The Australian university sector comprises 42 institutions, 38 of which are public universities. But unlike the private outfits, they are underfunded.
While the government commits billions of dollars to the black hole of AUKUS and a military-strategic future in thrall to the United States, universities — essential looms in the creation of society’s general social health and wellbeing — wallow in its wake.
Analysis of university financial reports shows consistent reporting of deficits, 27 of them in 2022 and 2023. In a bid to cut costs, four universities plan to scrap nearly 1000 jobs next year.
Federal Labor’s decision to cap international student enrolments, beginning next year, means universities will lose an income stream during the first year of operation of $650–750 million.
The peak organisation Australian Universities warns of the possible future loss of 14,000 jobs. But the sector’s woes are not only due to external factors.
Over the past two decades, a management culture that regards universities as businesses, rather than as teaching and research institutions, has developed.
This variously led to costly empire-building and instances of business decisions that went expensively belly-up. There have been morale-sapping leadership scandals, mismanagement and wastage.
From the outside you wouldn’t really know about it. All the while, Australian vice chancellors are the highest paid university bosses in the world.
Getting rid of jobs in the sector is relatively simple. Astute and ruthless use by managements of current industrial laws, which advantage employers and constrain workers, is changing the nature of the workplace and work.
Gobbledygook terms like “restructuring” and “disestablishment” are used to mask the ditching of courses, the closing down of disciplines, the amalgamation of departments and faculties and the human misery of job destruction and unemployment.
Public explanations by managements of the necessity for “restructure” and the nature of the new workplace tend to reference consultations that have taken place within the institutions, as though something democratic has occurred.
But, generally, one is hard pressed to find anyone in the workforce who was consulted.
Notice of unemployment tends to come via email, and while links to remedial counselling are provided, this is about as useful as tossing a floatie to a Titanic survivor drowning in the hypothermic vastness of the North Atlantic.
Enter the University of Wollongong (UOW) in the Illawarra region of New South Wales and its aim to get rid of up to 300 jobs across its academic and professional workforces.
Management claims this is necessary due to rising costs, a 2024 budget that apparently still requires “stabilising”, a “significant budget gap” for next year and, if nothing is done, then “cash negative” by 2027.
Specifically cited as the cause of woes is the drying up of the “long-term pipeline of international students”. Suggestion by the local branch of the National Tertiary Education Union that part of the university’s woes might be internal has been sidestepped.
A query by the Illawarra Mercury as to whether mismanagement has been part of the problem was denied.
Currently the UOW leads the cohort of job scrappers, with processes underway to axe 90 full-time equivalent academic jobs five days before Christmas.
Notices to potential candidates for unemployment have been served to 137 academics across 25 disciplines. While management is acting legally under industrial law, the process comes at a time when historically and logistically it is difficult for workers in the sector to organise and fight back.
Potentially headed for the scrap heap of people and disciplines are English Language and Linguistics, French, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Human Geography, Archaeology and Earth Sciences.
Job and course losses will also probably be visited upon History, the Faculty of Engineering and Information Science and the Faculty of Business and Law.
The Christmas axings cap an extraordinary year at the UOW. A new chancellor was installed with a background in investment banking, corporate leadership, equity and debt markets. The whole of the university’s senior executive variously exited, including the relatively new vice chancellor.
All were replaced by interim “acting” appointments. Key among these and fronting the current axings was interim Vice Chancellor John Dewar. A lawyer by training, he brought to the job previous experience in the role and a long history of restructuring and scrapping jobs and courses.
Dewar is also a partner in the consultancy firm currently reviewing the UOW’s operations, though he is currently on unpaid leave from that. Media and union concern there might be a conflict of interest have met a blank wall.
Apprehension, uncertainty, distress and anger hang heavy in the air on the UOW campus. As one senior academic I spoke to said, barely containing a mix of rage and disbelief: “They are creating a shell of a university. This is wanton destruction from which the university may never recover.”
[Rowan Cahill is an author and an Honorary Fellow in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at UOW.]