The Unhealthy Divide:

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The Unhealthy Divide Demarcation in the VET
Sector
Maree Conway ATEM President
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Who am I?
One hat President, Association for Tertiary
Education Management. Another hat Director,
Foresight, Planning Review at
Swinburne. Background BA in media studies
graduate study in educational management, and 20
years in tertiary education administration and
management. About to re-start a PhD around the
topic of the professionalisation of university
administration, a long standing interest which I
now write about in Campus Review (as President of
ATEM).
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This Presentation
Issues Changing Work in Tertiary Education
Institutions Professions Implications Discussion
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A Caveat
This presentation is based on research and
experience in the Higher Education sector,
because I have worked mainly in higher education
institutions. Is it an issue of interest to VET
administrators and managers? Raising lots of
questions rather than answers this is the
subject of continuing conversations nothing is
resolved yet!
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Terminology
Terminology is important, but hard to find terms
that everyone agrees on.
Tertiary education administration and
management. Administrators and managers. Professio
nal staff? Professionals? A profession? Academic
and teaching staff. Academic managers. Executive
managers.
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Issues

• Unhealthy Divide? Demarcation?
• The issues
• changing nature of work in tertiary education
• institutions
• changing nature of occupations generally
• implications for staff and institutions for the
  future.
• How should work be designed in the
  future?

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Drivers of Change
Examples of some key drivers of change in
education

• Social factors demographics, increasing demand
  for access to educational services, globalisation
  and globalisation of technology, communication,
  and movement of people (activism)
• Technological impact on learning organisational
  processes
• Economic globalisation of economics unequal
  distribution of wealth resilience to economic
  crises new economic players rise of
  non-government organisations
• Environmental increasing move towards
  sustainability in all aspects of society and
  organisational life
• Political decreasing government funding
  increasing links to national priorities
• Customer increasing demands (increasing fees)
  accountability flexibility (time, pace and
  place).

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Drivers of Change
Areas of uncertainty

• Interconnectedness from the local to the global.
• Competition from organisations of all sizes in
  the globally connected economic system.
• Financial and resource pressures brought on by
  increased numbers.
• The pervasive influence of existing and emerging
  technologies.
• Security, including national, physical, food and
  habitat.
• Increasing access to a diversifying range of
  values, cultures and worldviews.
• Asymmetry of equity, including wealth and access
  to wealth creating activities rich richer,
  poor poorer, digital divide etc.

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Changing Nature of Work
Work in tertiary education institutions has
changed. The roles of staff who undertake that
work has changed. More than half of the staff in
universities are not employed to deliver the
core business. Most staff are employed to provide
services, provide support, coordinate and manage
aspects, tasks and functions associated with the
delivery of core business.
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Changing Nature of Work

• These aspects, tasks and functions have increased
  in scope over time, so that a new occupational
  grouping of administrators and managers (among
  others) has emerged to deal with them
• ie, academics alone can no longer run
  institutions (as they once did).
• What is the status of this new occupational or
  professional? - grouping of administrators and
  managers?

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Who Belongs?
Who belongs to this new occupational grouping?

• At the macro level, those involved in running
  institutions.
• Administrators and managers (not from an
  academic background).
• Academic managers DVC, PVC, Deans, Heads of
  School/Department etc.
• New occupational groups emerging in other areas
  as well eg professional staff involved in
  curriculum design and delivery, but not teaching.

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Some Problems

• Symptoms of tension and hostility between the
  existing profession (in universities, the
  academics) and the new profession of
  administration and management, manifested in
• lack of professional respect, second class
  citizen status (non-academic benchmark)
• lack of parity of esteem with academic staff.
• research in sector is focused on academic work,
  how it is changing, how that profession is
  affected, what this means for institutions - but
  little, if any, similar work on administrative
  and management work.

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The Result?
A demarcation dispute an unhealthy divide.
Administrators should not be seen to make
academic decisions. Administrators do not
understand the fundamental nature of the academic
business. Administrators need time and guidance
to build this understanding. .and in meantime,
should be seen and not heard!
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Possible Causes?
Administrators and academics have different
values, and therefore will never be able to
understand each other. Administrators are the
vehicle for implementing corporate managerialist
approaches in universities. Work expanding but
traditional owners cannot do it all, but unhappy
to let it go. Academic role is changing now
dedicated academic managers. Grass-roots
academics having to deal with increasing
workloads as well as decreasing involvement in
academic decision making, as well as the
upstart administrators.

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Implications
How can we understand the totality of work in
institutions if the work of less than half of the
staff is understood?
Lots of individual goodwill, so the work gets
done. Institutions suffering in terms of process
and efficiency because of distrust/misunderstandin
g among staff groups. The tertiary education
institution of the future will need to operate
cohesively in all its aspects to survive.
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Implications
One way to understand the emergence of this new
occupational grouping, its work, and its impact
on existing occupations is by using a
professional framework.

• What is a profession?
• What differentiates a profession from an
  occupation?
• How do new professions emerge?
• What happens to existing professions?
• Does anyone care?

