Kate Smithers
katesmithers.bsky.social
Kate Smithers
@katesmithers.bsky.social
I work at Charles Sturt University and I am interested in sociology of education with a particular focus on academic work and philanthropy in education. https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=KwNebNUAAAAJ&hl=en
Pinned
New paper! In this paper, we examined the creation of decausalisation schemes in the latest round of Enterprise Bargaining Agreements. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Decasualisation and the universities accord: an examination of university approaches
Casual and fixed-term employment is rife across Australian universities, with current estimates suggesting that around 60% of the workforce are precariously employed. This level of precarious emplo...
www.tandfonline.com
There is something very tumblresque about this
October 31, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
Thread. 💔
1/At Macquarie Uni we are losing 50% of our units in my faculty. This is on top of cuts in 2020. We estimate by next year my faculty will be teaching 80% fewer subjects than pre Covid. Disciplines being cut do not have declining enrolments. @jennaprice.bsky.social @michaelwestbiz.bsky.social
September 20, 2025 at 1:21 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
Even @andrewjnorton.bsky.social is on a short 1 year contract - hard for ECAs who roll from short contract to contract to feel they can have academic freedom (but Andrew is close enough to retirement to feel secure to speak out on key issues)
#herdsa2025
July 9, 2025 at 1:53 AM
We should all be interested in policy and how it frames our work.
👏 @molliedollin.bsky.social with an argument for why we should be interested in policy, in her introduction of @andrewjnorton.bsky.social as the Wednesday keynote at #HERDSA2025
July 9, 2025 at 1:23 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
Grammatical amusements aside, TEQSA recommended a bunch of crackdowns and unis have pushed back recognising their place in community (to allow others to come on campus too).

Oh, and now onto casual underpayments (dare I say it, wage theft @katesmithers.bsky.social ...)
July 9, 2025 at 1:20 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Full article: Working at the level above: university promotion policies as a tool for wage theft and underpayment
www.tandfonline.com
June 4, 2025 at 7:48 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
Possibly the best thing I've read about ChatGPT yet.

h/t @melaniemitchell.bsky.social

amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-e...
Diabolus Ex Machina
This Is Not An Essay
amandaguinzburg.substack.com
June 4, 2025 at 4:42 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
‘in 2023, the Australian National University spent $11 million, just on executive travel. Who are these people - and did one of them go to the moon?’ Equivalent of 95 academic salaries spent on 15 people, averaging $3/4M each. @hannahforsyth.bsky.social hannahforsyth.substack.com/p/spending-t...
Spending to the moon and back
Universities making staff, students and the public wear the costs.
hannahforsyth.substack.com
May 25, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
Interesting paper about the rise of the Pro-Sessional, 'a new category of university employee who is expected to carry out complex and faculty-critical roles despite not having the salary, job security or support of a tenured academic'. (open access)

