DETERMINING ACADEMIC WORKLOAD AND REMUNERATION SCHEMES IN GEORGIAN UNIVERSITIES

One of the main regulatory mechanisms for university education quality enhancement is the achievement of maximum efficiency in using the academic personnel's teaching and research potential. Therefore, the regulation of the academic workload and remuneration has become a key management issue for Georgian Higher Education Institutions. Elaborating of fair and logical workload schemes and determining of adequate salaries is quite a difficult problem, because academic work is very complex and consists of several components. To overcome the problem Higher Education managers should take into account the opinions of professors concerning the loading and compensation issues. The research aimed to analyze opinions of academic and administrative staff of the leading Georgian universities about the major factors characterizing professors' workload that are important for determining reasonable remuneration. Significant differences in the assessment of these factors of academic and administrative staff were revealed. It seems obvious that current workload and remuneration schemes of academic personnel at universities of Georgia require improvement and development in order to avoid demotivation of professors and to ensure purposeful spending of university finances. The research offers to move to the system of calculating academic workload in the credits-hours as a method for elaborating fair and logical remuneration schemes. Findings and conclusions of the research will be helpful for elaborating academic workload and compensation schemes that promote quality enhancement and motivation of the academic staff performance.