academic workforce

Top of the pops: AARE’s Hottest Ten 2022

Thank you to all our contributors in 2022. We published over 100 blog posts this year from academics

We asked academics to be real about work. Here are our new findings

By Roxanna Pebdani

My children were two and three years old in March of 2020 when Sydney went into its first COVID-19  lockdown.  At the time, I was in an education-focussed leadership role but also still teaching and conducting research. I was supporting my colleagues as they pivoted to online learning at the same time as helping implement

At least six ways COVID has crushed higher education (now university managers make it worse)

By Fiona McGaughey, Richard Watermeyer and Kalpana Shankar

Even less work-life balance, anxiety around online skills, fears the pandemic will be used to crush academic autonomy

We Found Education Schools Across The Nation Are Victims Of Targeted Cuts But More Threats Are Looming

By Jo-Anne Reid

At every university around the country, academics in schools and faculties of Education have been hit hard.  Hundreds, maybe thousands, have lost their jobs. Many of them are people we know. Yet it is not easy to identify the particular staff who have ‘disappeared’ from classes, courses and schools of Education among the seventeen and

The importance of networks for career advancement in academia

By Troy Heffernan

From the first day I was employed in the university sector I got the impression I was working in a fairly corporatised and business-like environment. There were performance benchmarks, far more conversations about budgets than I expected, and it was clear that exceeding targets could result in a promotion. However, there was also something else.

Universities are exploiting their sessional academics. We need to do better for our precariously employed

By Troy Heffernan

As the 2020 academic year begins, this will be the first in my seven years of working in universities that I have a permanent position and am not relying on contracts or sessional work. I know how privileged I am to be in this position, but I also know first-hand what precarious employment feels like.

Our university workforce has become a fragmented, casualised ‘gig economy’. The problems we face

By Paul Richardson and Amanda Heffernan

The quality and integrity of higher education in Australia is dependent on the quality of the academics who staff our universities. The supply pipeline of the academic workforce needs careful planning if it is to continue to be effectively renewed by fully rounded academics who are engaged in research and can contribute to sustaining the

I was excited to be interviewed for a permanent lecturing job and then this happened

By George Variyan

As a doctoral candidate coming to the end of my journey, the ever present need to find a