Shortage of business academics imminent

Business academics are getting older, and recruiting replacements is either a disaster or no big deal, depending on who you talk to and what they want to do about it.

“It’s a furphy,” says Alan Ruby from the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania. “There are only so many times you can walk to the beach; people want to stay engaged.”

Ruby points to a colleague: “At 75 he says he has a book to write and has no intention of stopping work.” Anywhere there is no mandatory retiring age, retirement is an obsolete idea for academics, he says.

There are also ample career changers, people in their 40s and 50s who want to take up teaching. According to Griffith University economist Ross Guest, “lots of businesspeople would like to spend time in academe in various parts of their career”.

But hiring them is often easier said than done, and for some deans saying goodbye to the baby boomers is a problem compounded by the shortage of high-performers interested in university life, especially in accounting.

For other university leaders, however, it is an opportunity to change the nature of their workforce.

And for a new breed of academics it is a boon, creating opportunities for existing and aspiring scholars at different stages of their careers.

According to the NSW Auditor-General, 40 per cent of the state’s scholars were 50 or older last year; among the large metropolitan campuses, the University of Western Sydney is the oldest, with 54 per cent of academic staff in that age group.

The university was advertising last week for sessional teachers in a range of business disciplines.

Comparable statistics for other states are scarce, but it seems the pattern applies nationwide.

For commerce deans the news is not so bad; according to the University of Adelaide’s Graeme Hugo, there are more younger staff in most business disciplines than is the industry average. Even so, he found that in 2006 more than one-third of business academics in leading fields, except banking and finance, were over 50.

There is also evidence replacements may not be easy to find. According to the US-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, there are not enough new academics, especially in accounting, to meet demand.

Faculty leaders are aware they have to replace retiring talent in the next few years. Monash’s business and economics dean Stephen King says his faculty has a good age spread after decades of consistent expansion, “but we are going to lose some of our stars”.

And with 400 staff spots to keep filled, King is always looking for talent; eight new staff are starting in marketing and six in economics.

Robert Widing, dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, has a similar strategy. “We’re recruiting now for the next generation,” he says.

But where will staff come from? At the elite end, researchers who can win Australian Research Council grants are gold.

The equally essential academics happy to teach first-year classes are in short supply because of labour market rigidities.

The answer, it seems, is that demand will find a supply, especially if universities are flexible in staffing strategies and look farther afield.

The global financial crisis has made Australia attractive to US and European academics, especially young ones.

In Britain, there are more university staff under 35 (25 per cent) than over 55 (25 per cent).

“This is a good time to be recruiting in the US,” Widing says.

Monash’s new marketing recruits, in addition to locals, include people from Europe and North America, as well as Asians with doctorates from the US. King says of his six new economists, five come from overseas.

Recruiting at the top inevitably involves more money, at least in areas that suit a dean’s research strategy and where student demand is strong.

“It’s certainly a challenge,” says Widing. “We have to do a little bit better than the pegged pay rates for high producers.”

“You have to pay a premium over base grade salaries in every business-relevant part of a university,” King agrees. But he adds that academic life can never compete on cash with consulting.

Whether this matters depends on what sort of academics a university wants: highly rated researchers or people with a passion for teaching.

King wants both: “We have a very strong policy, excepting ARC and Federation fellows, everybody, including me, must teach and research.”

“In commerce faculties research is a primary determinant of promotion,” Widing says.”In our case we can’t afford to have somebody who can’t deliver in a quality way in the classroom.”

In general the emphasis on research and related lack of respect for teaching is a big part of the problem for deans with staff shortages, according to Guest.

Businesspeople who would like to teach “are discouraged by inflexible entry barriers. Accreditation bodies such as the European Quality Improvement System require a high proportion of staff to have a doctorate.”

This strikes Guest as nonsense.

Inflexible pay scales and the absence of objective measures of classroom performance don’t help.

What universities need to attract businesspeople who may not have a doctorate but know what they are talking about and how to explain it are funding measures that reward individuals and institutions on the quality of their teaching.

“We don’t just create knowledge, we facilitate learning,” Guest says.

King says the chance to follow their interests can attract high flyers from industry, although he accepts not everybody wants to be a star researcher.

“Interests can change. Somebody who is a star researcher in their 30s wants to be an exceptional teacher in their 50s. We need to do better on flexibility.”

And that includes making it easier for academics who want to balance work and family. Guest says accounting schools demonstrate how this can work, with women accepting lower pay for the flexibility academic life allows.

Except, it seems, when it comes to the rules that govern who is hired and what they are expected to do.