TEU Tertiary Update, volume 12, number 37

SLOW PROGRESS FOR WOMEN PROFESSORS

The proportion of professors and associate professors who are women grew from 17 percent in 2003 to 21 percent in 2008 according to the Ministry of Education’s just released Profiles and Trends Report 2008. Overall the proportion of female academic staff in tertiary institutions has fallen slightly from 46 percent to 45 percent, with a slight increase in wānanga and universities and slight decrease in polytechnics.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs said universities need to do more to help women into professorial roles.

“The overall number of academics in universities grew during the same period so it is strange that the proportion of women academics should be stagnant and the proportion of professors should be growing so slowly.”

Meanwhile, the report also shows that the personnel costs per full time equivalent staff member have fallen against the rate of inflation between 2007 and 2008. While universities and wānanga increased their personnel spending by an average of at least $5000 per staff member, polytechnics increased their spending over the same year by only $1000, meaning that spending failed to keep up with inflation. In total, 58 percent, or $2.21 billion, of total public tertiary education expenditure was spent on personnel in 2008 (up one percent from 2007).

Ms Riggs said these statistics made grim reading for polytechnic staff.

“The State Services Commission and individual polytechnics and institutes of technology seem set on repressing wages this year. For a group of workers whose pay appears not to have kept up with others in the tertiary education system that’s not only unfair, it is going to hurt those workers and their families.”

ALSO IN TERTIARY UPDATE THIS WEEK:

1 Site-by-site bargaining underway at universities
2. Polytechnics not that impoverished
3. How do you start a custom from scratch?
4. Social report reveals fewer students
5. Monash staff to get back lost leave pay
6. Fundraising up to university leaders

SITE-BY-SITE BARGAINING UNDERWAY AT UNIVERSITIES

Following the stalemate in nationwide multi-university negotiations last month, members of the combined unions agreed to try negotiating collective agreements at each individual university.

Those negotiations now are underway, with initial negotiations having already taken place at the University of Auckland, AUT, and Waikato. The University of Canterbury, Massey University, and the University of Otago also are meeting individually with the unions’ bargaining team this week. Victoria University and Lincoln University will both meet individually with the unions’ negotiating team for the first time the following week, in early November.

These negotiations are an attempt to see if a deal can be reached between each side. However, the unions’ claim for a national multi-university collective agreement is still sitting dormant on the negotiating table.

At the three local negotiations that have begun, progress is as follows:

The University of Auckland has already offered and paid its staff 2.6% back in May this year. It now has put forward a series of claims that remove some existing conditions from the collective agreements.

AUT has rejected all the union claims except the one year term. It is proposing some of its own claims and has offered a 0.6 percent pay increase for one year.

Waikato has made no claims of its own but is seeking a two year term and no pay increase during that term.

POLYTECHNICS NOT THAT IMPOVERISHED

The Ministry of Education’s Profiles and Trends Report 2008 states that the strategic financial performance of polytechnics remained relatively stable in 2008. While the average operating surplus declined slightly from 2007 and remained below the Tertiary Education Commission’s benchmark, the other three key indicators - liquid assets, working capital and net cash flow - all improved slightly and remained above the commission’s benchmark.

Universities, meanwhile, found three of their four financial indicators weakening during 2008, and two of them below the commission’s benchmark.

TEU president Tom Ryan believes that this data contradicts the perception of poverty that the minister and the polytechnics themselves have been propagating.

“The government has claimed that polytechnics’ poor financial management is one of the main reasons for cutting away community representation from their governance boards. And polytechnics themselves around the country now are arguing that ongoing financial hardship is why their wallets are closed to staff who even they agree deserve a fair pay increase. Government funding cuts don’t help, but this data suggests that polytechnics were not faring that badly compared to the rest of the sector last year,” said Dr Ryan.

HOW DO YOU START A CUSTOM FROM SCRATCH?

While universities around the country claim to find it impossible to unite in bargaining, they have been quick to follow the lead of one of their number when it comes to celebrating Christmas. The idea that has seized senior management from Otago to AUT in recent weeks appears to have originated at Massey: close your institution down early and make your staff take extra annual leave in the last week before Christmas.

This will markedly reduce each institution’s annual leave liability and so free up cash to spend in the next financial year. The difficulty that management face, however, is two-fold. First, many other planning decisions have already been made on the assumption that the university would shut down on Christmas Eve as usual. Those include planned teaching and research programmes and, of course, individuals’ annual holiday plans.

Mandatory annual leave immediately before Christmas especially penalises those staff who diligently plan and take their annual leave.

