This is a bit of a read, but if you're here that shouldn't scare you.

Monash has a strong worldwide brand, which attracts students from all over the world. What people don't know is that this is entirely based upon its research capacity, not its teaching quality. Teaching at Monash is an afterthought - many staff members are T&R (Teaching and Research) staff who don't really want to teach and would rather do research, and the majority of the classes are run by sessionals, many of whom are not given an appropriate environment to succeed in teaching students appropriately.

The reason why those sessionals aren't in a good spot is that the university is refusing to treat them like real employees, despite the university being largely functional because of them. Sessionals are not proper casual employees (they aren't able to get conversion to more secure jobs), aren't paid according to experience or skill (a brand new tutor who doesn't really know what they're doing is paid the same as a 5+ year veteran), and have to reapply for their jobs every semester + don't get to work for much more than 26 weeks a year.

Of course the sessionals have complained to the university that this is ridiculous, but the university doesn't really care about its sessionals or their experiences, because they don’t see a sufficient reason to care (why would you when the student fees keep rolling in?...). This leads to the majority of sessionals leaving to get other more secure jobs. Which means newer tutors take up these now vacant classes, and the cycle repeats, with Monash never doing anything about it.

You would hope that a university which rakes in millions a year from students who are expecting a proper education end up being taught by people who are either overworked, underpaid, or living with the constant threat of not having an appropriately yearly income.

If you’re a student reading this, the reason why this should ring alarm bells for you is because this directly affects you – you’re the ones paying (either via loan or directly) for what is advertised to be a high quality of teaching. In particular international students who pay out the nose for their degrees, you’re not getting what you paid for. So the sessionals need your help to get the university to make teaching a priority - if the experienced tutors are put in an environment where they can thrive in their workplace, this higher quality will be passed on to the students.

One of the issues with the current situation is that many tutors simply don't know how much they're being taken for a ride (each faculty has varying levels of exploitative bullshit). They learn the ropes from other tutors and assume that each faculty must be doing the same and that this is fair treatment – this couldn’t be further from the truth and makes it hard to gather momentum with challenging the status quo.

Adding to all the above problems, the university is trying to force tutors to limit their working hours per week. Given that the few longer term tutors that are around tend to survive by working a lot during semester to compensate for the lack of work over the holiday periods, this is yet another ridiculous blow the university is delivering to tutors and ultimately the teaching quality at Monash.

Something needs to be done.

Please fill out this survey if you have information regarding the declining standards of teaching at Monash - your own experiences will do.

Here at the Monash Casuals Network, we're trying to fix this - we're a group of casuals/sessionals/tutors who work at Monash and meet semi-frequently to share their experiences and information with one another. We are union affiliated but you don't need to be a member of the union to join, and there's no fees or any cost to joining or attending a meeting.