Three Decades of Change in Australia’s University Workforce

The Australian higher education workforce has been reshaped in recent decades. Changes to management practices and rules around industrial relations, the creation of new universities in the 1990s and the growth of international education markets have all influenced the academic and professional workforce in Australia. This paper examines national level data on university workforce changes from 1989 to 2021. It highlights that despite the relative stability, there have been sector-wide shifts with clear implications for the future of Australian universities.