AUSTRALIA: Teaching load carried by 'servants'

Sessional lecturers are the domestic servants of the contemporary campus and carry as much as 80% of the undergraduate teaching load, according to a new study on the rise of the casualised class of academic, reports The Australian Higher Education. "In many ways the lifestyle of the traditional teaching (and) research academic is totally dependent on the contribution of sessional staff, in the way that Victorian middle class lifestyles were dependent on the domestic servant," according to the University of Wollongong's Professor Rob Castle, spokesman for the Recognition, Enhancement, Development report.

The report says up to 50% of university classes are taught by sessional staff and that official figures, stated as full-time equivalents, do not make clear the sector's dependence on casualised academics. In two of the 16 universities that took part in the RED project, commissioned by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, sessional staff led 80% of undergraduate classes.

The National Tertiary Education Union is seeking to place strict limits on the number and kind of casual appointments as a central part of its national wage campaign, concerned at an estimated 60% increase in casual appointments during the era of John Howard-led government. But Castle noted that the use of sessional staff did not automatically imply anything about the quality of teaching. Part-time teachers came in all shapes and sizes, from highly qualified experts through to PhDstudents starting careers.
Full report on The Australian Higher Education site