A shocking new report shows Australia’s universities are living a tale of two workplaces where senior leaders say they experience relatively low levels of psychological risk while staff at every university in the study are working in conditions that put them at high risk of psychological harm.
The findings, released today as part of the 2025 Australian University Census on Staff Wellbeing, lay bare the deep disconnect between management and frontline staff at institutions which educate more than a million students and employ hundreds of thousands.
National Assistant Secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) Gabe Gooding said the alarming feedback shows a growing chasm between leaders and the experiences of those on the ground.
“Independent research has now confirmed what our members keep telling us - that their workplaces are toxic and having serious impacts on their health,” Ms Gooding said.
The national survey, conducted between October 2025 and January 2026, collected responses from nearly 11,500 staff across 42 universities and measured workers’ exposure to psychosocial risk using the internationally recognised Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) framework.
The tool is used to assess if senior management prioritise psychological health through leadership commitment, communication, consultation and workload management.
“What this report demonstrates is a sector racing to the bottom on staff wellbeing following a sustained period of aggressive restructuring across the board,” Ms Gooding said.
“In several universities, a safe workplace is effectively non-existent, with less than 10 per cent of staff reporting low-risk conditions and more than 80, and in some cases 90 per cent, working in environments which put their mental health at risk.
“It doesn’t matter if you're at the top or the bottom of the rankings - staff mental health is being traded off for productivity and even the best institutions are firmly within the high-risk category.
“Essentially this means at every single ranked institution in Australia, senior management is failing to provide an environment that adequately protects staff from psychological harm.”
The report also found staff are far more likely to be exposed to psychological risk than workers in almost any other sectors and that unpaid labour is increasingly being relied upon to meet productivity demands.
“In this sample alone, staff contributed a staggering estimated $271 million a year in free work because the job can no longer be done within paid hours.
“The toll on emotionally exhausted workers is no longer speculative. The report shows staff in very high-risk environments face more than a 100 per cent increase in the incidence of persistent depressive disorders, with mental health risks running at more than double the rate seen across the rest of the economy.
“The refusal of most Vice-Chancellors to support this study when invited is an indication they will need to be dragged to accountability via government intervention on their staff wellbeing, just as they were with wage theft.
“This is another failure of university governance. The NTEU strongly supports the report’s recommendations, including making PSC scores a core management KPI, easing productivity pressure through proper funding and introducing regular, independent reporting,” Ms Gooding said.
The report also recommends that assessment and response to psychosocial risks be incorporated into the Higher Education Framework Standards.
“The law is very clear about all workers being entitled to a safe workplace. Universities are not meeting these obligations and so we need interventions to ensure that this will change - and fast.”
Key findings:
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100% of ranked Australian universities recorded average scores indicating high or very high psychological risk meaning there are no safe campuses.76% of university staff are working in environments rated high or very high risk for psychological harm which is more than double the rate in the general workforce.
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Just 18% of university staff report working in a low-risk (healthy) workplace, compared with 54% of workers nationally.
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Even the top-ranked universities remain unsafe: the highest score nationally was 34.9, well below the low-risk benchmark of 41.
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At the bottom of the rankings, some universities recorded very high-risk scores as low as 23.9, indicating severe psychosocial danger.
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82% of university staff reported high or very high emotional exhaustion, nearly double the rate seen across the broader workforce.
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71% of staff said they regularly work beyond their contracted or paid hours.
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Nearly one in three full-time staff are working 48 hours a week or more.
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Staff contributed an estimated $271 million a year in unpaid labour in this sample alone.
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69% of staff disagreed that senior management values psychological health as much as productivity.
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73% of staff said risks to their mental health are not actively monitored by their employer.
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27% of staff said they intend to leave their university within the next 12 months.
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Only senior executives and deans rated their workplaces as medium or low risk while all other staff groups reported high-risk conditions.
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Eliot | 0423 921 200