National post-secondary education faculty unions and associations from more than 30 nations met in Melbourne, Australia for the 5th Education International Conference on Higher Education and Research. Key issues included academic freedom, commercialization, privatization, trade negotiations, security, working conditions, brain drain/ brain gain and the situation of general staff.

A centrepiece of the conference was the release of a major comparative study of the employment and working conditions of academic staff in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The report, prepared for EI by CAUT’s associate executive director David Robinson, found that academic staff in countries under review are facing unprecedented challenges, from a long-term decline in compensations levels and working conditions to an explosion in the number of limited term and part-time appointments.

“The challenges facing the profession have enormous implications for the future of post-secondary education,” Robinson told the assembly. “Without a talented and committed professoriate and without respect for tenure and academic freedom, effective teaching, scholarship and learning cannot take place.” CAUT and EI will have the study online later this month.

The meeting was also attended by CAUT president Loretta Czernis and executive director James Turk.

The meeting noted reservations on GATS, privatization and education, following which delegates unanimously endorsed a statement demanding that education be removed from GATS. This statement was sent to national trade ministers of WTO member countries meeting the following week in Hong Kong.

The day before the EI conference, Australia’s National Tertiary Education Union hosted a symposium on academic freedom, universities and the new terror laws. Turk presented a paper on academic freedom in the U.S. and Canada since 9/11. He was joined by Steve Wharton, president of the UK-based Association of University Teachers who spoke about the implications for academics of the British Prevention of Terrorism Act, and professor Rosli Mahat of the University of Malay who discussed academic freedom and internal security in Malaysia. Three leading Australian academics presented papers on the chilling aspects of the Australian government’s extreme anti-terrorism measures.

“The legitimate concern with security is being used by governments to take away long-held civil liberties and to undermine the foundation of academic freedom on which the work of our universities depends,” Turk said in summarizing the conference.