AUS Tertiary Update
University talks
founder
The likelihood of university unions and employers
collaborating on approaches to deal with funding and salary
woes in the university sector seems remote after employers
stipulated that such an approach could proceed only if
unions dropped claims for national collective employment
agreements.
University employers have walked away from a
proposal for an independently researched ‘white paper’ on
university funding and salaries, to form the basis of a
joint employer/union approach to government, after saying
that such a project was contingent on enterprise (site)
bargaining. They said that the ‘white paper would not
proceed’ if the unions’ claim for national agreements
remained.
The unions had earlier initiated bargaining for
two national collective employment agreements across the
sector with salary increases of 10% for next year, based on
studies of local and international
relativities.
Negotiations, which resumed in Hamilton
this week, explored the possibility of the interim
short-term rollover of current enterprise agreements to
allow for the ‘white paper’ to be developed, however they
have been adjourned after the unions rejected the employers’
terms for the rollover, which included salary offers of
between less than 2.0% and 2.8%.
Union advocate Jeff
Rowe said that meetings of union members last week had shown
continued strong support for national bargaining, and
impatience with the employers’ refusal to make realistic
salary offers and to accept national bargaining. Union
members had authorised the bargaining team to explore the
possibility of interim site settlements to allow the ‘white
paper’ proposal to be developed, but the present salary
offers were unacceptably low and showed no sign of any
commitment by the employers to resolving long-term salary
woes in the sector.
Mr. Rowe said there was no logical
reason that the development of a ‘white paper’ was reliant
on enterprise bargaining “and, in fact, the employers have
acknowledged that it is only because we are bargaining
nationally that the suggestion has even been explored”. He
said that the unions remained open to working on a
collaborative basis on this matter. “We see national
bargaining as assisting, not impeding, this process,” he
said. “What is apparent, however, is that the employers are
using this as a lever to try to delay national
bargaining”.
Mr. Rowe said that the salary increases
which had been on offer were lower than average wage and
salary settlements across New Zealand and did nothing
towards resolving long-accepted funding and salary problems
within New Zealand universities.
Negotiations are
scheduled to resume in Wellington on 11 February
2004.
Also in Tertiary Update this week
1. Restrictions
on tertiary growth
2. Loan repayments threshold to
rise
3. One-off payment for Victoria staff
4. 100 new
chairs created in bid to lift RAE scores
5. Higher
education strike ballot in UK
6. Fixed-term drift halted
7. Scottish universities urged to pool academic
resources
8. University launches own beer
Restrictions
on tertiary growth
Tertiary institutions may grow by no
more than 15% or 1,000 equivalent full time students (EFTS)
per year, whichever is the greater, under new rules
announced this week to manage growth in tertiary student
numbers from 2004. In exceptional circumstances the Tertiary
Education Commission (TEC) may approve growth exceeding
these rates. The initial calculation will be based on 2002
enrolments and the growth limit applies only to domestic
EFTS-funded places.
Announcing the plans, Associate
Minister of Education (Tertiary) Steve Maharey said that the
rules provide some flexibility, while giving the government
the ability to plan for the costs of growth in student
numbers.
Mr Maharey said that most tertiary institutions
are increasing their education provision at annual rates
well below the 15% ceiling. “The TEC will manage this
process and will focus on balancing public expenditure,
tertiary student growth and tertiary education objectives,”
he said. “Safeguarding the quality of education outcomes
during this process remains a top priority”.
"There has
been concerns expressed that high rates of growth in some
areas may risk compromising quality and ultimately
disadvantage the students. The government also wants to
avoid unexpected surges in supply and demand that impact on
the tertiary education budget”.
Mr. Maharey said that
those education providers which may be allowed to exceed the
15% growth limit in equivalent full-time students (EFTS), to
start in 2004, would already have had firm plans and
additional capacity in place at the time of the June
announcement about growth limits. “I would hope that
providers are only expanding where they are confident that
the growth is in high-quality courses, well-aligned to the
Tertiary Education Strategy. If the sector is not
re-examining its growth plans with this in mind, then I will
need to ask the Commission to undertake further measures to
restrict growth,” Mr. Maharey said.
Loan repayments
threshold to rise
Income thresholds for student loan
repayments and interest write-offs will rise from 1 April
next year, from $15,964 to $16,172. The maximum income
level for a full interest write-off for part-time or
part-year students will rise from $25,909 to $26,140. The
student loan repayment threshold is aligned with the
domestic purposes benefit paid to people with two or more
children.
Announcing the changes, Associate Education
(Tertiary) Minister Steve Maharey and Associate Revenue
Minister David Cunliffe said that borrowers whose income is
below the repayment threshold will not be obliged to make
repayments on their loans and a large portion of their
interest will be written off.
“Full-time, full-year
students will continue to receive a full interest write-off
while they are studying, regardless of their income,” they
said.
Lincoln University student President Andrew Kirton
said the changes would do “next to nothing” and were like a
bad Christmas joke. Increasing the threshold by a “meagre”
$4.00 per week was “insulting, especially when the income
threshold for the student allowance has not increased since
1992,” he said.
One-off payment for Victoria
staff
Almost $1.3 million will be paid to Victoria
University staff in a one-off payment in what has been
described as a reward for their hard work and achievements
over the past year. Vice-Chancellor Professor Stuart
McCutcheon said the payments, which represent 1.75 percent
of an employee's base salary for the past 11 months, will be
made before the end of the University year.
“Record
enrolments, the introduction of the Performance-Based
Research Fund, the development of significant new
partnerships and the transition to a multi-campus University
have made for a challenging year,” said Professor
McCutcheon. “Victoria was able meet these challenges, and
succeed, because of the dedication and hard work of its
staff and I'm particularly pleased the University's good
fortunes can be shared with them”.
