MONASH University, a leader in language support for students in Australia, is about to downgrade its service by stripping the language staff of academic status.
The claim is made by Alex Barthel, president of the Association for Academic Language and Learning and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) of Australia.
Monash plans to shift what it calls student learning support from the Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching to the library in June. General staff positions will replace what were mostly academic posts.
Most Australian universities employ staff in centralized academic advisory services, or in faculty based positions, to provide academic language development for students. Many of these academic language advisers have become increasingly involved in academic staff development. TESOL(Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) qualifications are needed for literacy skills lecturers who are appointed to support students from language backgrounds other than English. Academic staff requires that academic language lecturers are personally engaged in academic work, both to advance the theoretical basis of their field and to have advisory credibility within an academic environment.
Some educators have questioned the English language proficiency of international students entering Australian universities, who are the most obvious users of academic language support. They said Monash is pitching language learning support at a lower level of expertise.
NTEU organizer Stan Rosenthal said general staff should not be expected to teach. In any case, their teaching would lack the research base that goes with academic appointment.
But Graham Webb, vice-chancellor for quality at Monash, said the new learning support staff would “undertake professional development, go to conferences and may be involved in focused research projects. They will not be required to spend 30 to 40 per cent of their effort producing academic research outputs, however.”
Barthel, who has just carried out a census of the academic language field, said that, still, where there was growth in the sector, it was in academic appointments. Of 331 language staff turned up by Barthel’s survey, 67 per cent were academics.
Kieran O’Loughlin, assistant dean of international programmes in the education faculty at the University of Melbourne, said that what Australian universities can do is to work harder to improve the quality of support they offer international students.
