AUS Tertiary Update
Gender pay gap reinforced in university statistics
Women
employed in universities are paid significantly less than
their male counterparts, and are more likely to be appointed
to lower-grade positions, and to be engaged on fixed-term
employment agreements, according to information compiled by
the Association of University Staff.
Figures obtained by
AUS under an Official Information Act request show that the
mean salary of women employed in New Zealand universities
is, on average, $52,608, that is $7,660 less than that of
their male counterparts who earn $60,268. The widest margin,
of $17,757, is at the University of Canterbury, where women
earn $51,027 compared to $68,784 for men. Massey University
has the next widest margin, of $15,513, with women earning
$50,642 and men $66,155. The smallest differential is at the
University of Auckland, where the gap is $732. The
University of Otago failed to provide figures.
The gender
pay gap at universities reflects current national statistics
for the entire New Zealand workforce, with Statistics New
Zealand reporting that women, on average, are now earning 82
percent of men’s earnings, down from 86 percent last year.
The gender differential in universities has, however, shown
a slight decrease, with women earning approximately 87
percent of men’s wages, compared with estimates of around 80
percent in 2003.
AUS Women’s Vice-President, Associate
Professor Maureen Montgomery, said that appointment levels
in universities over the past two years illustrate a
probable reason for the differential for women staff, both
academic and general. “It appears that academic men are
about two-thirds more likely than women to be appointed to
higher academic classifications, while women are vastly
over-represented in the bottom general staff salary
bandings,” she said. “At Lincoln, for example, positions
which occupy the bottom two bands of the general staff
salary scales are filled by women at the ratio of nine to
one over men, whereas, in the top two bands, men dominate by
a ratio of three to two over women. Similarly, the ratio of
male academic appointments to the classifications of
lecturer and above was much higher at all universities than
for women, while females dominated lower-ranked
classifications such as tutors and sessional assistants.
”
According to Associate Professor Montgomery, AUS
membership data also show that women were between 21 and 46
percent more likely to be engaged on fixed-term employment
agreements than men. This has been identified as an area of
priority for the National AUS Status of Women Committee as
it is one of the contributing factors to the gender
differential in continuing positions.
Associate Professor
Montgomery said that Department of Labour Pay and Employment
Equity reviews, set to run at each university next year,
would provide an opportunity for problem areas to be
identified and measures put in place to remedy any problems.
Also in Tertiary Update this week
1. Student-loan
report published
2. Nats continue attack over loan-policy
costings
3. NZUSA elects new leaders
4. Business
School to be closed
5. National groups seek records on
exclusions of foreign scholars
6. University staff to
join national protest on IR laws
7. SOAS librarians
reinstated
8. Harvard President at centre of fresh
controversy
Student-loan report published
Since it was
introduced in 1992, around 680,000 people have used the
Student Loan Scheme; almost half a million of them,
representing 14 percent of the population over the age of
fifteen years, still had a loan at 30 June this year.
The Student Loan Scheme Annual Report to 30 June 2005,
which was published on Tuesday this week, shows that, after
fourteen years, the outstanding national student-loan
balance was $7,499 billion, up 10 percent on the previous
year. The average loan balance is $14,997, with about 40
percent of loans under $8,000 and 0.1 percent over
$100,000.
The report shows that some 157,032 students
borrowed from the scheme in the 2004 academic year, of whom
71 percent were under thirty years of age, 60 percent were
women, 17 percent were Maori and 7 percent were Pasifika.
They borrowed an average of $6,258 in 2004-05 to fund their
study, including fees, course-related costs and living
costs, compared to $6,316 the year before.
Full-time
students continue to be those most likely to access the loan
scheme; while about 53 percent of eligible students overall
accessed a student loan in 2004, the uptake from full-time
students was 74 percent.
According to the report,
173,168 loans have been completely repaid, $1,030 million in
interest charges have been written off and $2,827 million
has been repaid.
The New Zealand University Students’
Association (NZUSA) says, however, that the report shows
that the average student debt is increasing, and more
students are graduating with extraordinarily high levels of
debt. “This report is a sad reminder of how the Student Loan
Scheme is making the lives of an entire generation of New
Zealanders increasingly difficult,” said Camilla Belich,
NZUSA Co-President. “The report shows that the number of
students with loan balances over $50,000 has grown by 24
percent in one year, and the number of students with loans
over $30,000 has grown by 17 percent since 2004.”
