Pay up to attract young academics - study

Cape Town - Higher education institutions will have to improve the conditions of service of lecturers and junior lecturers drastically in order to attract the best young graduates to an academic career, a new study has recommended.

Yesterday Higher Education South Africa (Hesa) released a summary of its study of remuneration of academic staff at South Africa’s universities, which sought to compare the 2012 remuneration packages of full-time academic staff at universities with their counterparts in the public and private sectors.

Hesa represents 23 vice-chancellors of public universities.

The key findings include that remuneration packages at the lower academic levels (lecturer and junior lecturer) were generally lower than those for comparable levels in the public sector but comparable to the private sector.

“Without competitive remuneration for academics, especially at the lower echelons of the profession, many promising potential academics, as well as current academic staff, will be lured away to well-paying positions in the public sector, as well as in the private sector. There is also an ongoing brain drain in the country.”

In general the academic profession paid well against the public and private sectors, particularly in the more senior job levels.

In 2012 the average annual remuneration for professors was R831 768, associate professors received R658 692, senior lecturers R546 816, lecturers R430 500 and junior lecturers R321 156.

The study also pointed to differences in remuneration of white and Indian academics compared to coloureds and Africans, and indicated that this was the result of African and coloured academics being under-represented in the higher academic ranks and over-represented in the lower ranks.

The document stated that the Department of Higher Education and Training was considering proposals by Hesa to enhance the development of a new generation of academics.

The implementation of these proposals would help to close the differences in the remuneration levels of academics in the different race groups.

Additional funds would, however, be needed.

Cape Argus