More timetabling troubles ahead

Timetabling at an institution as large as UQ is undeniably a complex challenge. However, staff working conditions directly shape student learning conditions. Timetabling systems must therefore support sustainable workloads, reasonable hours, and care responsibilities. When timetabling disregards staff conditions, it undermines teaching quality, equity, and the educational experience it claims to serve.

In late 2025, UQ’s Academic Registrar’s office put forward a new policy and procedure on course timetabling, the guts of which were:

• Academic staff would’ve been expected to be available for teaching in “standard hours”, defined as 8am-10pm Monday to Friday. Only a very narrowly specified set of reasons for unavailability were to be considered.

• Teaching and research academic staff could no longer be able to reserve a '“research day” during the semester.

• Changes to the preliminary timetable after the draft has been made available have to be approved by an Associate Dean Academic, and only for a very narrow range of reasons.

These changes — if implemented — would have resulted in the worst arrangements for academic staff in regard to research time and work-life balance of any Go8 university.

Good news? Thanks to the work of union members through a petition and feedback, the university walked back the proposal in December 2025.

Bad news? The proposal isn’t dead and buried, it’s only going through ‘further work’. So keep an eye out in 2026 for another potential timetabling policy that may have significant negative impacts on academic staff and the professional staff who support teaching activities.