The
report, which contains the full, audited financial accounts,
an overview of the Government’s policy for student financial
support, a description of the components of the scheme and
how they work, an extensive set of statistics and a
valuation of the scheme, can be located at:
http://www.minedu.govt.nz/index.cfm?layout=document&documentid=10873&data=l
Nats
continue attack over loan-policy costings
With
legislation tabled in Parliament last week to make student
loans interest-free from the start of the new financial year
for students and former students residing in New Zealand,
the Opposition has wasted little time in trying to making
political capital out of the costings on which the proposed
legislation is based.
In Parliament’s question time on
Tuesday, National Party Leader, Dr Don Brash asked the Prime
Minister, Helen Clark, whether the Government had ignored
Treasury advice on the cost of implementation of the
proposal because she found it politically unpalatable as it
showed that, on realistic assumptions, the policy would
increase student debt by over $5 billion and Government debt
by $14 billion.
Dr Brash pressed further, asking Helen
Clark to reconcile earlier statements that the cost of the
policy would be around $300 million, when Treasury advice
showed the policy would cost $390 million annually by its
third year, rising to $500 million annually after 6 years
and to almost $1 billion annually by 2019. Helen Clark
responded that initial Treasury forecasts had been revised
downwards, adding that the loan-interest policy was a good
one and had caught the Opposition napping during the
election campaign.
The twist came this morning, with the
Minister of Education, Dr Cullen, announcing that Treasury’s
initial “jottings” were wrong, and that new estimates showed
the cost at $202 million per year.
Meanwhile, in
response to another question about Maori and Pasifika
participation in tertiary education, Dr Cullen told the
House that Maori participation in degree courses has
increased by 25 percent since 1999 and by 56 percent for
Pasifika students. The number of Maori obtaining doctorates
has increased by 30 percent and the Pasifika figure has
doubled.
NZUSA elects new leaders
The New Zealand
University Students’ Association has elected Conor Roberts,
current Auckland University Students’ Association
Administrative Vice-President, and former National Affairs
Officer, as its second Co-President for 2006. He will join
Joey Randall as NZUSA Co-Presidents in 2006 and Jennifer
Jones as NZUSA National Women’s Rights Officer, both of whom
were elected in October.
“I am really excited about
representing the interests of students to the Government
next year,” said Mr Roberts. “I am committed to ensuring the
introduction of the interest-free student-loan policy goes
smoothly and lobbying to increase access to student
allowances.”
Joey Randall was the Auckland University
Students’ Association Education Vice-President in 2004,
while Jennifer Jones is the current Education Vice-President
at Victoria University Students’ Association.
Joey
Randall said that the three were “really thrilled” to be
taking on the leadership of NZUSA, and looked forward to
furthering the goals of students at a national
level.
Jennifer Jones said that, with well over 50
percent of students being women, and with women graduates
facing longer student-debt repayment times than the general
population, she looked forward to improving the situation
for women students in 2006.
Current NZUSA Co-Presidents
Camilla Belich and Andrew Kirton, and National Women’s
Rights Officer Karen Price, will continue in their roles
until the end of this year.
Business School to be
closed
In what may be the first casualty of the strategic
review of the tertiary education sector, it appears likely
that the Christchurch College of Education Business School
will be closed. The Press reports that a College Council
meeting last night decided that the School would be wound
down as part of a proposed merger with the University of
Canterbury.
Earlier, the College had sought to sell the
Business School because it was not included in its planned
merger with the University. Despite several expressions of
interest from other public tertiary-education institutions,
the College Council called off a tender process because the
Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) told the College it did
not want to see duplication of programmes and, therefore,
did not want the Business School to go to a provider from
outside the region. TEC staff also indicated that including
the Business School in the merger with the University of
Canterbury was not an option because the Commission was
unlikely to fund the School’s sub-degree courses as they
were not compatible with a university context. The
possibility of a sale to the Christchurch Polytechnic and
Institute of Technology was also ruled out.
The Principal
of the College of Education, Dr Graham Stoop, said the
Business School has about 450 equivalent full-time students,
most of them studying for the New Zealand Diploma of
Business, and about 150 studying for a business degree.
The Press reports that a last-minute proposal for the
School to continue as a management and leadership centre at
the University of Canterbury, involving the New Zealand
Institute of Management, was rejected by both the College
and University.
Dr Stoop said that the Council has now
concluded that current students will be able to complete
their studies and graduate because of an offer of support
from the University. “If the merger [with the University] is
approved, the College of Education will run the School for
another year, after which the University will take over for
a further two years,” he said.
Worldwatch
National
groups seek records on exclusions of foreign scholars
The
American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has
joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and PEN
American Center in a legal action against the US Departments
of State, Justice and Homeland Security and the Central
Intelligence Agency. The groups allege that the agencies
are illegally withholding information on the Government’s
practice of excluding prominent foreign intellectuals based
on their political views.
