Changes in Australian and New Zealand University History Staffing Profiles, 2016 to 2022

Abstract

This article considers developments in History staffing in Australian and New Zealand universities between 2016 and 2022. The COVID pandemic and the ongoing effects of the corporatised university have worn away at History student and staffing numbers, much exacerbated in Australia by the fee changes introduced by the Morrison government in 2020. There are positive developments, such as the near-disappearance of gender disadvantage for women and increasing levels of first nations representation, but these have occurred against a backdrop of overall decline. The gradual fall in staffing numbers over past decades has sharpened considerably recently, and is accompanied by declining student enrolments. History in Australian universities is in a particularly difficult situation.

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Emily Winter for her help in collating the data and preparing the tables and graphs that appear in this article.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Martin Crotty and Paul Sendziuk, ‘The Numbers Game: History Staffing in Australian and New Zealand Universities’, Australian Historical Studies 50, no. 3 (2019): 354–77; Paul Sendziuk and Martin Crotty, ‘“Fragmented, Parochial and Specialised”? The History Curriculum in Australian and New Zealand Universities’, History Australia 16, no. 2 (2019): 239–65. For the full report, see Martin Crotty and Paul Sendziuk, ‘The State of the Discipline: University History in Australia and New Zealand’, March 2018, Australian Historical Association, https://theaha.org.au/the-state-of-the-discipline/ (accessed 15 February 2024).

2 Crotty and Sendziuk, ‘The State of the Discipline’, 8.

3 Australian Academy for the Humanities, ‘Humanities Hit Hardest When Needed More Than Ever’, June 2020, https://humanities.org.au/power-of-the-humanities/humanities-hit-hardest-when-needed-more-than-ever (accessed 9 August 2023).

4 Nassim Khadem, ‘Government’s University Fee Changes Mean Humanities Students Will Pay the Entire Cost of Their Degrees’, ABC News, 20 June 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-20/study-arts-and-humanities-government-fees-tertiary-education/12374124 (accessed 9 August 2023).

5 Workplace Gender Equality Agency, ‘Higher Education Enrolments and Graduate Labour Market Statistics’, Australian Government, 28 April 2021, https://www.wgea.gov.au/resources/publications/higher-education-enrolments-and-graduate-labour-market-statistics (accessed 9 August 2023).

6 Ibid.

7 ‘Can the Humanities and Social Sciences Survive COVID?’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh-MSZRhj6I&ab_channel=TheFacultyofArtsandSocialSciences%2CTheUniversityofSydney (accessed 9 August 2023).

8 See, for example, Frank Bongiorno ‘Oh, the Humanities’, The Monthly, 22 June 2020, https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/frank-bongiorno/2020/22/2020/1592791777/oh-humanities (accessed 7 February 2024); Martin Crotty, ‘The Slow Death of Academic History? History in the Academy since Dawkins’, in The Australian History Industry, eds Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2022), 19–33.

9 For fuller discussions, see our 2019 report; Stuart Macintyre, André Brett and Gwilym Croucher, No End of a Lesson? Australia’s Unified National System of Higher Education (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2017); and Crotty.

10 See Stuart Macintyre, ‘“Funny You Should Ask That”: Higher Education as a Market’, Evatt Journal 2, no. 3 (April 2002), http://evatt.org.au/papers/funny-you-should-ask.html (accessed 15 February 2024); Jill Roe, ‘Faith, Hope and History in the Year 2000’, Australian Historical Association Bulletin 91 (December 2000): 38.

11 Macintyre et al., 114, 119.

12 Norman Etherington, ‘The Historical Profession in Our Universities: Trends and Prospects’, Australian Historical Association Bulletin 83 (1996): 30–1.

13 Dorothy Page and Barbara Brookes, ‘Women in the Historical Profession in New Zealand’, Australian Historical Association Bulletin 52 (October 1977): 22.

14 Gwilym Croucher, Three Decades of Change in Australia’s University Workforce (Melbourne: Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, 2023), 10–11, 17–18.

15 Etherington, 30–1; Page and Brookes, 22.

16 Martin Crotty, Paul Sendziuk and Emily Winter, ‘A Discipline in Crisis? University History Staffing in Australia and New Zealand, 2022’, October 2023, Australian Historical Association, https://theaha.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/AHA-Staffing-Report-2023_revised_final.pdf (accessed 24 May 2024).

17 The literature examining the factors listed in this paragraph is extensive. See, for example, Teresa Marchant and Michelle Wallace, ‘Sixteen Years of Change for Australian Female Academics: Progress or Segmentation?’, Australian Universities’ Review 55, no. 2 (2013): 60–71; Carmel Diezmann and Susan Jane Grieshaber, ‘The Australian Story: Catalysts and Inhibitors in the Achievement of New Women Professors’, in Proceedings of the International Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education 2010 (Melbourne: AARE, 2010), 1–17; Glenda Strachanet et al., Women, Careers and Universities: Where to from Here? (Brisbane: Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing, Griffith University, 2016).

