Hundreds of students protested Macquarie University’s proposal to cut hundreds of jobs and “streamline” arts courses in the faculty. The protest on September 11 was organised by Save Macquarie Arts.
Management is proposing $8 million in cuts which means more than 300 staff may lose their jobs.
The protest was joined by members of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), the Queer Collective and other staff and students.
Management wants to reduce the eight arts faculties to five. It has already said it will merge anthropology and sociology, and ancient and modern history, as well as cutting some language courses.
Chris Dixon, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts, told teaching staff that majors would be cut to only eight units, with any elective courses “rested” and, eventually, cut.
An anthropology student told Save Macquarie Arts that the lack of flexibility will drive people away from the university. “They need to stop the cuts or no one is going to bother staying or attending in the first place.”
Another arts student Save Macquarie Arts: “It’s incredibly disheartening [for the university] not to care about your degree or our amazing lecturers.”
Between 300–600, mostly casual, staff could lose their jobs if the funding cuts proceed.
Macquarie already has the worst staff-to-student ratio of any university in the country: Arts has a ratio of 1 staff member for each 52 students. The projected cuts will mean bigger tutorials and therefore less possibility to engage with students.
Dylan West from Save Macquarie Arts told Green Left that worse conditions for teaching staff will impact students. They said the cuts would make the “quality of learning worse”.
Students believe that management wants to cut casual staff before the government’s Closing Loopholes law has an impact. The new law changes the Fair Work Act, giving staff the right to convert from casual to full- or part-time employment.
Students point out that the Vice Chancellor Bruce Dowton’s wage of $1 million and the $500,000 being paid to Dixon are remaining in place.
West pointed out that the lack of federal funding for tertiary education is a major problem. “Successive governments have refused to boost funding for universities, forcing them to cut staff, cut courses and lean on international students to fill funding gaps.
“We saw this particularly during the pandemic, when lots of jobs and courses were cut when money from international students dried up … many of those courses never came back.”
The Macquarie University National Tertiary Education Union unanimously voted, at three meetings, to condemn the cuts. However the Liberal Party-dominated Student Representative Council (SRC) refused to allow a motion condemning the cuts to be voted on.
The University of Sydney SRC passed a motion condemning the cuts, in solidarity with the Save Macquarie Arts campaign.
“Management is turning the university into a ‘degree mill’,” West said. “Staff are also facing pressure to dedicate more time to teaching and less to research.”
This is the “corporatisation of universities”, West said. “This is a public university, it should be a place where education is a right, a way to improve your life and the community at large.
“Universities are supposed to foster and grow knowledge: they are a public service; they are not supposed to be run for profit.”