Australian Universities Face Shortage of Academics as Many Prepare to Retire

PSLast sentence should read:For young academics in Australia – and enterprising academics elsewhere willing to relocate – I hope the data behind are the piece are robust.

I am a sometime, occasional, aspirational, late-blooming, frustrated, and ambivalent academic, currently teaching part time in universities in Western Australia, and in my second year as an online PhD student at a distinguished private university in California.My heart bleeds for Australian universities faced with an imminent shortage of academics. Somehow, however, I imagine the administrators will find ways of engaging even more non-tenured and adjunct teaching staff, including post-graduate students desperate for experience and income, to meet institutional financial targets.As long as Australian society is more committed to large business and to sport than to scholarship (in the humanities and sciences), as long as disciplinary isolation stands in the way of embracing complexity and holistic, transdisciplinary approaches to inquiry, there will be no shortage of academics. There will, however, be a continuing decay of intellectual freedom, public intellectuals, and scholarship in the service of personal and social transformation, rather than serving the perpetuation of privilege and the social order.Although I am by no means an authority, it seems to me that while working conditions for some academics in Canada and the US may be better than in Australia, this is not always the case, and may not even generally be the case. I believe our societies have more in common to lament about ‘higher’ education, than we have differences. The way we are heading, ‘post-secondary training” is becoming a better term than ‘higher education’.

I get really sick and tired of reading articles like this. The statistics are wrong – dead wrong. They completely ignore the fact that a typical academic position attracts about 60 applications – most of whom would be perfectly capable of doing the job. They really should be banned under false advertising regulations. The career structures for mathematicians, scientists and engineers are lousy, particularly in Australia. That is why there are recruitment problems. Most students from comfortable middle-class backgrounds will very quickly and often abusively tell you why they are not interested in maths, science or engineering careers. Lousy pay, no job security and hence inability to get housing finance and low social status.I have reached 55 years old, published over 50 papers in international journals and have had 12 years post-doctoral experience in Scotland, USA (twice), Canada and Australia and I have never had a secure job. My immigration application to Canada was rejected on the grounds that my PhD in plant science was “not of value to the Canadian economy” which just about says it all about the status of scientists. I have only had post-docs (more slavery) and miserable contract academic positions that have led nowhere. Based on my own experience I could not with a clear conscience recommend a science career to anyone.I am a first-generation graduate. I had no-one to warn me how bad career prospects were in the sciences. I believed the propaganda. It is true that universities need PhD and Masters students to do the benchwork in the labs but nobody gives a stuff for what happens to you afterwards. You are simply replaced by more slave labour. I feel very sorry for people from REMs (racial/ethnic minorities) who are encouraged to go into maths, science and engineering. They will generally be first-generation graduates. They will believe the recruitment con and have no parental or sibling advice to help them see the real career prospects in such fields. Trying to tell them the bitter truth is very dangerous as it can so easily be misunderstood. To add insult to injury there is still a great tradition in Australian universities of never appointing an Australian to academic positions if they can possibly avoid it. “Detracts from the international status of the university”. What rubbish.If the USA like Australia really needs to recruit more mathematicians, scientists and engineers from their own populations they should provide more attractive career paths. That is not happening and will not happen.