Career advancement policies ‘used for wage theft’

Australian academics required to ‘act up’ for years before being paid for it, analysis finds

十一月 4, 2024
 A performer balances a giant ladder on his chin to illustrate Career advancement policies ‘used for wage theft’
Source: WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images

Universities use the lure of career advancement as a way of systematically underpaying their tenured staff, according to Australian researchers.

An analysis of publicly available promotion policies at the country’s universities has found that most require applicants to already be working above their pay grades.

Nineteen of the 34 institutions in the study had policies stating that aspirants must have been performing at the level of the position sought “for every component of the role” – often for years.

Another 11 universities required the candidates’ output in at least one aspect of the job to meet the standards of the higher-paid position.

Just four institutions merely required applicants to “demonstrate their capacity or potential” to work at the targeted level. And at one of the four, this policy was contradicted by an “academic promotion rule” requiring current performance at the next level up.

“What the university sector has achieved in promotion requirements is both devious and masterful,” the researchers write in the journal Higher Education Research and Development. “[The] sector has legitimised a method to make people work…at a more senior level for an extended period without adequate pay.

“[This] has undoubtedly…resulted in millions of dollars in savings. At the same time, these tactics have allowed the sector to stall the promotion aspirations of thousands of academics.”


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The authors – the University of Manchester’s Troy Heffernan and Charles Sturt University’s Kathleen Smithers – describe the practice as an underacknowledged form of the “wage theft” occurring at “pandemic levels” in Australian universities.

“[It is] a more explicit form of wage theft – one written into publicly accessible policy documents,” they write.

They told Times Higher Education that in other educational settings such as schools, staff on secondment were typically paid at higher rates. These “acting” stints were then accepted as evidence of people’s suitability for permanent promotion.

“If you are doing these tasks, you should be getting paid for it,” the pair said. “If you are at the top of lecturer level and excelling at [that] level, [you should not need] to undertake more senior roles to prove your capability.

“We would encourage universities to foster opportunities for professional development for those looking to be promoted, but also to utilise acting positions and secondments to enable staff to be paid while proving their capacity.”

The authors said tasks previously deemed “the responsibility of the professoriate” were increasingly being handed to junior academics. And while promotional policies were not necessarily applied in practice, this could either favour or disadvantage applicants.

“The policies enable a large level of subjectivity in the decision-making,” they said. “To one committee, ‘sustained performance’ or ‘demonstrated capacity’ may be evidenced in one way. To a committee with different membership, it could look very different.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com

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Reader's comments (2)

Exactly the same thing is happening in the UK. At my Russell Group University, people have to work at a higher level for 6, 7, 8 years, all the while being led to believe that if they deliver at that level across multiple areas of work, they'll be promoted. Of course they never get promotion, they just get burnt out and swept under the carpet.
The bait and switch approach is now endemic in British universities, but academics are getting smarter. They are refusing to take on multiple roles that require one to work at a higher level than their existing pay grade. Instead, they apply to another university that will accept them at that higher grade but without the 6 years + of burnout, and lack of a social life behind them.