For readers just back from Mars, the National Tertiary Education Union has long complained about university administration and called for more staff involvement to run them better. In its submission to the Senate committee inquiry into system governance the comrades specify problems and provide solutions.
The NTEU’s dozen prescriptions for revising HE:
- Metrics driven-short decision making “a failure to engage in long term workforce planning, or invest in long term research capability” fixed by: publicly available reporting on workforce planning and institutional governance and universities being “exemplary employers”
- Lack of accountability which leads to “inadequate performance management” fixed by transparent management
- Excessive executive pays plus “profligate spending on the senior management group” fixed by capping VC pay at that of premiers to “help restore public trust”
- Transparency lacking “increasingly opaque” governance with business conducted as commercial in confidence fixed by “publicly available reporting in institutional data”
- Lack of trust which is fixed by: open access to information
- Governing bodies don’t understand cultures, fixed by “majority of university board membership comprise the university community, via democratically elected staff, students and alumni
- Academic managers control academic boards, which dilutes collegial decision making fixed by “members of university governing bodies have the right to represent the interests of their respective university communities, embodying the concept of universities as distinctive public institutions”
- Elected staff on governing boards “excluded, intimidated and targeted” fixed by safeguards to ensure elected staff and student representatives can exercise their rights and responsibilities
- Devolved budgets which “impose performance and financial constraints on academic and support units” fixed by joint consultative committees
- Siloed decision making “universities appear to have little co-ordinated, strategic oversight as a whole institution” fixed by “developing a culture of cooperation, consultation and contributory decision making that supports academic freedom and values employees”
- Workforce composition “comparatively higher levels of casual and fixed term staff” fixed by “committing to significantly reducing the levels of both employment insecurity and instability based on a renewed focus on workforce planning and continuing employment as the preferred mode of employment”
- Psycho-social safety: high job demands (workforce composition and high emotional demand to support students), constant organisational change and the bullying and harassment of staff by students and parents fixed (in part) by: “robust proactive mental health support systems.”
