Automated?systems are ¡°a complete and utter nightmare¡± for university staff, exacerbating rather than easing administrative burdens by trapping academics in a logjam of service requests, an Australian survey has found.

Lecturers and professors are also exasperated by a ¡°mushrooming¡± of ¡°box-ticking¡± online training courses that are ¡°devoid¡± of educational merit, University of Melbourne researchers in the journal Science and Public Policy.

Managing casual contracts via university-mandated processes is a ¡°false economy¡± that transforms tenured teachers and researchers into staff supervisors whose excessive workloads put them at constant risk of triggering ¡°wage theft¡± cases, it further highlights.?

Based on a survey of 350 academics at 37 institutions, the study unpacks the specific factors fuelling perceptions of overwhelming administrative overload at every level of seniority.?It found that internal rules and processes, rather than government-imposed compliance requirements, were the greatest source of ¡°ire¡±.

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¡°Our participants considered the [burden] associated with universities¡¯ institutional policies to be substantially higher than those associated with national policies,¡± the paper says.?

Lead author Peter Woelert said respondents may have been unaware of regulatory changes that had precipitated new institutional rules. But universities tend to ¡°go overboard just to prevent any risk that they associate with government settings¡±, he said. ¡°If the government says, ¡®we need this checked by 10 per cent¡¯, they¡­check [it] by 90 per cent.¡±

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The paper cites compliance training on slavery in supply chains ¨C compulsory for all staff at one institution, even though few have any involvement in ¡°purchasing activities¡±. Universities instinctively mandate that ¡°everyone needs to do this¡± when ¡°it may only be applicable to 30 per cent of staff¡±, Woelert said.

Online modules provoked particular fury among the respondents. ¡°Some consulting firm is making a fortune selling these terrible materials to unis,¡± a male professor observed. ¡°The constant increase of ¡®mandatory¡¯ modules to complete is exhausting,¡± said a female lecturer. ¡°I have no financial delegation, yet I have to complete finance modules. I only teach postgraduate students yet I have to complete child safety modules. It makes no sense!¡±

Woelert said that while he had anticipated criticism of online training courses, the fervour of resentment over universities¡¯ automated systems had taken him by surprise.

¡°I have never seen such bad systems in my life,¡± a female professor complained. ¡°They¡¯re non-intuitive. There¡¯s¡­no one in charge; no one to talk to. If someone was going out of their way to design a bad system, I don¡¯t think it would be as bad as this.¡±

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The paper speculates that the ¡°idiosyncrasies¡± of university life ¨C particularly the different practices from one discipline to another ¨C mean that generic attempts to centralise and automate processes inevitably backfire. But Woelert said there was no apparent effort to ¡°capture the costs¡± of forcing ¡°well-paid¡± professors to use a ¡°self-service ticketing system¡± for basic administrative requirements.

¡°They don¡¯t know how to use [it] properly so it takes them three times as long. If you had a software company¡­you wouldn¡¯t impose all these tasks on your software engineers. You want [them] working on software, not filling out compliance forms or trying to navigate a travel portal.¡±

Meanwhile, academics supervising sessional staff were obliged to shepherd casual contracts through multiple layers of approval. The contracts eventually returned with the allotted hours pared back. ¡°I¡¯m scared we have a wage-theft case coming our way,¡± a senior lecturer confided.

The paper is a companion piece to a March study of administrative overload among professional staff, using data from the same survey. Woelert said nobody was immune, with deputy vice-chancellors ¨C ¡°technically¡± employed to do strategic work ¨C spending all their time approving things, attending meetings and checking emails. ¡°People in leadership roles are also really heavily burdened.¡±

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com