International Law

In the Higher Education supplement in The Australian today there is an article on administration staff at Australian universities.  The article debunks the myth that the growth in administrative staff has occurred centrally.  Instead the growth in administrative staff has occurred in faculties, for this reason:

He said it was all about upstream reporting: admin staff in faculties and schools jumping to the commands of central administration, which in turn must supply endless, often near identitical data to two levels of government at different times of the year.

And so much of this, demanded in the name of accountability, ended up filed and forgotten, Dr Dobson said.

That conclusion certainly fits with my experience at QUT.

The article also contained these two interesting statistics:

Dr Dobson found that between 1989 and 2007, the student body doubled in size and the teaching staff increased by only a third, with most of the growth being casuals.

Research-only staff increased by a staggering 352 per cent, rising from 3.2 per cent of total staff in 1989 to almost 10 per cent in 2007.

Neither of these statistics are good news for students.

Read the article here.

(PS. It was interesting to note that the article - and presumably the study - referred to "administrative staff".  At QUT, we no longer have administrative staff.  Rather, they go by the more glamorous name of "professional staff".  Us "academic staff", however, continue to be referred to as "academic staff".)