Internationally, changes to academic work are a response to the massification of higher education and a changed and changing higher education context. The majority of these adjustments involve a casualisation of academic work, widely characterised as being of a de-skilling nature, alongside the emergence of new, as well as changing, roles that typically function across traditional boundaries and frequently involve elements of up-skilling. The paper points to the value of the latter group of adaptations, characterising them as "direct-response" changes to new environmental conditions. In contrast, de-skilling adaptations, classed as "indirect-response" changes, are viewed as impacting negatively on key aspects of higher education. Inter-professional teaching practices are advocated as an alternative to the casualisation strategy, based on the belief that it would empower large numbers of existing groups of higher education workers to make a fuller and richer contribution to student learning and help prepare them for an uncertain future.