every aspect of our society. This role is founded on the right to engage in research and public debate without the threat of disciplinary action because you may have embarrassed a funding body, or the reputation of the university. Our society depends on this role being indisputable in every case whether it be in epidemiology, climate science, law, sociology or epistemology. Governments, media, courts and society in general need to know that the views and opinions expressed by experts in a particular field are genuine and not moderated by pressure to conform, or a threat to their employment.

This includes the need to ensure that intellectual enquiry is not stymied or limited by managerial interventions designed to protect the brand of the institution. Such a fundamental responsibility should be above debate, yet we have seen attempts by universities in each bargaining round to water down or diminish these rights.

There have been a number of significant court cases recently that have establish the need for these rights. It has taken the High Court to make clear the importance of these principles in its judgement on the dismissal of Peter Ridd from James Cook University (see report, p. 24). And concurrently in the Federal Court, the case of Tim Anderson at University of Sydney (see report, p. 22).

Given the principles at stake are fundamental to the role of a university in our society, it is staggering that we continue to have to defend people from university managements who seek to protect their brand at the expense of their role in the society.

How are wage theft and intellectual freedom linked? By the internal cultures of our universities that have prioritised short term institutional needs over the greater responsibility to defend our institutions and the staff in them. Let’s also not forget that a casualised workforce is one that will not easily rock the boat. That will think twice before challenging managerial conventions.

Regulation is not a dirty word.

Matthew McGowan, General Secretary