University Staffing Crisis Discussed In Committee

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31836, 14 November 1968, Page 26

University Staffing Crisis Discussed In Committee

(New Zealand Press Association) HAMILTON, November 13. The council of the University of Waikato today decided not to discuss in public the staffing crisis in New Zealand universities. After receiving two reports in open meeting, the council adjourned its discussion to the in-committee stage of its monthly meeting.

Before the council was an approach from the Association of University Teachers for support in the association’s submissions to the Government.

The president of the Waikato branch of the A.U.T. (Mr M. J. Selby) l forwarded a four-page report on the current staffing and salary position in New Zealand. “We realise that the council is aware of the situation in which the University of Waikato has recently lost staff to Australian universities," Mr Selby said in a covering letter. The present crisis threatened the economic future of New Zealand as much as the future of the universities, Mr Selby said.

Unless parity with Australian salaries was achieved by the review due in 1969, the situation could only change for the worse.

At present, many New Zealand universities could not fill vacant teaching positions, and the increased work which inevitably fell on other staff must mean a decline in standards. New Zealand universities were at present held in high regard internationally, but this would not be true in future if the present trends continued. The most obvious and most important cause of the present crisis was the failure of New Zealand to compete with salaries paid elsewhere, particularly in Australia, where New Zealand had to compete for staff, Mr Selby said. The council, before adjourning the discussion, agreed on a motion of thanks to Mr Selby.

It was not proposed to make any interim adjustment to university salaries before the general review next year, the Acting Minister of Education (Mr Adams-Schneider) told Parliament today, according to another Press Association message from Wellington.

Mr Adams-Schneider had been asked by Mrs M. M. McMillan (Lab., Dunedin North) whether the recentlyannounced increases were merely to compensate for devaluation, and would he announce more generous scales for lecturers before the next normal review?

Mr Adams-Schneider said that the recent adjustment was in line with increases in lower scales of the State services. Allowances meant that members received at least $lOO more a year.