Comparing academic workload models: how Australian universities resource teaching activities

The Australian higher education sector has undergone significant changes over the last two decades, and is set to be challenged by various pressures well into the future as debate on public funding and productivity continues. A recent report on the higher education workforce of the future identified agility of its workforce as the foremost attribute that a university must possess to be successful going forward. Furthermore, the report singled out more flexible academic workload models as a critical factor. The choice of model used at an institution has both significant and diverse impacts, including those on casualisation levels, financial viability, and productivity. In this paper, we report on our preliminary findings from a research project that aims to compare diverse academic workload models being used in a number of Australian universities. We show where models offer broad agreement throughout the sector, but also where there are significant differences. The observed variation offers a partial indication of the range of resourcing levels existing in Australian higher education today, and forms part of the discussion around workload models affecting the sector’s productivity