Another round of jobs cuts are coming at ANU, with change proposals in six new areas next month and more expected from July – which will just about cover the whole university.
There is no official statement of how many jobs are already gone, but 650 so far is circulating on campus and the reasons for them are thus far poorly sold. An open letter circulating on campus demands management make its case for savings, rather than “rely on financial modelling that remains secret premised upon questionable assertions of a financial crisis.”
The National Tertiary Education Union argues management has already achieved the $100m target head count saving and need not press on.
The union argues it is all due to “poor leadership, financial mismanagement and poor governance.”
Plus malice. “Instead of trying to rebuild trust, the Vice-Chancellor will cause more pain for ANU staff. The cuts are cruel,” says union branch president Millan Pintos-Lopez.
But they are not, at least from an apparently panicked management’s perspective, irrational – but rather an attempt to prepare for crises to come, to address bad (or worse) no decisions over the years.
The ANU community assumes that its special status as a policy resource for the nation dating from its foundation in 1946, now worth $220m this year is immutable. It is certainly an essential foundation of the university’s finances. The possibility of it ever being cut may have crossed the mind of members of Council who watched the VC and team have a terrible time in Senate Estimates last year from Liberal education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson, starting with Gaza protests on campus.
While there is nil chance of a conservative government trumping ANU funding now, the possibility that the university’s solvency could depend on a Minister cannot be calming. The same would apply to no emergency support in another pandemic. There may be no risk of ANU defaulting as long as the cash flows, but it does not have the deep reserves of the foundation universities in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
ANU has also taken a revenue hit over time by capping student numbers, including internationals. In 2016, then Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt wanted to make ANU more of a residential campus and in 2018 set a 20,000 student ceiling.
And the ANU community does not like change. Former VC Ian Young (2011-16) had multiple goes at restructures. He tried to cut underperforming academic programs. He proposed big changes to the music school, including an ahead-of-its-time teaching partnership with the Manhattan School of Music. Professor Young hoped the College of Arts and Social Sciences would adopt a “forum” style of teaching.
He lost on all of them when staff dug in.