The Australian higher education sector is now on a slippery slope, with the University of Melbourne leading the slide to the murky bottom. Melbourne has announced that because of financial losses it will cut 220 full-time academic and administrative jobs. One hundred of those will be voluntary redundancies, and the rest will result from a ban on hiring new staff, renewing contracts or replacing workers who leave. In an e-mail to staff, Glyn Davis, vice chancellor of Melbourne, described the cuts as an “economic-response programme”. Prof. Davis told a national radio programme that Melbourne lost A$191 million (Rs.798 crore) last year, but stressed that “nothing inside the university” has changed and that “nobody will be asked to leave”.
Melbourne is not the only Australian university in this predicament — most and possibly all are likely to be in the same boat. Melbourne is just the first one brave enough to admit that it has messed up its finances. Yet the university is blaming the financial crisis and even government policies rather than admitting that the blame lies with bad advice, greedy investors and the idea that universities should operate as businesses.
Monash University recently announced that it had “exercised its sunset clause” on a A$300 million (Rs.1,354 crore) deal with the property developer Rino Grollo’s Equiset company, to provide more student accommodation (which would have appealed mainly to international students) and a new law building. In a statement, Monash also blames the “global financial crisis”, which had “placed significant… constraints on the commercial feasibility of components of the approved project”.
The private tertiary sector is also in dire straits, with two more institutions going into receivership in late July, leaving international students out of pocket through lost deposits and tuition fees. Add to this the racially motivated assaults on Indian students by gangs of thugs, and the result is an industry in deep turmoil.
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)