home cooked theory » NTEU

NTEU Future of Higher Education Conference

melgregg — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:29:20 +0000

Has anyone heard of this conference? I hadn’t – even as a union member and a Sydney employee – but am interested to know who would go based on the speakers listed. From the titles alone, it’s not clear that any of the academic speakers are active teaching staff in the present, let alone the future. Surely this should be addressed?

Active campuses

melgregg — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:38:01 +0000

It’s great to see two big campaigns hitting campuses at the moment. Today’s rally for international students is a great initiative that deserves serious attention. We hear a lot about the value of the international student market to the national economy, which is why Julia Gillard is overseas right now at her most eloquent. But we rarely talk about the value of having international students in our cities in and of themselves. Their presence brings to life not only the biggest but also some of the smallest cities in our country. They are the ones that often keep things running – far from their own family and friends – while we are enjoying a weekend or sleeping soundly in our beds.

I remember years ago working as an enrolment officer at Sydney Uni in the summer breaks between semesters, trying to explain to international students why they don’t qualify for travel concessions. It’s time to admit this rule is actually bullshit. Students are students. The sacrifices foreign students make to come to our classes should be rewarded with all this and more. Often they are the only point of contrast for local kids to appreciate the extent of their own privilege in a global, English-speaking, knowledge economy. International students teach us as much as we teach them. If you can’t make the rally, at least sign this petition and pass it on: http://www.petitiononline.com/nswcccc/

Meanwhile, the NTEU is mobilising members for strike action next week. For the details behind Sydney’s deliberations, there’s a YouTube video here that explains what’s at stake.

The workloads campaign is nationwide, however, and they really nail it with this one:

Genevieve Kelly, the NSW Rep shown in the video, will also be a plenary speaker on Day One of the State of the Industry conference. Register your attendance now! And get involved in this refreshing new wave of campus activism. It’s sure been a while coming.

Overload

melgregg — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:02:31 +0000

Think your job is bad? Read this. Overload reports on “the role of work-volume escalation and micro-management of academic work patterns in loss of morale and collegiality at UWS.”

Apart from highlighting the inadequacies of workload formulae across every level of academic life, it’s also one of the best reports I’ve read showing the impact of online technology on academic work.

The figures are stunning enough. Number of those surveyed who worked on weekends: 100%. UWS staff/student ratio: 1:23. And be sure to check out the pie chart comparing Level A appointments.

A sample of quotes:

- “It is now 5.15pm. I have been up since 4am marking assignments and I still haven’t finished”

- “I had to turn around 86 hours of marking in 10 days. 86 hours is what I actually get paid presuming I can mark 1,000 words every 20 minutes, which I can’t…”

- “In 2008 I have taught 7 different units none of which I have taught before”

- “This year I travelled to other campuses twice per week. I had a WLA for 7 return trips but had to undertake 13 return trips to see students and collect exams. $300 in tolls”

I came across this amazing research while trying to find out about the union’s recent campaigns – part of ongoing preparations for the State of the Industry conference happening in November. We may yet hear more about this, and hopefully one of the study’s research team will agree to speak on Day 1. But so far, in spite of numerous emails and phone calls, the NTEU President doesn’t seem available, or at least hasn’t told us one way or another over the past 3 months. I’m quite disappointed about this, since so much anecdotal evidence would suggest the NTEU’s profile could do with some boosting. I had thought the conference offered a timely opportunity for the industry’s peak representative body to prove its relevance to a significant part of its constituency.

Maybe I’ve just gone about asking the wrong way. If the report is any indication of the wider experience of contemporary worklife, our President is probably drowning in email and can’t imagine any way of handling the amount of communication requests she receives…