Overview
- Released on 12 February 2026, the Australian University Census on Staff Wellbeing drew on nearly 11,500 responses from 42 institutions gathered between 2020 and 2024 using the Psychosocial Safety Climate metric.
- All universities recorded high or very high psychosocial risk, with more than 80% of staff reporting emotional exhaustion and risk levels more than double those seen in the general workforce.
- Institutional results highlight severe hotspots, including ANU with 58% of respondents at very high risk and 31% at high risk, the University of Sydney with 70% at high or very high risk, and the University of Wollongong ranked sixth-worst.
- Researchers attribute the sector’s decline to weak safety systems, continual restructures, rising workloads, job insecurity, funding constraints, technological overload, and governance controversies.
- The report labels the situation a sector-wide public health concern requiring urgent, coordinated action, noting high unpaid overtime and that about one in four staff plan to leave within a year, with rankings interpreted alongside a roughly 7.7% overall response rate.