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A profession?
Is tertiary education administration and
management a profession? Or a specialisation?
How has the emergence of a new profession
affected the work of academics?

• Are these important questions?
• Which criteria do you use to define profession
  (and there are lots)?
• If it is not a profession, why do we have lots
  of professional associations?
• When and why did administrators and managers
  start calling themselves professionals?

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Changing Occupations
Trend is for new occupations to emerge in
response to changes to the content and control of
work (the work jurisdiction) and to challenge for
work traditionally held by other occupations or
professions.

• Driving forces of technology and growth of
  bureaucracies and large organisation emergence
  of professions based in organisations as new
  type (Abbott, 1988 Larson 1977).
• Occupations naturally undergo a process of
  professionalisation.
• Professions exist in a system (Abbott, 1988),
  so changes in the work of one necessarily affects
  all other professions, particular those which are
  neighbours.

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A Profession Emerges?
Mid-20th century most staff are academics a
few non-academics working under direction from
academics. 1970s external forces generate new
work in universities professional associations
start to emerge (indicating self-definition by
administrators of themselves and their
work). 1980s impact of change on academic work
starts to be investigated seriously growth of
academic managers. 1990s conversation about
administrative work in universities starts to
emerge, but little differentiation between
academic managers and administrators.
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A Profession Emerges?
Some work on comparing approaches to work and
values of academics and administrators, but using
academic benchmark. Issue emerges about the need
to differentiate between the governance and
management of universities when talking about
administrators and the administration. Increas
ing specialisation of administrative work, so
diversity of profession raises questions about
how such a heterogeneous group can be defined
under a single heading. 2003 more than 50 of
staff are not academics work is complex, and
cannot be controlled by one group.
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Professional Relationships
Where traditional works roles are challenged, a
settlement between the two groups needs to occur,
either in the workplace or legally(ie within the
courts). Possible outcomes

• subordination of one under the other (legal).
• final division of labour that splits the work
  jurisdiction into two independent parts.
• sharing of a jurisdiction.
• advisory control by one over aspects of the
  work.
• division of jurisdiction according to nature of
• client.

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But

• There has to be recognition at some level in
  society that a new profession has emerged before
  you start talking about settlement ie changes
  in the division of labour
• in the case of education, recognition in the
  workplace or industry by government, peak groups,
  institutions and the first profession, academics.

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Recognition?
Recognition involves

• clear definition of who administrators and
  managers are
• organising in a way that provides clear
  indication to the sector of their competence
  knowledge base and continuing professional
  education and training
• usually involves some minimum benchmark (eg a
  qualification or combination of qualification,
  experience and training).

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Recognition?
Professional status usually requires an esoteric
knowledge base

• that there is some element of knowledge and
  skills required to provide a professional service
  that is not readily understood by most people
• that this knowledge requires formal training and
  continuing updating and
• the focus is on the application of knowledge and
  skills to solve problems for clients.
• That is, knowledge and how it is used, not the
  legal status of the occupation, is the key
  defining element of a profession.

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Recognition?

• Recognition begins with self-definition by
  administrators themselves, eg
• recognition of value of their work, and need to
  profesionalise it
• form a professional association
• define particular professional education and
  training to set themselves apart from other
  occupational groupings.
• Then, a process to claim ownership of a
  particular part of the division of labour.

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So?
So what does this all mean? A lack of
recognition means
lack of effective collaboration between two major
groups responsible for running institutions inabi
lity of existing structures and systems to deal
with changes to totality of work inability of
government policy to deal with the issue lack of
work model that will let institutions organise
effectively for the future.
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The Future?
What now for the future? Changes to work are not
going to go away. New occupations will continue
to emerge to deal with changing work some of
these occupations will go on to claim
professional status. Need to pay attention to
the totality of work in institutions instead of
focusing only on one aspect (ie academic work).
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The Future?
Work models need to consider the future, not only
the past. The way in which work was conducted in
the past may not be enough to cope with work in
the uncertain future facing universities. A
re-thinking of the division of labour in
institutions is required to match internal
capacity with external environment.
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The Future?

• We need discussion and research about the
  implications of changing work for
• administrative work and the way it is conducted
  now and in the future
• the way academic work might be conducted in the
  future
• how the totality of work in institutions might
  be allocated the jurisdictional settlement so
  that the skills, knowledge and competencies of
  all staff are utilised to support those
  institutions.

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The Future?
Underpinning the idea about tertiary education
administration and management as a profession, is
the assumption that the work administrators and
mangers do is inherently valuable and necessary
for an institution, and that there is something
unique about the application of otherwise generic
knowledge and skills in tertiary education
institutions, so that a claim to a spot in the
division of labour in the sector is necessary to
gain recognition and ensure the knowledge and
skills of all staff are use to ensure the
survival and growth of institutions.
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Discussion

• Is this a real problem?
• Is there an unhealthy divide in the VET sector?
• what are its characteristics?
• what do organisations like VISTA and ATEM need
  to do if anything?
• If not, what is VET doing differently?
• Is the concept of profession valuable?
• What else?