Australian universities could become more harmonious and efficient by simply resisting the urge to restructure, researchers have been told.

A survey of 138 professional staff at 25 universities has found that escalating administrative workloads have coincided with a deterioration in administrative efficiency, despite technological advances.

More than three-quarters of the participants complained that they were spending more and more time on administrative tasks unrelated to their core roles. Over half thought that administrative efficiency had decreased since they began working in the sector, while less than one-quarter thought it had improved.

¡°Despite considerable efforts at organisational restructuring¡­a majority of participants clearly felt that universities¡¯ administrative performance had been going backward,¡± the study team??in the?Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management.

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Asked about potential remedies, three in five participants said ¡°reducing the number of organisational restructures¡± should be a priority. ¡°It just disrupts¡­your connection to good people who can get stuff done,¡± one respondent said.

¡°Just accept that universities are not the same as business and¡­will always cost more in admin because of the mind-boggling array of different things that we do.¡±

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The study team, from the University of Melbourne¡¯s Faculty of Education, said the Australian sector had become ¡°culturally accustomed, perhaps overly so, to top-down decision-making and the pursuit of short-term change¡±. But this led to mounting administrative workloads with serious negative consequences, the survey found.

Most respondents thought it reduced the amount of time they could devote to their core roles ¨C as student support specialists, learning designers or intellectual property lawyers, for example ¨C while constraining their ability to support their colleagues or plan for the long term.

Lead author Peter Woelert said executives tended not to factor in the downsides when they considered the ¡°value proposition¡± of organisational change. ¡°People need to learn new systems [and] processes¡­and that¡¯s got to cost time,¡± he said. ¡°Universities never try to capture that cost.¡±

He said the evolution of the professional ¡°staffing profile¡± at many universities, with the ranks of middle and senior managers?expanding at the expense of junior workers, suggested that constant restructure was not achieving its objective.

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¡°They¡¯re burdening a lot of their staff with tasks that take them a long time to complete, because they¡¯re not trained for it, and it¡¯s in addition to what they usually do. But¡­that hasn¡¯t led to those broader efficiencies, either.¡±

The paper criticises a tendency to frame professional staff as ¡°a source or at least a symptom¡± ¨C rather than sufferers ¨C of increasing administrative burden in higher education. Their share of the university workforce has remained ¡°remarkably stable¡± despite the skyrocketing administrative workload, the paper says.

Survey participants said that as well as minimising restructures, universities should consult staff about the design of digital ¡°solutions¡± for administrative processes. ¡°[Keep] the poor end user in mind,¡± one respondent urged.

¡°Don¡¯t let safety experts design a document portal when 99 per cent of end users are not experts. Usability can only be designed by the users, preferably the occasional user who is super-busy and doesn¡¯t want to do it anyway.¡±

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Many respondents also said professional staff, like their academic peers, should have workload models that acknowledged the time spent on administrative tasks. But the authors warned that such an arrangement could make administrative overload worse, because of universities¡¯ instinct for ¡°formalisation and standardisation¡±.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com