Major university announces cuts to jobs and degrees

Macquarie University is set to axe more than 50 academic jobs in a proposed restructure that the Tertiary Education Union says will cut degrees in archaeology, music and ancient languages.

Staff were told via videoconference on Tuesday afternoon about the “workforce realignment” proposal for the arts and science faculties, which the university says will save it $15 million a year. The plan is to cut course offerings with low enrolments so that the institution can focus on areas of demand.

Macquarie University is expected to axe more than 50 academic staff and reduce course options for its students.

The union says the arts faculty faces 42 job losses while the science and engineering faculty has 33 staff facing redundancies – a total of 75. University management quantified the figure as between 50 and 60.

Staff say the reduced academic offering poses a reputational risk to the university and follows years of belt-tightening, which led to larger class sizes.

Macquarie is the latest in a string of universities across NSW to retrench staff, with the University of Technology and Western Sydney University both planning to dump 400 employees. The University of Wollongong has plans to axe up to 270 positions.

“We are acting with a clear vision,” says vice chancellor Professor S. Bruce Dowton.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The job cuts come as mid-tier universities brace for reduced income from the international student market after Education Minister Jason Clare instructed immigration bureaucrats to deliberately slow the processing of visa applications once an institution reaches 80 per cent of a designated enrolment cap.

The restructuring at Macquarie is part of a broader plan that its management says will bolster long-term sustainability.

“Universities in Western democracies are facing a range of external pressures and Australia is no exception. Accordingly, we are acting with a clear vision and a strong sense of responsibility to ensure our education and research remain relevant, impactful and sustainable,” vice chancellor Professor S. Bruce Dowton said.

The proposal considers how to best align education and research in the two faculties with what students and employers want, and to “ensure the university can respond effectively to the significant challenges facing higher education, including increasing policy and funding uncertainty”.

Macquarie University posted a small deficit last year of $3.7 million and vice chancellor Dowton was paid a salary just over $1 million, its annual report shows.

The union said bachelor’s degrees in archaeology, music and ancient languages would be scrapped under the proposal, while “sociology and ancient history will be decimated”. It said arts students would no longer be able to study politics, gender studies, criminology, and psychological studies as majors.

A Macquarie University spokesman said foundational disciplines across the arts, including ancient history, archaeology, music and social sciences, would still be available but that courses with lower enrolments would be “rested”.

“So, while we are preserving traditional humanities subjects such as history, philosophy, and English literature, we are at the same time offering majors and courses that are focused on employability and meeting areas of student interest and demand,” he said.

The president of the Macquarie University branch of the National Tertiary Education Union, Dr Nicholas Harrigan, said the proposed job cuts were damaging to the university’s academic reputation.

“The ancient history department is a gem in Australian intellectual culture. It is an incredibly prestigious institution built around 13 professors and associate professors and they’re reducing them to three,” he said.

“It is damaging to the institution. Word gets around if your degrees have been gutted. It’s killing the goose who laid the golden egg, on a diet that has actual long-term damage to the institution,” he said.

The sociology academic said the restructure came after years of cost cuts.

“There has been a massive decline in the educational offering. Sociology has gone from 25 classes to 12 – and class sizes have gone up,” he said.

He also questioned why areas such as the humanities were facing cuts when they generate substantial revenue, while management had taken out large loans for building projects in recent years.

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