Strikes, teaching bans and slashed subjects: how Australian unis are an education in uncertainty and cost-cutting

‘This week-long teaching ban, near the end of semester – which throws our final assessments and grades into uncertainty – is a serious disruption,’ writes Saria Ratnam. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The GuardianView image in fullscreen‘This week-long teaching ban, near the end of semester – which throws our final assessments and grades into uncertainty – is a serious disruption,’ writes Saria Ratnam. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The GuardianStrikes, teaching bans and slashed subjects: how Australian unis are an education in uncertainty and cost-cutting Saria RatnamThe relationship between universities and their students and staff has reached an untenable level of conflict

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There’s an air of uncertainty around my university campus. This week, many of our lecturers and tutors at the University of Melbourne are taking part in a national strike and week-long teaching ban; all but two of my classes have been cancelled. Posters announcing the industrial action are everywhere. Students are speculating about whether classes will resume by the end of semester or whether last Friday was, unexpectedly, our last day on campus for the year. We’re wondering whether our assessments will even be marked and what will happen to our marks and postgraduate plans as a result.

Quite frankly, this sense of instability isn’t new to my university experience and it’s not just my university. In recent years, Australian tertiary education has been plagued by sharp and uneven fee hikes under the job-ready graduates scheme, controversy surrounding the management of pro-Palestine protests, difficulty regulating the use of AI and more.

Read moreIt feels like, after years of dissatisfaction with universities’ handling of problems and the government’s treatment of the tertiary sector, staff have finally had enough. A week-long teaching ban, near the end of semester – which throws our final assessments and grades into uncertainty – is a serious disruption.

It feels like a watershed moment for Australian universities. The relationship between these establishments and their students and staff has reached an untenable level of conflict and it’s difficult to believe that things could go on like this for much longer.

Course fees continue to rise exorbitantly, while the quality of education decreases and university staff are exposed to uncertain casual contracts, low wages and a lack of rights protection.

I feel incredibly lucky to study my course at the university I’m attending; my tutors and lecturers are brilliant and dedicated, and the discussions I have in class with my fellow students are always thought-provoking.

But at the same time, I’m frustrated by the $2,100 price tag on each of my subjects, while my contact hours are reduced to 2.5 hours a week for each one. More subjects are cut from my degree each year; none of the subjects I had hoped to study in my third year are running any more. And our assignments are becoming increasingly simple, designed to be AI-proof rather than to test our intellect or thinking skills.

The treatment of the university’s staff is worsening the quality of our education even further. The Atlantic previously reported on the correlation between the increasing casualisation of tertiary staff and grade inflation; as more and more university staff globally are hired on precarious casual contracts, where their employment depends on satisfaction surveys that students complete at the end of each semester, they feel an increasing amount of pressure to design easy assignments and hand out good grades so that students rate their subjects highly, bettering their chances at future employment.

Although this is a global issue, the combination of issues plaguing the Australian university is unique and, in many ways, clearly attributable to our government and university executives.

While Australian universities are subjecting staff to unreasonable working conditions while cutting students’ class options and contact hours, this has been enabled and exacerbated by years of federal policy missteps.

Over the past decade or so, there’s been a lack of policy reform to protect staff from the casualisation of the tertiary workforce, alongside steep increases in student fees under the jobs-ready graduates scheme, leaving staff and students feeling abandoned.

This will only worsen if an elected Coalition would implement its proposed cut to the international student intake, leaving a significant gap in university revenue, likely exacerbating the subject and staff cuts and reduced quality of education that we’re already seeing.

Read moreAll of this is taking place against the backdrop of a kind of worldwide tertiary ontological crisis. With the rise of AI, a drastically changing job market and grade inflation, it’s hard to know what the future of university looks like, or whether a university qualification will hold much real-world value in the future.

More than ever, universities need to look at how they are treating their staff and students. It would be naive for our universities and government to continue assuming that students and staff will passively accept the ongoing deterioration of our studying and working conditions. If the Australian tertiary sector has any chance at surviving this era of instability, it needs to take a serious look at itself and make some drastic changes.

The first steps would be for the government to scrap the job-ready graduates scheme and overhaul the laws governing tertiary employment. Additionally, universities must reinstate the staff, subjects, contact hours and assessments that they have cut.

If our universities and governments are not careful, they will engineer the extinction of the tertiary system itself. When I left campus last week, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be returning before the end of the semester. I wonder if, one day, staff and students will walk out and not come back.