Every fifth employee in higher education is temporary

Illustration.Laboratory.Photo: pixabay.com

The proportion of temporary employees is more than twice as high as average at higher education institutions throughout the Norwegian workforce.

While the proportion of temporary employees in the Norwegian labour force, who are aged between 15 and 74 years, was 8.2% in the fourth quarter of last year,the average was of 19.7 % at higher education institutions in the country.

Academics extracted these figures from the Database for Statistics on Higher Education (DBH), operated by the Norwegian center for research data, according to Klassekampen newspaper.

In some faculties, the proportion was four to five times as high as the average for the entire workforce.

These include the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Oslo, and the Faculty of Law at the University of Tromsø, where the proportion of temporary employees were, respectively, 44 and 36 %.

‘There is a problem with quality of research. When not offered permanent positions, it means that the cleverest people will look for opportunities to find employment elsewhere.
Educational institutions must have competitive working conditions’, said Chairman, Kari Sollien,of Akademikerne.

Deputy Rector, Ragnhild Hennum, at the University of Oslo, believes the large proportion of temporary posts has a natural explanation.

‘Temporary employment in academia, beyond recruitment positions which by their nature are temporary, is linked to the proportion of researchers with external funding,’ she wrote in an email to Klassekampen newspaper.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today