Academic Staff - Sabbaticals
Claim
17. Guaranteed sabbaticals after three years of continuous full-time service for Academic Staff.
Claim Details
Claim
Re-introduction of regular and comprehensively funded sabbaticals once every 3-4 years for academic staff.
Benchmark UQ’s provision, financing and implementation of sabbaticals against other Group of 8 universities.
Increase the country time limits to 6 months on Sabbatical visits, from current 30, 60 and 90 day limits.
Enable academic staff to directly charge their ACA accounts for travel costs, rather than on a reimbursement basis.
Rationale
Research leave is a fundamental part of research-intensive universities to enable concentrated research focus and disciplinary renewal.
UQ’s current AEP scheme is not best practice in the sector, and its design diverges substantially from research leave programs at other universities providing considerable constraints in the design, conduct and regularity of Sabbatical research activities.
The resumption of sabbaticals will protect UQ’s brand identity as a Go8 institution
Sabbaticals help ensure the university remains a strong performer in research in all disciplines including important areas that don’t attract Category 1 funding.
Access to sabbaticals open opportunities for staff to apply for prestigious overseas Fellowships e.g. Churchill, Fulbright, MacArthur, Spencer and other schemes currently inaccessible under AEP.
Sabbaticals ensures ongoing capacity to provide high-quality doctoral education and research-informed teaching in all areas of undergraduate and postgraduate coursework.
The suspension of sabbaticals has intensified the workloads of academics. Loss of dedicated regular time for research every few years, forces academics to work out of hours to maintain research capacity and productivity in context where managerial expectations for research output have not diminished but have been increased.
The Academic Enrichment Programme is not an adequate substitute for research sabbaticals for the reasons below:
There are restrictions on time that can be spent overseas. This limits many areas of research e.g. fieldwork in natural sciences, archival & ethnographic research.
The AEP country time restrictions fail to recognise widespread international agreements to avoid double taxation, and recognition that Sabbatical research is not the same as routine employment
Presented on 7/5/26.
Management Response
The bargaining team presented this claim briefly on 25/3/26 and were given a flat ‘no’ from management.
The claim was presented again with more detail to management on 7/5/26, and management again gave a flat ‘no’ and expressed that the existing Academic Enrichment Program (AEP) is sufficient. The bargaining team disagreed.