Cut-price teaching

Higher Education Trends in this week's THES draws attention to the growing casualisation of the acdemic profession. It is likely, as Lucy Hodges reports (page i), that official figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and gathered by the Association of University Teachers underestimate the true extent of casual working.

Casualisation is an inevitable response to financial uncertainty. Dwindling government grants and funding allocated on a per capita basis force institutions into doing what they can to retain some flexibility.

Before tenure was abolished in the old universities, those which had the strictest form - whereby staff could not be made redundant even in cases of financial necessity or departmental closure - were most likely to employ staff on a short-term basis. It was hoped, unrealistically as it has turned out, that ending this form of tenure in favour of terms of employment more like those covering the rest of the working population would increase universities' willingness to hire permanent staff.

Alas that was in the days of expansion. Now the exploitation of staff to bridge the funding gap has extended from holding down permanent salaries to getting by with casual workers employed on unfavourable terms.

Many of them are women. The academic life can be a roving one. Most senior posts go to men. They often have well-qualified wives who make fine part-time teachers or researchers but are not in a strong bargaining position.

Another, overlapping, group to suffer are researchers living from short contract to short contract. Their entry into a full-time academic career is unreasonably delayed and difficult, bringing insecurity early on and damaged pension prospects later (page viii).

The Concordat, drawn up by the research councils, Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals and others, and formally launched this week (page 2), may do something to address the problems. And it is indeed the right way forward. It is not realistic to hope that short-term contract and part-time work will go away. The need for flexibility is unlikely to abate. Financial uncertainty will continue. Demand for different courses and curricula will accelerate. As higher education becomes more adept at providing short courses for commercial customers, it will need more short-term (and often highly expert) people. Nor will there be a lack of people willing to work part-time as more graduate students with more debts seek to work their way through their higher degrees.

What is unacceptable is to rip off people working in this way. They need training, clear contracts and, where appropriate, access to pensions and employment rights. And they need to be properly paid and supported. It is vital these issues be addressed since part-timers and short-contract staff make an essential contribution to higher education.

First there is the benefit brought to first-degree students by postgraduate students and post-docs working alongside them, often as part-time teachers. In an article in Nature (January 19, 1989), John Ashworth drew attention to the correlation at Salford University of increasing numbers of research students with improving undergraduate degree results. The possibility that this might be cause and effect was not one those eager to find evidence of falling standards wanted to entertain either then or now.

Second, as Richard Robbins pointed out in a letter to THES (June 26, 1996), part-time teaching has traditionally supported artists, craftspeople and performers and brought students into contact with professional artists. Businesses have often been willing to contribute teaching time at less than economic costs in the interests of company goodwill, but with downsizing and the increase in self-employment it is no longer reasonable to expect this: self-employed people need to be paid for their time and core staff are overstretched.

Third is the advantage of being able to bring in unusual skills for which there is not full-time or permanent demand. This might be the case with specialist language teaching.

The problem then is not with the part-time and short-term mode of working in itself but with the terms and conditions on which people are employed. They must be seen and treated as a valued resource not a cut-price makeshift.