“Market For Graduates In Sellers’ Favour”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31662, 24 April 1968, Page 10

“Market For Graduates In Sellers’ Favour”

“One can only applaud your editorial plea that the Cabinet give some undertaking concerning a future increase in the university salary scales,” Mr John L, Cameron, of Stourbridge Street, Spreydorf, says in a letter to the editor of “The Press.” “However, I do not believe that Government inaction is entirely responsible for the loss of staff at the subprofessorial level. “Pending an increase, the universities themselves could do much to alleviate the situation by a more generous application of the existing scales. At present there are wide and inequitable differences in the salaries offered similarly qualified staff taking up initial appointments in different departments of the same university, and in the same department of different universities. “My own criticism on salaries (and I take up a Canadian post in September) is directed against the arrogance of an administration

which cannot or will not recognise the realities of the prevailing professional market.

“The training of suitably qualified teachers has on a global scale not kept pace with the enormous expansion in student numbers. As a result the emerging Ph.D. graduate no longer has to compete for a university post. Today, in contrast with the pre-war situation, it is very much a sellers’ market “Until the incumbent university administrations, as distinct from the Government, face this fact by a more generous application of the existing scales and by expediting the processing of initial appointments, losses of highly qualified staff of initiative by departure or default will continue to cripple university teaching. “Only those who lack the qualifications to be considered for an overseas post will remain, and our universities will be staffed by an inbred, self-perpetuating line of academic nonentities. The ultimate casualty is inevitably the student,” said Mr Cameron.