TEU Tertiary Update Vol 12 No 17

SIX ITPS NEGOTIATE WORKLOAD HOURS

TEU bargaining advocates spent two days last week exchanging claims with the six institutes of technology and polytechnics (ITPs) covered by the ITP multi employer collective agreement – Wintec, WITT, Unitec, Whitireia, NorthTec and BoPP.

The polytechnics are seeking greater flexibility and productivity. They want to discuss how to ensure academic staff work such hours as may be reasonably required of them to professionally fulfil the requirements of the job, which may be outside of the normal week.

They also want to delete the current entitlement to one block of annual leave of at least four weeks, and to change discretionary leave so that it is at the employer’s discretion rather than the employee’s.

TEU lead advocate, Irena Brorens, says that workload is already a huge issue in polytechnics and the employer claims would put further pressure on the heavy workload, if they were to be implemented.

“Academic staff at ITPs are already flexible and do all they can to be with their students. It’s important to remember that as well as their timetabled teaching hours they have assessment and administration, not to mention the demands of research and professional development. Excessive workload is detrimental for both staff and students,” says Ms Brorens.

Union members at the six ITPs are seeking a 5 percent increase to salaries and allowances and a reduction in maximum timetabled teaching hours from 825 per year to 750, with a weekly limit of 20 teaching hours. They also have claimed greater protection for casual staff and those workers involved in organisational change or surplus staffing reorganisations.

Negotiations have now adjourned, and are scheduled to resume on Tuesday 9 June.

ALSO IN TERTIARY UPDATE THIS WEEK

1. Budget signals new tertiary education strategy
2. Mixed messages from NZVCC
3. University of Auckland quits U21Global
4. Med schools not ready for new students
5. Holidays won’t be taken but might be sold
6. Worldwatch

BUDGET SIGNALS NEW TERTIARY EDUCATION STRATEGY

The government’s intention to develop a new Tertiary Education Strategy is further worrying news to come from the Tertiary Education Commission’s budget briefing last week, says TEU president Tom Ryan.

The strategy, which will focus on “simplifying the funding system” and “lowering compliance costs and reducing central planning”, will emphasise the government’s intention to reduce central control for the sector. The strategy also will link future funding to performance.

“This indicates a further move away from a cohesive strategy for the sector and a return to a fragmented approach to planning in the sector; and probably with even more constrained funding,” says Dr Ryan.

Dr Ryan believes that last week’s budget undermined the government’s stated intentions for tertiary education.

“While TEC might describe tertiary education as ‘a key national strategic asset which plays a vital role in building skills of New Zealanders’, all we can see is widespread cuts to many areas of education that ordinary New Zealanders value. This budget did little to support the innovative work that the tertiary sector needs to do in order to be effective in responding to unemployment and the global recession.”

“The recent Australian Budget responded to the financial crisis by putting an extra AU$5.3 billion into tertiary education and the US has put in $US$50 billion in the next few years. On a per capita basis, $1 billion over coming years would have shown the same commitment to learning our way out of financial trouble. Instead the sector has been hit with ill-considered reductions that ignore increases in student enrolments and the subsequent negative impact on staff workloads and students’ learning experiences,” concludes Dr Ryan.

You can read TEU’s full budget analysis here and coverage of the budget here.

MIXED MESSAGES FROM NZVCC

The Vice Chancellors Committee has sent out a range of responses to last week’s budget.

On the day of the budget a “measured” NZVCC Chair Roger Field, from Lincoln University, described the budget as worrying and called for “savings achieved through reduced tertiary education compliance costs and cuts in bureaucracy to be reinvested in the sector.”

The next day AUT’s Derek McCormack called the budget a ‘body blow’, and launched a strong attack on the government for withdrawing “funding already committed to keeping academic salaries at levels which are barely competitive in an international market.”

“Further, the Government has made an explicit statement that no provision has been made for growth in university enrolment. The number of unfunded students in the system this year will continue to grow in 2010 and beyond in a compound effect and this can only result in increasing numbers of prospective students being turned away, potentially to join the dole queue.”

Later that day, David Skegg from the research-intensive University of Otago, said budget measures affecting research, science and technology “have given universities a solid indication that the Government recognises their key role in the research and innovation system and the need to maintain it.”

It is believed that the eight universities may be positioning themselves to take differing strategies for addressing workers’ salary costs in the upcoming employment negotiations. With some universities recording significant surpluses last year ($25 million at Otago, $10 million at Victoria, $15 million at Canterbury), and all publically stating that salaries are not high enough to recruit and retrain the staff they want, it is perceived that universities are not in a position to plead poverty at the negotiation table this year.

UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND QUITS U21 GLOBAL

Auckland University has withdrawn from Universitas 21 Global - and presumably failed to recover its initial investment.

