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<TITLE>Unis suffer as number of casual academic staff rises</TITLE>
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<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=4>Unis suffer as number of casual academic staff rises</FONT></B></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B></B></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B></B></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Harriet Alexander Higher Education Reporter<BR>
July 24, 2006 </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Sydney Morning Herald</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">THE proportion of casual employees working in academia is about to top 50 per cent, threatening the quality of teaching and deterring young starters from joining the ageing workforce, academics warn. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">The figure is already more than half at some universities, and the proportion is expected to rise again with the latest round of enterprise agreements. Anne Junor, the deputy director of the Industrial Relations Research Centre at the University of NSW, said the market had become more deregulated since Work Choices legislation took effect and the Federal Government had introduced regulations last year that threatened to penalise universities that capped the number of casual employees.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">"We've seen it plateau and it will rise again," Dr Junor said.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Although casuals were usually good teachers, their limited time on campus meant they were not available to see students face-to-face and had less time to liaise with other academic staff.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">"The thing that makes for quality is when a group of people who are teaching in a course sit down together and touch base," Dr Junor said.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">"I'm always in a dilemma. I want the casuals to come to my lectures but I can't pay them.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">"And what are they teaching if they don't come to lectures and don't know the intricacies of what we're doing?"</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Research she conducted four years ago showed that no casual staff liked the conditions of their employment.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Many of them had PhDs and had been waiting years for permanent full-time positions, and spent many more hours designing courses and fielding student emails than they were paid for, Dr Junor said.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Department of Education figures peg the proportion of casuals at 19 per cent.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">But Ken McAlpine, a senior industrial officer at the National Tertiary Education Union, said that calculation was based on a formula that overestimates the number of tutorials a full-time staff member would teach.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Dr Junor's research put the figure at 50 per cent, based on the combination of a head count and the number of classes taught by casuals in any given week in a survey of five universities.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Meanwhile good academics were being lost to the private sector because they were not being given full-time jobs and allowed to research, Mr McAlpine said.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">"What it means is that we don't necessarily have people who are actively involved in research in the fields they're teaching and that's what makes a university a university," Mr McAlpine said.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000000">"The Government says that deregulating … is about providing people with choice. Our research shows that over half of all academic employees would prefer a full-time career as an academic."</FONT></SPAN></P>
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