Professor McCutcheon
said more than 18,500 students enrolled with Victoria in
2003, about 2000 more than in the year before and that,
combined with careful financial management, meant it would
achieve a surplus of about $8 million.
AUS spokesperson
Robyn May said that the payment would have far more value
for staff had it had been included as part of Victoria
University’s salary offer during national bargaining.
“Increasing base rates of pay is what counts and the 2%
currently on offer will do little to remedy the appalling
state of university salaries,” she said.
Robyn May said
staff reacted angrily to the University’s proposal to
introduce performance pay linked to PBRF scores, and felt
the bonus would do little to counteract that
anger.
Worldwatch
100 new chairs created in bid to lift
RAE scores
More than 100 new chairs are being created by
UK universities in a multimillion-pound restructuring drive
aimed at securing them top marks in the next research
assessment exercise (RAE).
Competition for top
researchers to form cores of new groups is intensifying more
than three years ahead of the next RAE, with chairs being
created at Royal Holloway, Birmingham and Manchester. These
follow similar initiatives at Nottingham (20 new chairs),
Sheffield (12), East Anglia (16) and Aberdeen.
The drive
is being matched by efforts to persuade key staff to remain
in post, in some cases by giving them promotion to ensure
that they are not lured away.
In a move unprecedented in
recent years, Queen Mary, University of London, is
advertising up to 48 professorial positions in The Times
Higher Education Supplement this week.
Adrian Smith,
principal of the college, confirmed that the initiative was
an explicit attempt to boost department assessments to at
least a 5 rating in the next RAE, expected in 2007.
"Anything less than 4 will not be funded and will cost a
university millions of pounds, as happened in the last RAE,"
he said.
"This is a competitive situation, and we must
invest in the highest quality researchers - hence our
decision to invest in new chairs”.
Queen Mary's
priorities were drawn up after an internal mock RAE. This
produced casualties, picking out 3a-rated chemistry as one
department unlikely to make the grade without a £4 million
investment.
As a result, the academic board decided last
week to stop recruiting chemistry undergraduates. Staff will
be moved elsewhere in the college.
Universities UK
warned, however, that the rush to create new professorial
posts could cause staff recruitment problems at many
institutions. In a recent report, the organisation said that
removing funding from grade 4-rated departments would put at
risk "innovative research of disciplinary, economic and
social benefit.”
Higher education strike ballot in
UK
The Association of University Teachers (AUT) in the UK
will ballot its 47,000 members on strike action after the
higher education employers’ body, UCEA, called off
negotiations in London this week. The AUT will be
recommending that members vote for industrial action in the
ballots which will be held between 13 January and 12
February next year.
Employment agreement negotiations
broke down earlier in the year after the unions rejected a
pay offer of under 6.5% over the next two years and new
salary structures which would have led to the abandonment of
national wage bargaining and substantial pay losses over the
sector.
The AUT says that the employers had agreed to
resume negotiations this week on key elements of the pay and
salary structure package, but abruptly withdrew the offer
without explanation. AUT deputy general secretary Malcolm
Keight said “it now seems clear that they (the employers)
would prefer a damaging dispute than to seek a negotiated
settlement”.
“The employers’ pay and modernisation
proposals are truly insulting. During the past 20 years,
higher education pay has fallen substantially in comparison
to all other sectors, and yet we are faced with a proposed
system that would lead to under-regulated localised
wage-bargaining; widespread downgrading and hefty losses in
salary for many hard-working employees,” said Mr
Keight.
Fixed-term drift halted
A dramatic increase in
tenured positions shows that Australian universities have
reversed the drift to fixed-term employment during the past
five years. Data gathered by the federal Department of
Education, Science and Training shows that tenured staff
numbers increased 30 per cent between 1998 and 2003 to
53,285. This represents 70.7 per cent of all full-time
employees. The trend was most marked among women with the
number of tenured women staff increasing by 45 per cent in
the five-year period. During the same period fixed-term
employment fell from 35.5 per cent to 24.7 per cent.
The turnaround coincides with a landmark ruling in the
Australian Industrial Relations Commission in 1998 which
limited the circumstances under which fixed-term employment
can be offered. The commission ruled that fixed-term
employment should be limited to four main circumstances: to
replace someone on leave; to fill a temporary research
position tied to an external grant; as a pre-retirement
contract; and for postgraduate students to obtain employment
for the duration of their studies.
Within 12 months of
the IRC ruling there had been an 8 per cent increase in
tenured employment. Before 1998 tenured numbers had steadily
declined from 46,000 in 1994 to fewer than 41,000 in
1998.
Scottish universities urged to pool academic
resources
Universities in Scotland are being encouraged
by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council to pool
resources in physics, economics, life sciences and creative
industries to create greater "critical mass" in the
competition for research funding. Roger McClure, the
council's chief executive, said a combined Scottish physics
"institute" looked set to be the first fruit of the policy,
designed to encourage outside academics and funding bodies
to "see the Scottish research landscape as a whole" rather
than a disparate set of smaller departments and
institutions.
University launches own beer
Birmingham
University this week launched its own ale - Old Joe's Winter
Warmer. The beer is named after one of the university's
leading landmarks, the 100m high Chamberlain clock tower,
known as 'Old Joe' in memory of founder Joseph
Chamberlain.
Tertiary Update is compiled weekly on
Thursdays by the Association of University Staff
PO Box
11 767 Wellington, New Zealand.
Phone (+64 4) 915 6690,
Fax (+64 4) 915 6699
Back issues are archived on the AUS
website: http://www.aus.ac.nz.
Direct enquiries to Marty
Braithwaite, AUS Communications Officer, email:
marty.braithwaite@aus.ac.nz