Australian National University to cut extra 215 jobs

The Australian National University will cut a further 215 jobs to help meet a budget shortfall due to COVID-19.

Australian National University vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt. Picture: Ray Strange

The Australian National University will cut a further 215 jobs to help meet an estimated budget shortfall of $103m in each of the next three years as a result of COVID-19.

In a message to staff, vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt said the university was facing the worst crisis of its near 75-year history and must be reshaped to match financial realities while still meeting national needs.

“The stark reality is we need to save money, and this will mean spending a lot less, both on our non-salary expenditure but also on salaries,” Professor Schmidt said.

He added that the university must continue to deliver on its mission and “not be a hollowed-out shell of our former selves”.

The ANU job cuts come ­immediately after UNSW’s decision to force more than 250 staff into redundancy.

The National Tertiary Education Union said job losses in Australian universities now ­totalled more than 11,000 in the past few months, not including thousands of casual and fixed-term staff who had either been sacked or not renewed.

“If it was just about any other sector of the economy it would be headline news,” said NTEU president Alison Barnes.

“To make matters much worse, the government’s proposed changes to university funding mechanisms will result in a funding cut across the board of at least 15 per cent per student place.”

The 215 job losses at ANU come on top of 250 voluntary ­redundancies which were ­already in train. The university hopes to achieve the new job cuts voluntarily, but in a “last resort” will use forced redundancies. The losses are expected to ­include academic and professional staff.

Staff were told that their agreement to defer pay rises in 2020 and 2021 had saved $13.5m, which led to up to 90 jobs being saved.

In a paper outlining its recovery plan the university said the “best-guess scenario” was that international student numbers next year would be 30 per cent down on 2019. The university also acknowledged that inter­national student revenue was its greatest area of budget risk.

Aside from the job cuts the university will also save money with other measures including limiting the use of consultants and contractors, limiting travel and negotiating better rates for air tickets (when travel resumes), and using less office space due to flexible work.

Professor Schmidt will continue the 20 per cent pay cut he took in the latter half of this year during 2021. Before taking the cut he was already one of the lower paid vice-chancellors in Australia, earning less than half of the $1.6m paid annually to University of Sydney vice-chancellor Michael Spence.

Earlier this year ANU borrowed $200m to help it through the crisis. It now has borrowings of $315m, within a debt limit of $800m set by the federal Finance Minister.

The ANU council has ­decided the university will budget for a cash reserve of at least $250m at the end of 2020, equivalent to three months of operational expenses.