#HigherEd

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The rise of the pro-sessional: precarious employees taking on complex and faculty-critical roles
Researchers have noted for several years that universities are increasingly relying on precariously employed academics rather than employing continuing or permanent staff members, and consequently,...
www.tandfonline.com
May 21, 2025 at 6:56 AM
This piece is extremely well written and beautiful in its eloquence.
April 7, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
I've never done anything in my life that gets as much credit as running. Even when I was just starting out, people were so impressed by me going for a run. I was given a huge amount of encouragement, even for short runs, slow runs, runs with lots of walking.
What you do is impressive: A tip I learned from learning to run
I've never done anything in my life that gets as much credit as running. Even when I was just starting out, people were so impressed by me going for a run. I was given a huge amount of encouragement, even for short runs, slow runs, runs with lots of walking. As I passed various milestones (whether that was being able to run for 10 minutes without stopping, or my first 5k park run) I felt all the support along the way.
researchinsiders.blog
March 27, 2025 at 4:08 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
A tip I learned from learning to run is 'active recovery'. In fact, there is a whole thing in running called a 'recovery run'! This horrified me when I first found out about it.
But it made me think about what active recovery strategies we might use to help us in our writing.
Active Recovery: a tip I learned from learning to run
A tip I learned from learning to run is 'active recovery'. In fact, there is a whole thing in running called a ... 'recovery run'! This horrified me when I first found out about it. Any run felt like a huge effort, surely any kind of running was the opposite of recovering from running! And it's true, you should be sleeping, and resting, and taking days off from running, to recover from running. But it's also a good idea to sometimes run, slowly, easily, not for too long, to help you recover from running. And this made me think about what active recovery strategies we might use to help us in our writing.
researchinsiders.blog
March 13, 2025 at 4:43 AM
Tonight I made carrot cake. I don’t have any cake holding device, so pie dish it is!
March 12, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
“The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.”
— Augusten Burroughs
February 18, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Interested in sharing your insights, experience and advice about being an early career academic in Australia?
We are looking for those who have worked or work as an academic in an Australian university. You can be early career, mid-career, late-career or retired. See more: tinyurl.com/2j5xyaaw
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.
tinyurl.com
February 18, 2025 at 1:15 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
🚨🥳 new paper alert! The House of Cards paper (the companion to last year's seminar - youtube.com/watch?v=IO-y...) has been published. Thanks to Rola for her leadership of the project and the team for their hard work.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The house of cards: equity-group students’ experiences of structural inequity in higher education
Globally, correlations are reported between lower academic attainment and university students being a member of an ‘equity’ or ‘historically under-represented’ group. We seek to illuminate how this...
www.tandfonline.com
February 12, 2025 at 2:33 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
This is probably compulsory reading for anyone who's involved in Australian higher education - big changes still rolling out, and who knows what will happen when the merry-go-round stops?

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Decasualisation and the universities accord: an examination of university approaches
Casual and fixed-term employment is rife across Australian universities, with current estimates suggesting that around 60% of the workforce are precariously employed. This level of precarious emplo...
www.tandfonline.com
February 7, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
A useful read.

Academics - we have a lot of skills to offer in organising against fascism.

Last night I used my skills as a teacher to educate new door knockers on how to talk to people in low conflict ways.

I felt useful. And I felt better about stuff

www.404media.co/you-cant-pos...
You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism
Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them, Janus Rose writes.
www.404media.co
February 7, 2025 at 1:11 AM
New paper! In this paper, we examined the creation of decausalisation schemes in the latest round of Enterprise Bargaining Agreements. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Decasualisation and the universities accord: an examination of university approaches
Casual and fixed-term employment is rife across Australian universities, with current estimates suggesting that around 60% of the workforce are precariously employed. This level of precarious emplo...
www.tandfonline.com
February 6, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
📗🚀 Special Issue Launch! Next Wednesday!

‘Reimagining Higher Education Learning Spaces: Assembling Theory, Methods, and Practice’

🗓️ Wednesday 29 January 2025

Online 7-9pm Australian EST / 8-10am UK

🎟️ Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/2025-speci...
2025 Special Issue Launch ‘Reimagining Higher Education Learning Spaces'
Are you interested in what the future could look like for learning spaces in Higher Education? Hear from contributors to the HERD 2025 SI.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
January 24, 2025 at 3:28 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
One of those cases where you just couldn’t make it up…
January 19, 2025 at 6:32 AM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
What happens when we ask school principals to generate grant revenue? It's not necessarily good. New peer-reviewed study from Emma Rowe @sarahlangman.bsky.social Nicole Mockler & yours truly #edusky Free downloads at www.tandfonline.com/eprint/CXVBQ...
Perverse impacts of competitive funding: public school principals as revenue generators in the grant economy
This paper focuses on competitive funding models for public schools, drawing on interviews with public school principals serving disadvantaged student cohorts in Australia. Public schools receive t...
www.tandfonline.com
January 15, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
I have taken
the resources
that were in
the budget

and which
you were probably
saving
for higher education

Forgive me
they were needed
to feed the AI bubble
and to dismantle the humanities
January 16, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Kate Smithers
“The PhD stipend is $33,511 … well below minimum wage of $47,627”

“Universities can raise the stipend to a maximum of $52,352, but a ACGR survey found none have done so. The highest stipend is just over $40,000 … with the average at $34,244.”

#RaiseTheStipend
PhD student Jesse Gardner-Russell earns $20 an hour. Experts say low pay is turning Australia’s best and brightest away
The University of Melbourne student whose work could contribute to curing blindness says ‘people are shocked to find out how unlivable it is’
www.theguardian.com
January 16, 2025 at 11:37 PM