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		Qualifications of Australian Academics Sources and Levels 1978–1996
		97/11 Don Anderson Robert Arthur The Australian National University Terry Stokes Monash University
		Evaluations and Investigations Program Higher Education Division Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs

©Commonwealth of Australia 1997

ISBN 0 642 23677 1

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the Australian Government Publishing Service. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the manager, Commonwealth Information Services, Australian Government Publishing Service, GPO Box 84, Canberra ACT 2601.

This report is funded under the Evaluations and Investigations Program of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.

Contents

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Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Executive Summary

1. Introduction

2. Objectives and Methods of the Study

3. Overall Trends in Profiles 1978–1996

4. Differences Between Fields of Study

5. Differences between Academic Ranks

6. Men and Women

7. Institutional Profiles

8. Australia Compared

9. Some Issues Arising from the Analysis

Appendix 1: Project Brief

Appendix 2: Code Book

Appendix 3: United Kingdom Sample

References

Abbreviations

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Acknowledgments

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It will be readily apparent to the reader that a project such as this one is very labour intensive. We benefited from the highly skilled assistance of Phil Telford, Matthew Doulgeris and Judith Pabian of the Planning Services Office at The Australian National University. Phil generated all of the tables and figures, made invaluable suggestions for improving the presentation of a vast amount of information and prepared a computer based presentation of the findings. Matthew wrote the computer programs that read the nominal lists and turned them into quantifiable form. He was also responsible for making compatible the 1992 and 1996 datasets and designing a strategy for matching individuals. Judith managed the project in its early stages and liaised with the Association of Commonwealth Universities in London.

Sonya Welykyj, who had worked on The 1992 Study, managed data operations, wrote the code book, ensured that all codes and coding was reliable and valid, hunted up alternative data sources, found references, and made innumerable helpful suggestions. Pam Starrs performed miracles formatting our raw text.

Social Science Data Archives (SSDA) at The Australian National University assisted us with ‘cleaning’ the 1992 data set and making it compatible with 1996. All of the data files will be available to researchers from SSDA.

The Association of Commonwealth Universities publishes the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook. Sue Kirkland was our contact officer and we are most appreciative for her advice and work in delivering to us electronically exactly those fields needed for the study.

Phil Hughes (UNESCO Visiting Fellow at The Australian National University) and Michael Shattock (Registrar at Warwick University) helped us to understand the United Kingdom system.

Our Steering Committee, Tom Karmel of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA) and Gordon Stanley (Chair, Higher Education Council) steered with a light touch. We are grateful for their many helpful suggestions.

Executive Summary

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This report analyses the sources and levels of Australian academics’ qualifications—whether they are from overseas or not and, if from Australia, whether from their present university or elsewhere. Comparisons are made between fields and between staff who were in either the Colleges of Advanced Education or university sector before the creation of the national Unified National System in 1987. Comparisons are also made with the United Kingdom, identifying staff who were in the polytechnic or university sector before that binary line was erased.

The report extends and updates a 1992 study—Sources of Australian Academics’ Qualifications. In 1992 47.2 per cent of all academic staff possessed a doctorate; in 1996 the figure had risen to 51.8 per cent. The greater increase occurred among staff from former Colleges of Advanced Education, 32.3 per cent of whom now have doctorates. Among staff of the pre-1987 universities 70.2 per cent have doctorates.

The proportion of doctorates varies a great deal with field, being highest in science (82 per cent) and engineering (68 per cent). It is well below 50 per cent in a number of professional faculties. Doctorates also vary with academic rank, from over 80 per cent among the professoriate and readers down to 34 per cent among lecturers and 23 per cent among assistant lecturers.

Over 70 per cent of Australian academics obtained their first qualification from Australian institutions—72 per cent in 1992 and 71 per cent in 1996. The ‘college’ sector at around 76 per cent accounts for a higher proportion of Australian qualifications than the ‘university’ sector at around 66 per cent.

Not unexpectedly there are fewer higher than first qualifications that are Australian. The proportions haven’t changed much—68 per cent in 1992 and 69 per cent in 1996; the ‘college’ sector at 75 per cent in 1996 being about 12 points ahead of the ‘university’ sector in this respect.

The United Kingdom remains the chief source of qualifications—first or highest—that are not from Australia. The gap between the United Kingdom and the United States is closing however, as the former proportion declines and latter proportion increases—in 1996 the proportions of highest qualifications from these countries were 13.7 per cent and 11.8 per cent respectively.

Despite the enormous changes in universities and in Australian society in the years since 1978, a constant fraction of almost 30 per cent of Australian academics in higher education have been what we have termed either migrants (first degree from an overseas university) or foreign recruits (first and highest degrees from overseas). The proportion of such staff who are in pre-1987 universities has been around one third. In the humanities the proportion in 1996 was 40 per cent, and over 35 per cent in social sciences, mathematics and engineering. Among the professoriate it is 37 per cent.

Women comprised 29 per cent of academic staff of lecturer grade and above in 1996. Thirty-six per cent of women and 60 per cent of men have doctorates. The proportion of women with Master degrees is greater than the proportion of men, but even so the proportion of men with higher degrees remains greater than for women. These differences are found in all fields except Visual/Performing Arts where 20 per cent of both sexes have doctorates.

Women, with or without doctorates, tend to be clustered in the lower half of the academic hierarchy. In the absence of information about age or year in which degrees were gained it is not possible to discover the extent to which recency of qualifying accounts for this distribution.

At professorial level the proportion of both men and women with doctorates is 85 per cent. At reader and every other level the proportion of women with doctorates is less than the proportion of men.

The older established universities are much more inclined than others to recruit their own graduates as staff, the rate being one third (for the highest qualification) in the ‘Group of Eight’ institutions. Overall, 22 per cent of academics obtained their highest qualification from the institution which employed them in 1996.

Fourteen per cent of academic staff members are working in the universities from which they gained both their first and highest qualification. At four of the older universities—Melbourne, Adelaide, Queensland and Sydney—one quarter or more of the staff are in this category. ‘Group of Eight’ universities recruit their staff from overseas much more than other institutions.

British universities are, on average, about as inbred as Australian but if the sample distortion due to Cambridge (66 per cent have their highest qualification from Cambridge) is removed the extent of recruitment of their own higher degree graduates is substantially lower—both overall and among the universities of the former binary era. The level of foreign recruitment is far lower in Britain than it is in Australia.

Of the many issues which emerge from the data four are discussed in Chapter 9—whether all academics should be expected to have a PhD, mobility and the extent of recruitment of own graduates by universities, the extent of foreign recruitment and the position of women in the academic hierarchy. We trust that the points we make will lead to constructive discussion; and that other authors may be stimulated to mine the dense but rich lode of statistical ore from which we have extracted only a tiny fraction of concentrate.

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