Another week, another walloping for ANU management plans to save money.
Vice Chancellor Genevieve Bell is looking to reduce spending by $250m overall, including a $100 cut in staff costs.
But the university has less scaled back than surrendered on headcount cuts to the proposed College of Medicine and Science in the face of adamant opposition from staff. From 50 positions to go, the new proposal is 13, two vacant and 11 fixed term.
And last week, staff knocked back a suggestion from Professor Bell that they give up the 2.5 per cent instalment of the enterprise bargain agreed pay rise due mid-December. The university advises 4,782 people turned out, which was just about everybody on the roll and 88% of them voted no.
In contrast, in 2020 then-VC Brian Schmidt asked the university to defer a 2 per cent payrise for 12 months as a Covid-crisis saving. “We will transparently demonstrate how every dollar will be used to protect jobs,” he said. The proposal got up, just. Turnout was 61% of staff and 50.46% of them voted yes.
So what’s the difference? It’s not the strength of the no case. The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union campaigned hard both times. But long-time ANU observers say changing times and people have made a difference.
Brian Schmidt was respected as a researcher (a Nobel Prize will do that) and liked as an individual, working for decades in ANU. Also COVID was nobody’s fault – in 2020 Australians instinctively united behind leaders they trusted.
In contrast, Professor Bell has not been around long enough to have the chance to create her own human capital and has had to preside over unpopular smaller decisions – closing childcare centres, a blitz on staff leave and parking rates more than doubling for 2025.
These are as nothing compared to the biggest issue Professor Bello inherited; the failure of successive managements to sort out ANU’s business model. The university has bounced around for a decade, with various unfulfilled plans for growth and an apparent dearth of accountability.
Back in 2012, then Vice-Chancellor Ian Young said savings were needed and would come from axing academic programmes. It was followed by a badly handled attempt to cut costs in the music school.
There was a proposal to reduce language courses in 2016, which did not go far, leading to Professor Schmidt kicking in more money.
Covid was the crunch, with 467 jobs gone or going by April 2021 – which was supposed to be the end of it. “The sacrifices you have all made in the past year have gone a long way towards reducing our deficit and future-proofing the university from further financial shocks,” Professor Schmidt said, adding the university “does not anticipate any more job losses”.
Until that is, the recent announcement that $100m more in staff savings is needed.
“Last time people believed that giving up pay rises would save jobs. There was a strong “I’m not falling for that again” vibe this time around an ANU staff member says.
All of which has left Professor Bell with an unenviable task to start repairing the balance sheet fighting against entrenched Faculty positions, armed with a feather duster and a fistful of IOUs. International recruitment windfalls are well beyond the horizon, leaving domestic recruitment, the odd research grant and the grind of 1,000 tiny cuts the main focus into 2025.
