Postgraduates shy away from universities

Jill Rowbotham From: The Australian May 04, 2011 12:00AM

LACK of confidence among budding academics that a university career would be satisfying, revealed in the sector's biggest survey, reflected the perception universities were under significant financial pressure, according to research leader Les Field.

Professor Field, chairman of the Group of Eight and Universities Australia committees of deputy vice-chancellors (research), said: "A young researcher with the option of entering the university workforce doesn't have the confidence that the workload and working environment will offer the satisfaction in the future that it has in the past."

However, he was heartened the findings of the National Research Student Survey showed "we do actually have the capacity to address the projected crisis in academic staffing".

The study, reported exclusively in the HES last week, showed that contrary to popular belief, more than half of students pursuing higher degrees by research wanted jobs as academics.

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One of the report's authors, the Australian Council for Educational Research's Daniel Edwards, said the problem was the lack of a clear career path.

"Students and early career researchers need to be able to see a career path in Australian higher education: it's a fundamental issue that will help build an academic workforce," he said.

Almost 30 per cent of higher degree by research students surveyed for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations report regarded their ambition to be an academic as unrealistic and 40 per cent expected to have such a career overseas, rather than in Australia, in the medium to long term.

Disincentives to pursue an academic calling in Australia also included that salaries were not competitive with other sectors.

The report showed while almost three-quarters of the students expected university teaching to be part of their career, only 14 per cent reported receiving any training in their research degree.

"For those of us who can remember back far enough, there was much better exposure for HDR students to teaching experience in times gone by," Professor

Field said.

"This has become increasingly more difficult as work practices have become less flexible and there has been less opportunity to take on students in more serious teaching roles."

Council of Postgraduate Associations president John Nowakowski said casualisation had "muddied the visibility of the availability of jobs" for students and that it, together with the expectation that teaching experience would be required of them, had driven "more students to partake in tutoring and lecturing".

"But [this is] not matched by training, leaving an unpreparedness with graduates," Mr Nowakowski said.

Dr Edwards agreed casualisation was a stumbling block and said it was "hard to convince universities that they need a bigger core permanent workforce".

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