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ANU faces drastic cuts
A $ 51 million cut at ANU means shedding staff numbers by several hundred. By Aileen Macalintal
To try and secure a“ financial footing” amid budget cuts, the Australian National University( ANU) has announced plans to reduce its workforce, offer a voluntary early retirement scheme and recruit more students.
These drastic measures come following the announcement of a $ 51 million cut to ANU’ s income over the next two years.
Part of the plan is to reduce professional staff numbers by 230, following concerns over the inefficient duplication of roles and processes within the university’ s administrative system.
The ANU’ s vice-chancellor, professor Ian Young, said during a recent meeting with both students and staff that,“ ANU currently has the highest ratio of professional staff to academic staff in Australia. We have more than 2300 professional staff to our 1600 academic staff,” Young said.
“ Some of this is because of the unique needs of a research-intensive university. But much of it is because we have built administrative systems that are overly complex; we have duplicated roles, and created processes that are frustrating for all of us.”
Aside from a significant administrative overhaul, funding of $ 1 million will also be provided for retraining, redeployment and management change.
Amid the cuts, Young also announced that“ all ANU staff will receive a two per cent salary increase. That increase will be backdated to 1 July, and paid on 1 August. It will be followed by a further two per cent pay rise on 1 July 2014”.
However, Deborah Veness, acting ACT division president of the National Tertiary Education Union( NTEU), said the union is uneasy about the drastic workforce cuts.
“ We deplore the funding cuts that have driven it to make these decisions. However, we are concerned about a number of aspects of the proposal, which we believe will cause greater problems for the institution,” said Veness, who is also a member of ANU staff.
“ I don’ t know how many of the 2300 non-academic staff positions will remain because the university has not shared that information,” she said.
Veness said it was important to ask how many of the university’ s staff members are not academic, technical, specialist, or research assistant.
“ It is from this relatively small group that the university intends to shed 230 positions. Once we know how big that group is, it is worth knowing what those people currently do. And who will do that work in the future,” she said.
Veness said the ANU is struggling with funding as are other institutions.“ However, the package outlined by the vicechancellor is very unfair to a small subset of professional staff, and, in the union’ s opinion, will cause more problems in the short-to-medium-term than it will solve.”
She added the planned boost in undergraduate students will increase the remaining staff’ s workload and also warned that industrial action was a possibility.
“ We are in the middle of a bargaining period, during which we have the option of taking industrial action. We would prefer not to do that, but if our members begin to show evidence of stress of the levels we are expecting, we will need to address that in some forceful way,” she said.
Derek Corrigan, an ANU professional staff member, said he was upset by the vice-chancellor’ s announcement.
“ As a staff member, the cuts affect me very personally,”
Corrigan said.
Instead of looking forward to an orderly transition to retirement, Corrigan said he is now forced to rethink his future.
“ I am required to make an almost instant decision between grabbing any additional money on offer and running, or [ making ] a continuing contribution to the research effort, following a planned completion of current and future commitments and then making an orderly transfer of my knowledge base.
“ I still have much to do and many projects to complete. It has been my observation over many years that the ratio of professional staff to academic staff is a naturally maintained distribution, relating to the workload generated by the teaching and research activity.”
Meanwhile, the Australian National University Students’ Association( ANUSA), is relieved to find no cuts to education and teaching funding at the university.
ANUSA president, Aleks Sladojevic, said that while a decrease in professional staff numbers is regrettable,“ the quality of education and teaching at the university is now secure”.
The comprehensive package includes a student recruitment drive to increase undergraduate student numbers to 2550 commencing students by 2015 and international coursework students by 1.5 per cent each year.
Sladojevic sounded a warning, however, about future class sizes. In increasing the intake of undergraduate students, he said,“ The university must ensure that tutorial sizes do not increase as student numbers grow at the ANU”. n
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www. campusreview. com. au July 2013 | 9