By Marina Cameron
University administrations are already planning, and in some cases implementing, measures to make up funding that was cut in the federal budget. This coincides with a new round of enterprise bargaining being undertaken by the National Tertiary Education and Industry Union.
Deakin University intends to force 17 staff to take redundancies, with the aim of laying off 170 in total. NTEU members have been picketing university council meetings and discussing industrial action.
A further 1000 staff are predicted to go at Victorian universities, with a plan to cut 250 out of the 1000 staff at La Trobe University. An attempt to cut the Classics Department at the University of Melbourne, however, was stopped by actions by students and staff.
The University of Adelaide intends to cut 100 staff and may still merge with Flinders University in order to "share" courses, or provide subjects through video-conferencing with the University of Western Australia. While these changes are being promoted as improving service through streamlining of courses and making better use of multi-media technology, the real goals are staff cuts and cheaper servicing of students.
Mergers have been discussed among the four universities in WA. The most likely is a merger of Murdoch and Edith Cowan universities, with "further collaboration" planned with the Curtin University of Technology. UWA and ECU may also merge their music schools.
The University of NSW administration has used federal funding cuts as a pretext to cut $15-20 million from its budget, despite running an operating surplus of $53 million in 1995. Measures being considered include closing the St George campus; less frequent student assessment; fast track degrees of three semesters, while only paying staff for two; replacing Senior and Associate lecturers with cheaper postgraduate staff; and linking the allocation of government funded places to the income that each school generates from international and full fee-paying students.
The University of Newcastle intends to cut $14 million from its budget, while the Northern Territory University intends to drastically cut its Arts faculty. The University of Wollongong may cut over half the courses in one faculty alone.
The Liberals' cuts to higher education will mean less individual attention to students, fewer staff enduring worse working conditions, and more industry-oriented universities. Access to public education is already in decline. Dramatic drops in school-leaver applications for 1997 courses indicate the discouraging effect of higher HECS charges. Meanwhile, Bond University announced last week that it may open Australia's first elite private medical and health sciences school, allowing public universities to contract out teaching and clinical services to Bond.
The NTEU is not at this stage accepting claims by university administrations that the cuts are justified by federal funding cuts or the pressure of funding a long awaited and well deserved academic pay claim. The union has resisted pressure to concede to further student fees, and made a strong submission to a Senate committee last week against any further student charges. It has also mapped out an industrial strategy to fight for a 15% pay rise with no trade-offs on working conditions.
In the face of proposed job cuts of over 10%, NTEU branches at the Australian National University and the University of Canberra both voted this month to reject an 8.6% pay offer which required trading-off working conditions. Both branches will implement a ban on releasing end of semester exam results.
As part of the NTEU's leading site strategy, staff at a number of key universities will negotiate offers in an attempt to set a standard for the weaker universities with less financial reserves.
Staff at the University of Sydney, who are fighting for a 19.7% pay rise, will implement bans on examination marking and stop work every Wednesday to discuss the campaign until the dispute is resolved.
Members at the University of Melbourne rejected a pay offer this week of 6% by July next year with some trade-offs, and will meet again in early November to discuss a ban on results and a work-to-rule in pursuit of a 15% claim.