Is a Corporate Management Culture Alienating Australian Academics? (October 2, 2009) 

According to an article by Andrew Trounson published in today's Australian, a study released by the University of Melbourne's LH Martin Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Management finds there is widespread dissatisfaction with academic life in Australia engendered by corporate management cultures at universities.

What is worrisome is that some 5000 senior academics are due for retirement in the next decade, and the LH Martin study suggests that the dissatisfaction with Australian academic life foreshadows difficulty in replacing them let alone increasing staff numbers which will be necessary to cope with the expected increased demand through raising the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds with bachelor or higher degrees from 32% to 40% by 2025.

Professor Lynn Meek, director of the LH Martin Institute told Mr Trounson: "With something like half the academic profession retiring at senior level in the next 10 years and given the increasing numbers of academics that will be needed to achieve the government's targets, it presents a very grave problem for the sector." And he added that the problem was compounded by academics feeling alienated by the corporatised cultures at universities.

While he agreed that strong management is needed at universities that have grown into billion-dollar businesses, he told Mr Trounson that the corporate culture had gone too far. "Australia has gone furthest down the road towards managerialism. Academics feel they aren't part of the corporate culture and strategic planning."

Of course the tendency for university administrations to foster corporate-managerialism at the expense of a collegiate academic society suits both government and the private sector in that it makes the university much easier to deal with. The trouble is that has a increasingly deleterious effect on the institution being a centre of scholarship and research.