According to the complaint, the
US Government appears to be invoking immigration laws and
section 411 of the Patriot Act, which permits the exclusion
of prominent individuals who have used their positions to
endorse or espouse terrorism. However, the individuals
named in the complaint are known for their anti-terrorist
stands. The complaint cites the experiences of several
foreign scholars, including the Swiss intellectual Tariq
Ramadan, and the prominent Nicaraguan scholar and former
government official, Dora Maria Tellez, as well as a group
of Cuban scholars who were scheduled to attend a conference,
among others.
“Our concern about academic freedom
extends beyond the rights that are assured on our college
and university campuses,” said Jane Buck, President of the
AAUP. “We believe that the people of this country should be
able to hear or read ideas from any speaker or writer
without our government’s restricting our access to a full
range of perspectives. Indeed, the government of a free
people is obliged to guarantee such access.”
A copy of
the complaint can be found at:
http://www.aaup.org/Legal/cases/FOIAComplaint.Signed.pdf
University
staff to join national protest on IR laws
Thousands of
university and polytechnic staff across Australia joined an
estimated 546,000 other workers in widespread protests
against the Government’s proposed industrial relations laws
on Tuesday. National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) General
Secretary, Grahame McCulloch, said that, even before the
latest package of legislation was introduced, university
staff had been angered by the Government’s interference in
universities’ internal affairs through its Higher Education
Workplace Relations Requirements, which passed through the
Senate last week. “These require that universities offer all
staff Australian Workplace Agreements, and introduce a range
of regressive workplace changes into staff collective
agreements, under the threat of having their Commonwealth
funding cut,” he said.
“Now we see the Government trying
to extend to the whole workforce the agenda it has been
imposing on university staff,” said Mr McCulloch. “NTEU
members are committed to retaining quality and fairness
through collective agreements, which protect their rights,
and protect academic freedom. Many members are also
concerned about the effect of the laws on their own
children, and on students, who increasingly rely on fairly
low-paid work to support their studies.”
Mr McCulloch
said the Government’s industrial laws are aimed at
undermining collective bargaining, reducing wages for the
low-paid and removing unfair dismissal rights from millions.
Protests by university staff occurred in all
metropolitan cities, and in over twenty regional centres
from Darwin to Launceston and from Rockhampton to Bunbury.
SOAS librarians reinstated
Academic staff at London’s
School of Oriental and African Studies have called off
strike action after management agreed to reinstate two
specialist librarians at the centre of a five-month dispute.
Members of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) had
voted by a margin of 80 percent to take five days of strike
action, demanding the reinstatement of Fujiko Kobayashi and
Sue Small, specialist librarians in Japan, Korea and China,
saying they were needed to maintain the specialist library
at the School which is funded as a national resource.
Their sacking from one of the UK's leading specialist
libraries prompted AUT members to vote for concerted strike
action. Fourteen academics had also resigned posts at the
School, though not their jobs, in protest.
Ms Small, who
is currently in China, is expected back at her desk in SOAS
by the end of the week.
The School, part of the
University of London, boasts “one of the world's most
important academic libraries for the study of Africa, Asia
and the Middle East, which attracts scholars from all over
the world to conduct research”.
From the Education
Guardian and AUT
Harvard President at centre of fresh
controversy
Harvard professors have circulated an email
criticising “backbiting” by the US University’s
controversial President, Larry Summers, following reported
comments about senior staff. The student newspaper, Harvard
Crimson, reported sources close to Professor Summers as
saying he had planned to sack William Kirby, Dean of the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, last year. However the
controversy that erupted in January over the President’s
remarks about female academics meant that he was not in a
position to carry out his intentions.
An email
circulated by a group of eighteen professors said they were
“appalled” that sources have spread rumours about President
Summer’s intention to fire the Dean. “We think it is highly
improper if, as reported, the President of Harvard has been
expressing to members of the Faculty his “deep
dissatisfaction” with the Dean of Arts and Sciences. This
kind of backbiting is more than unprofessional,” the email
read. “It undercuts the work and the morale of colleagues
within [the Faculty of Arts and Sciences] and damages the
institution as a whole.”
From the Education
Guardian
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AUS
Tertiary Update is compiled weekly on Thursdays and
distributed freely to members of the Association of
University Staff and others. Back issues are available on
the AUS website: www.aus.ac.nz . Direct enquires should be
made to Marty Braithwaite, AUS Communications Officer,
email:
marty.braithwaite@aus.ac.nz