Contract academic staff career development: An oxymoron?

Abstract

​As part of its Strategic Review, the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) is seeking to foster a broad discussion about the issues confronting the research workforce. This paper examines the increasing predominance of contract or ‘temporary’ staff amongst research academics in biomedical sciences. This transformation of the academic workforce has gone almost unnoticed amongst the wider community. However, New Zealand’s research performance is critical to developing the knowledge-based economy. As highlighted in major reviews overseas, the instability associated with an excessive dependence on contract staff for research has major implications for the future. We explore some of the factors behind this transformation, implications for research and academic performance, and some potential policy changes that have been proposed to mitigate its effects. This review particularly highlights an immediate policy issue, in that we found that there are no systematic data to either quantify the changes over time or the current extent of New Zealand’s dependence on contract staff for tertiary research and teaching.

Editorial: History never repeats...?

“…While the mind is a brilliant thing, it ultimately must prove to be an unreliable index -once its synapses are silent it remembers no more. The themes seen in Bennet et al (2005) and Massaro et al (2012) will be familiar to many, and were repeated in a number of Te Ara Paerangi -Future Pathways submissions, the cycle continues. In order to safeguard our history as we build a new future, we would be best served to store and index our collective wisdom where it is readily found and hard to forget.…”

“…Had I taken the initiative at the time and done some more digging perhaps I would have found the thematically linked 'Contract academic staff career development: An oxymoron? ' (Bennet et al, 2005) from 7 years prior -or perhaps I would not have. While a digital copy of this issue existed, somewhere, it was not necessarily easily accessible online.…”