University staff are pushing back against what they see as the growing corporatisation of tertiary education, with Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union warning universities cannot be run simply as businesses that happen to provide teaching and research.
The union’s intervention comes as staff at six of Aotearoa’s eight universities negotiate new collective agreements, with pay, job security, workloads and the increasing use of casual and fixed-term employment at the centre of the dispute.
The TEU says the fundamental argument is about what universities are actually for — and whether financial pressures are increasingly being allowed to override their public purpose.
Six universities at the bargaining table
Collective bargaining is underway at the University of Auckland, University of Waikato, Massey University, Victoria University of Wellington, University of Canterbury and University of Otago.
The union says staff are seeking pay increases that improve living standards rather than being swallowed by rising household costs, alongside greater security for employees repeatedly placed on casual or fixed-term contracts.
TEU says some university workers remain below the Living Wage while others can spend years performing ongoing work without receiving permanent employment.
For the union, that is evidence of a university model increasingly treating labour as a cost to be contained rather than investing in the people responsible for teaching, research and supporting students.
Rise of the Franken-job
The argument has intensified as TEU highlights what university workers themselves have dubbed Franken-jobs — positions assembled from casual, temporary and fixed-term work without the security traditionally associated with an academic career.
The union says researchers can spend years moving from contract to contract while undertaking important work in fields including natural hazards, medicine, climate change and disaster management.
TEU says that insecurity can affect everything from obtaining a mortgage to starting a whānau, while staff can also feel pressure to work beyond their contracted hours because their future employment depends on another contract being offered.
And the union argues the consequences do not stop with employees.
Its position is that unstable employment can undermine continuity for students, research capability and the long-term health of universities themselves.
Māori students need more than a balance sheet
The debate has particular relevance for Māori because universities are not simply providers of qualifications.
They are also places where mātauranga Māori, kaupapa Māori research, te reo Māori and Māori academic leadership are developed and passed between generations.
Māori support staff also play important roles helping tauira navigate institutions that have not always served Māori well.
Massey University Māori student support kaimahi Te Awatea Ward has been among those highlighting employment insecurity, with TEU arguing universities should be investing in the people who teach and support students rather than normalising precarious work.
That raises a wider question about whether institutions can credibly promise better outcomes for Māori students while the kaimahi providing crucial support themselves face insecure employment.
Funding squeeze sits behind the fight
Universities, however, are operating in a difficult financial environment of their own.
TEU has been campaigning against what it describes as decades of tertiary underfunding, arguing government funding has failed to keep pace with inflation while institutions face pressure over staffing and subject provision.
The union says Budget 2026 represents a $310 million real-terms reduction in tertiary education funding once inflation is taken into account, including reductions in the real value of tuition, training and research funding.
Universities therefore face the difficult equation of maintaining teaching and research while controlling costs in an increasingly constrained funding environment.
But TEU’s argument is that responding by cutting staff costs and increasing employment insecurity simply transfers the consequences of underfunding onto workers and students.
What is a university actually for?
That is the bigger argument underneath the industrial negotiations.
Universities need to remain financially viable.
But they are also expected to educate the next generation of teachers, doctors, scientists, lawyers, engineers, researchers and thinkers.
They conduct research that can take decades to produce a return, preserve knowledge that may never generate a commercial profit and provide an independent academic voice capable of challenging governments, corporations and society itself.
TEU says those responsibilities cannot be measured purely through the lens of corporate efficiency.
With Election 2026 underway, the union is also making tertiary education a political issue, arguing New Zealand needs greater public investment if universities are to deliver quality education while providing decent and secure employment.
And that leaves Aotearoa with a much bigger question than what university workers receive in their next pay agreement.
Are universities businesses selling degrees to customers — or public institutions whose teaching, research, mātauranga and people are an investment in generations still to come?
For the TEU, the answer is clear: universities are not corporations that also happen to teach.
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