Casualization within universities

Within the past year or two there has been a lot of casualization in universities where students have been paid less than the minimum wage. Katherine explains.

Images courtesy of nteu.org.au

The issue of casualization has risen in the last few months with Melbourne University having the highest percentage of casualization. Here students are being grossly underpaid and with the semester holidays now in swing there isn't a lot of work for students.

Many of the casuals are PhD students who love their jobs but just want more money for the hours they put in marking work, preparing the lectures/tutes, delivering it etc. Some casuals are also subject to harassment and the like.

Also casuals don't know what lies ahead. Many of them live off their meagre savings. Many of them are paid around $16 per hour.

Lena, a disabled student is studying her bachelors at RMIT. Here she felt the effects of casualization.She is an International student who paid quite a lot of money to RMIT. Her education suffered as a result as not many casual staff know how to deal with disabled students. Also the full time staff didn't have time to see her. So in the end she failed many subjects and dropped out of uni at the end.

Vincent has a learning disability. He is studying his bachelors in Melbourne Uni and he too feels the effect of Casualization.  Whilst he passed many of his subject he felt that the quality of teaching could have been a lot better.

Hopefully the management of these universities does something about this and funds the universities properly so that they can pay for more full time staff and less casual workers. International students bring about $3 million to Australia, hopefully that money will be spent properly by the Australian government on more funding for universities not schools.