U21 Global had been a Melbourne University-based idea for a global profit-making virtual university. The initial scheme involved a joint venture between the Universitas 21 (U21) consortium and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, but this foundered after unions at the affected universities led an international campaign against an academic liaison with Murdoch. However the scheme survived after Murdoch was replaced by Canadian Thomson Learning, and later Manipal Education, a Mauritius-based education services provider.

Former AUS president Professor Jane Kelsey, who has been tracking the U21 Global story, says it has all the classic features of risky privatisations.

“Its credentials carry the brand names of the shareholding universities who receive a licensing fee in return. Students who buy the products have no guarantee that their qualification will be recognised internationally. Courseware design is contracted out, not necessarily to academics from the shareholding universities. There is no commitment to collegial governance, participation by the student body, or academic freedom.”

The venture has been shrouded in commercial confidentiality, but it is believed that the total initial investment of the shareholding universities was $50 million. As of July 2008 U21Global had around 5000 students in 60 countries, mainly from India and South East Asia - well short of the 10,000 it needed to break even.

Participating universities were asked to make a further investment to prop up the company. Several, including Auckland, have declined to invest further. Auckland has completely withdrawn from the scheme and is now no longer a partner in U21Global, with its vice chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon, noting that U21 Global 'is no longer consistent with our strategic objectives'.

MED SCHOOLS NOT READY FOR NEW STUDENTS

Medical schools are saying that they may not have enough teaching staff and clinical training places to accommodate the 60 extra medical school places that last week’s budget allows for.

The budget provided a $25 million increase for training extra doctors. Next year it will fund 60 extra medical school places, gradually increasing to 200 within five years, to take the total number of doctors trained in New Zealand each year to 565.

Auckland University's medical dean, Professor Iain Martin, told the Christchurch Press that "academics who can teach in medical programmes are a very sought-after resource and recruitment will become appreciably more difficult with the loss of the tripartite funding."

New Zealand Medical Students' Association president William Perry welcomed the funding boost but said that increasing medical-student numbers "could come at a higher cost than expected".

"Teaching resources and clinical opportunities for learning are already stretched. We need to make sure that we maintain a high quality of education and that we continue to produce world-class doctors."

TEU president Dr Tom Ryan says universities will now need to “walk the talk”:

“Universities have iterated over recent months the important roll their staff play in teaching, training and researching, and they have noted how undervalued those same staff are financially. The time is coming now for those universities to stop talking and show what their commitment is to those employees.”

HOLIDAYS WON’T BE TAKEN BUT MIGHT BE SOLD

The minister of labour has announced the terms of reference for her government’s review of the Holidays Act.

The Council of Trade Unions believes that the review is more benign than had been anticipated given the government’s pre-election policy. The review has elements that will reassure workers but also will raise concerns says CTU vice-president Richard Wagstaff.

Mr Wagstaff said that the terms of reference make clear that this “not a wholesale attack on [workers’] holidays and pay entitlements when off sick, and directly specify that workers’ current core holiday and leave entitlements will be maintained.”

“On the negative side is the inclusion in the terms of reference of options for the trading of leave for cash which, while not unexpected, have the potential to see workers being pressured to sell holidays…We know from our experience that those on low pay or under pressure of workload from their employer will not have a truly free choice. We also know that holidays add to the quality of life in this country, make for healthier families, make workplaces safer, and have a number of other benefits which need to be considered in any policy change.”

The review committee is a tripartite body with two union representatives, two business representatives, and an independent chairperson. As well as the question of trading leave for cash it will look at how holidays are calculated, how casual staff accumulate holidays, and whether workers should be able to transfer the observance of listed public holidays to another day. The minister expects a report from the review committee by 15 December 2009.

WORLDWATCH

The Australian: Universities should have power to sack chancellors: inquiry

All universities should be given clear power to sack their chancellors, a parliamentary inquiry into higher education governance has urged.

The Guardian: Privatise elite universities, says top VC

Rector of Imperial College, Sir Roy Anderson says top five universities should form US-style Ivy league, and charge much higher fees.

Inside Higher Ed: A tradeoff worth making

Milwaukee technical college unions voluntarily forgo annual pay raise; in exchange, administration commits to no layoffs for two years.

Liverpool Daily Post: Community college lecturers to strike during exams

Liverpool Community College were on strike yesterday as staff walked out in a row over pay cuts and longer, and more anti-social, working hours.

2009 UNESCO world conference on higher education

Demand for higher education is surging, providers are increasingly diverse, and students are more mobile than ever. But national funding falls short of needs and stark inequalities remain at a time when higher education has a crucial role to play in addressing key social and economic challenges.

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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

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