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Student researchers demand payment for work
New statistics show the most research-intensive group is postgraduate research students. So, they want to be paid for it. According to ABS figures released last week, 57 per cent of hours spent on research in Australia are performed by postgraduate students. By contrast, just 30.5 per cent of research hours are contributed by academic staff, and other staff contribute 12.3 per cent.
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I guess that the universities will argue that the students are getting a PG degree and so that’s the “pay” that they earn for doing most of the universities’ research. And many of their supervisors will argue that all of those co-authored papers are also “pay” for the work they do.
It’s a structural rort. PG students are fattening the research publications record of supervisors and research team leaders who progress their careers, gaining promotion and research leadership roles while the students who graduate go on to (if they’re lucky) a cycle of casual and contract roles, doing still more unpaid work (like spending their own time writing grant applications for permanent members of staff in the hope of getting another 12 month contract out of it). They also pump up the institutional research output for which executive members received bonuses if it’s seen to meet targets or bump the university up in the rankings.
Good luck with your campaign, CAPA.