Second, section 29 of the Holidays Act says that an employer may close their business and require staff to take annual leave once a year, but that such a closedown must be customary. In universities such a closedown is not customary because the usual period in which the university is shut is covered by university holidays supplementing public holidays, thus avoiding the necessity for staff to take annual leave. As a result, universities have backed away from invoking section 29 of the Act.

Universities are, though, attempting to be as persuasive as possible in getting staff to take annual leave, with Victoria University, for instance, attempting a kind of mock annual closedown. They appear to be aiming to establish a custom for the future so that they can invoke section 29 in later years.

SOCIAL REPORT REVEALS FEWER STUDENTS

The 2009 Social Report from the Ministry of Social Development shows a decline in the number of people enrolled in formal tertiary education between 2007 and 2008. This is the first such decline in over a decade.

During 2008, a total of 421,000 people aged 15 years and over were enrolled in formal tertiary education, a decline from 444,000 people in 2007. The age-standardised tertiary education participation rate was 12.5 per cent in 2008, down from 13.3 per cent in the previous year.

Between 1998 and 2005 there was a rapid increase in tertiary education enrolments: the age-standardised participation rate rose from 8.4 per cent in 1998 to a peak of 14.0 per cent in 2005.

This rapid growth was largely driven by an increase in enrolments for certificate-level qualifications. Participation increased from 2.5 percent in 1998 to 6.4 percent in 2005 for Levels 1–3 certificate courses, and from 0.5 percent to 2.2 percent for Level 4 certificate courses. By 2008, participation at these levels had fallen to 4.9 percent and 1.9 per cent, respectively. In all other levels of qualification, participation rates remained relatively unchanged between 2005 and 2008.

Between 1991 and 2007 the proportion of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher qualification rose from 8 percent to 21 percent (469,000 people). Again, 2008 was the first year that this rate has decreased.

The report also shows that Māori are participating in tertiary education at a much higher rate than other ethnicities, with much of that growth related to a significant increase in taking certificate-level courses. The proportion of Māori who have a bachelor’s degree or higher remains substantially lower than the proportion for other ethnicities.

New Zealand’s enrolments in tertiary education place us above the OECD mean, higher the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, but below the rate of enrolment for Australia.

MONASH STAFF TO GET BACK LOST LEAVE PAY

Around 2,000 staff at Monash University have won back pay totalling around $5 million for holidays they didn't get to take.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) said its members at Monash had lost huge amounts of leave because they were committed to the university.

NTEU Monash branch president Jeffrey Bender says it is often hard for staff, especially academics, to take leave because of their commitments.

He said the university had a 30-day maximum accrual cap on leave, and when that cap was breached holidays were lost.

"Workplace stress is the major form of successful workplace injury claim in the university sector, and not taking leave is both a sign of that stress and also worsens it," Mr Bender said.

The NTEU had undertaken a successful test case for 69 staff members to get back lost holiday pay.

Branch industrial organiser Stan Rosenthal said many academics felt that by taking leave they were either sacrificing their professional standing as researchers or sacrificing their students.

"Even now, we are getting people saying their head of department won't let them take leave during the semester," Mr Rosenthal said.

"They face high teaching loads, and budget tightness means they are not hiring enough staff to let people take leave."

From the Brisbane Times

FUNDRAISING UP TO UNIVERSITY LEADERS

University leaders who want to raise money need to get out and ask, according to Eric Thomas, chairman of a 2004 inquiry that is widely credited with kick-starting a fundraising culture in Britain.

"The one message I would give to vice-chancellors is that they must lead," the Bristol University vice-chancellor said.

Professor Thomas is in Australia to attend alumni celebrations for his institution's centenary.

In Britain, philanthropy generates more than £500 million a year and, while Oxford and Cambridge collect a large share of that, the growth in philanthropy has helped across the system.

Fundraisers are helped by a £200 m government scheme to match donations. Professor Thomas said this "makes the ask a lot easier", but universities were still widely seen as a state responsibility, which meant "there is still a message to be got out". Vice-chancellors were the people to do it.

Professor Thomas regularly devotes 40 working days a year to fundraising, a commitment he increased 50 percent this year to support Bristol's centenary.

It is work that connects him to his university's origins. Bristol's early growth was assisted by large gifts from a local businessman. It is a tradition that continues with the largest personal contribution to the present £100m campaign coming from an individual who gave £250,000 "cash out of their pocket". The donor was not an alumnus but wanted to assist the university's classics department.

It's a sentiment Professor Thomas understands, having himself donated £100,000 to classics at Bristol: "I wanted to invest in my own university. There is no reason to ask for donations if I don't."

From Stephen Matchett at the Australian

-----

TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

© Scoop Media