ACOLA Report highlights investment needed to fix Australian research careers
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has welcomed the release of a report yesterday by the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) which has confirmed that job insecurity is the number one problem facing Australian researchers.
More investment in Australian universities and research institutions is needed to address this ever accelerating problem and stop the brain drain, says NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea.
“'Uncertain job prospects’ stood head and shoulders above other issues when the 1200+ respondents were asked to nominate the single ‘worst thing’ about a career in research,” Rea said.
“The findings reinforce concerns that have been highlighted by the NTEU for some time. In the sector we call them treadmill researchers – casual and sessional academics and fixed-term contract-based researchers running on soft money, often without any real career progress for years on end.
“Scholars finishing their PhDs are often between a rock and hard place – scrambling for short-term contracts and often competing against their old supervisor when it comes to getting grants. They’re often unrewarded after three or four years doing a doctorate. Some are forced into different fields or have to leave Australia to find work.”
Rea said the NTEU plans to bargain and campaign on job security issues in 2013.
"The problem is endemic and the sector needs significant workforce investment to fix this problem,” she said.
“We agree that as a nation we need a greater investment in the system – more funding for fellowships and grants; more funding for universities so they can ‘carry’ researchers over the lean times between winning grants; more time to allow early career researchers to publish and establish themselves; and more support to reduce workloads in the mature stages of a career.”
According to the ACOLA report, the worst thing about a career in research was “too much reliance on short term contracts” with 83% of the survey group choosing this option irrespective of discipline, age, gender or institution. This stood well above any of the other options for the worst thing about a research career, although workloads and lack of career path were the two other key concerns pinpointed.
“This report highlights that it is not only PhD graduates who are facing career bottlenecks. Researchers in the university sector face insecure employment conditions throughout their careers,” Rea said.
“The report also importantly highlights that as researchers progress in their careers, they face major challenges in balancing heavy teaching loads with the increasing expectation to produce research and win competitive research grants.
“The problem is that the more researchers understand their employment conditions do not support excellent research or teaching, the more they will look to employment in other sectors or overseas. Australian universities will face a human capital crisis unless they begin to understand that initiatives to generate greater employment security needs to come soon,” Rea concluded.
Media enquiries: Carmel Shute, NTEU Media Officer: 0412 569 356; cshute@nteu.org.au
Media comment: Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President: 0434 609 531 jrea@nteu.org.au
Comments
[ 0 ] Another increasing problem is the demand by potential supervisors and administrators for kickbacks so even less money is available to the people doing the actual work.
Like • Dislike •I'm not racist, but it seems the demand for kickbacks is most predominant with people having their origins in South Asia, perhaps they brought their culture with them. Although it must be admitted, many Australians of other backgrounds seem to think kickbacks are "world's best practice".
[ +2 ] Falling employment rates and insecure employment in Australian universities for Indigenous Academics who have completed a PhD shows that promoting education as a way of improving life outcomes, is actually a falsehood.
Like • Dislike •It is no wonder that there is some hesitation for Indigenous students to engage with higher education as they must consider if the stresses will actually benefit them when they see so many Indigenous academic achievers reduces to dodgy short term precarious employment.
As employment gets tighter, so too does the incidence of preferential treatment for family or mates - nepotism.
[ 0 ] The ACOLA report is title Career Support for Researchers and can be found at http://www.tossgascoigne.com.au/ Section 6.2 reefers to strategies universities can pursue in advancing careers in research.
Like • Dislike •