New SDG brief highlights challenges in higher education staff’s working conditions

With over 14 million tertiary education teachers and millions of non-academic staff worldwide, HEIs have a responsibility to ensure decent and inclusive working conditions, in alignment with SDG 8. However, the brief Higher Education Institutions as Employers: Ensuring Decent Working Conditions identifies key challenges, such as long-term job insecurity, widespread harassment and other undue behaviors at the workplace and policies that hinder work-life balance. 

Key Findings: 

• Job instability: There is a rise in the share of HE staff under temporary, part-time, and externalized contracts. In academic staff, this leads to long-term job insecurity, lowering the attractiveness of academic careers and, effectively, limiting the exercise of academic freedom. In non-academic workers affected by the externalization of campus services, job insecurity can be coupled by being subject to different working conditions than HEIs’ directly hired staff.   

• Insufficient and unstable salaries: Many employees, particularly junior academics and non-academic subcontracted workers, receive low and sometimes unreliable wages. Poorly paid junior positions or unpaid internships represent a significant (and structural) percentage of research and administrative positions, which represents an important barrier in the career advancement for those without additional resources who rely on a living wage income to sustain themselves. 

• Performance pressures and work-life unbalance: Academic staff often face unclear or unrealistic performance expectations, leading to long working hours, straining mental health and introducing a bias against those with career breaks (such as parental leaves) or with caring responsibilities. 

• A hostile work environment: Discrimination, harassment, and gender-based violence are still far too prevalent in HEIs. These are worsened by lacking or ineffective protocols and the inequal power dynamics between secure and non-secure job holders. 

Recommendations for policymakers and HEI leaders

The brief outlines actionable steps to improve employment conditions, such as: 

• Increasing reliable institutional funding to facilitate more stable work contracts. 

• Implementing transparent regulations for contracts, pay scales and selection processes. 

• Ensuring decent working conditions for subcontracted workers. 

• Supporting mental health and work-life balance policies, including the provision of key services such as childcare. 

Discover more

To learn more about the current challenges of higher education workers, identify relevant government policies and good institutional practices, as well as actionable recommendations for policymakers and HEI leaders, you can now read the full SDG Brief, available in English and Spanish.