18 Lyn Craig and Brendan Churchill, ‘Dual-Earner Parent Couples’ Work and Care during COVID-19’, Gender, Work & Organization 28, no. S1 (2021): 514–27; Kirsty Duncanson et al., ‘How COVID Is Widening the Academic Gender Divide’, The Conversation, 6 October 2020, https://theconversation.com/how-covid-is-widening-the-academic-gender-divide-146007 (accessed 23 June 2023); Belinda M. Brucki, Tanmay Bagade and Tazeen Majeed, ‘A Health Impact Assessment of Gender Inequities Associated with Psychological Distress during COVID19 in Australia’s Most Locked Down State – Victoria’, BMC Public Health 23, no. 1 (2023), doi:10.1186/s12889-022-14356-6.

19 Kristina M.W. Mitchell and Jonathan Martin, ‘Gender Bias in Student Evaluations’, PS: Political Science & Politics 51, no. 3 (2018): 648–52; Anne Boring, ‘Gender Biases in Student Evaluations of Teaching’, Journal of Public Economics 145 (2017): 27–41; Lillian MacNell, Adam Driscoll and Andrea N. Hunt, ‘What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching’, Innovative Higher Education 40, no. 4 (2015): 291–303.

20 ‘Indigenous Employment’, The University of Adelaide, https://www.adelaide.edu.au/indigenous/employment (accessed 4 June 2023).

21 ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Strategy’, The University of Adelaide, https://www.adelaide.edu.au/indigenous/employment/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-employment-strategy (accessed 4 June 2023).

22 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People’, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-people-census/latest-release (accessed 13 October 2023).

23 Stats NZ, Māori Population Estimates: At 30 June 2022, https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/maori-population-estimates-at-30-june-2022 (accessed 4 June 2023). It is worth noting that there are numerous Māori historical experts in Māori and Indigenous studies programs across New Zealand, as well as at wānanga (Māori tertiary institutes), who are not captured by our survey methodology.

24 Robyn May, ‘An Investigation of the Casualisation of Academic Work in Australia’ (PhD thesis, Griffith University, 2014).

25 See Archie Thomas, Hannah Forsyth and Andrew G. Bonnell, ‘“The Dice Are Loaded”: History, Solidarity and Precarity in Australian Universities’, History Australia 17, no. 1 (2020): 21–39; Megan Lee et al., ‘Occupational Stress in University Academics in Australia and New Zealand’, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 44, no. 1 (2022): 57–71; Damien Cahill, ‘Wage Theft and Casual Work Are Built into University Business Models’, The Conversation, 27 October 2020, https://theconversation.com/wage-theft-and-casual-work-are-built-into-university-business-models-147555 (accessed 24 June 2023); National Tertiary Education Union, NTEU Wage Theft Report, February 2023, https://www.nteu.au/News_Articles/National/Wage_Theft_Report.aspx.

26 Romain Fathi and Lyndon Megarrity, ‘You Matter: The Australian Historical Association’s Casualisation Survey’, November 2019, https://www.theaha.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Casualisation-Survey-PDF-for-release.pdf.

27 Thomas et al., 28; Graeme Turner and Kylie Brass, Mapping the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Australia (Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2014), 77.

28 Jess Harris, Kathleen Smithers and Nerida Spina, ‘More Than 70% of Academics at Some Universities Are Casuals. They’re Losing Work and Are Cut Out of JobKeeper’, The Conversation, 15 May 2020, https://theconversation.com/more-than-70-of-academics-at-some-universities-are-casuals-theyre-losing-work-and-are-cut-out-of-jobkeeper-137778 (accessed 24 June 2023).

29 Frank Larkins, ‘Australian University Staff Job Losses Exceed Pandemic Financial Outcomes’, 9 May 2022, The University of Melbourne, https://melbourne-cshe.unimelb.edu.au/publications/fellow-voices/australian-university-staff-job-losses-exceed-pandemic-financial-outcomes (accessed 24 June 2023).

30 Romain Fathi and Megarrity.

31 Ibid.

32 Etherington, ‘The Historical Profession in Our Universities’, 30.

33 Australian National University and Deloitte, University Course Costs and Funding, 2020, cited in ABC News, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-20/study-arts-and-humanities-government-fees-tertiary-education/12374124 (accessed 9 August 9, 2023).

34 Australian Universities Accord Review Panel, Australian Universities Accord Final Report (Canberra: Australian Government, 2023).