Staff at universities in Canberra say they're too frightened to raise concerns about job cuts, out of fear they could be next. The Australian National University is in a consultation phase after announcing dozens of redundancies. That's on top of hundreds of job cuts at the University of Canberra. Experts say these changes in the higher education sector could spell trouble for the ACT.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00At the ANU's Bush campus in Canberra, anxiety is brewing.
00:10One in eight staff members is facing the prospect of being made redundant as the university
00:15confronts a $200 million deficit.
00:19A learning and teaching manager, Will called Sam, was told his job was on the line via
00:24an online town hall meeting.
00:27This of course has implications for war at the university.
00:33He's too scared to be identified in case it risks his future employment.
00:38We just felt absolutely devastated.
00:40We've put effort into long term strategies and to see years of work for some people just
00:46get kind of thrown aside, it feels shocking.
00:49Town halls are meant to give staff the chance to ask questions, but Sam says many were ignored
00:55or even deleted from the online chat.
00:58The university had offered two weeks of consultation before their proposal became reality.
01:04But Sam told me he didn't think the university listened to any of the feedback from his team.
01:10He said it felt like the ANU was just paying lip service to the process.
01:15Over at the University of Canberra, the new ACT government has committed to a governance
01:20review to probe how the uni fell into a $36 million financial black hole.
01:27Staff have now been told more than 200 positions will be cut before Christmas.
01:33It feels like decisions have already been made, so even though we have an opportunity
01:39to be consulted, I don't know how empowered we feel about those consultations.
01:46This is genuine consultation.
01:49I'm sorry to hear if some staff apparently feel intimidated, but that's definitely not
01:54the purpose of this exercise.
01:56This is about removing positions, it's not about targeting particular people.
02:02Staff are concerned about a shrinking cohort of professional support.
02:07They cut staff, but the workload doesn't get any less.
02:11We have to make changes because the sector's changing, funding's changing, and no organisation
02:16can stand still and ignore the outside world.
02:19It's really clear that the ANU and the University of Canberra are not alone, and we're going
02:25to see far more staff savings.
02:27So far, seven universities have announced significant restructures that could amount
02:32to more than 1,200 jobs lost.
02:35The underlying issues are a change to the funding for domestic undergraduate students.
02:42And now, the looming prospect of caps on high-paying international students.
02:47You take that out of the economy, that has a significant impact, particularly for our
02:51small business, our tourism sector, because families come and visit, so the knock-on effect
02:57is significant.
02:58Which could spell trouble in the ACT, where international education is one of the most
03:03lucrative exports, worth more than a billion dollars a year.
03:08The ANU seems to be pulling every lever to try and tighten its belt.
03:12It's just put this prime block of land here in Weston on the market.
03:18But the university says it has no plans to offload other assets like this car park in
03:23Canberra's city centre.
03:25It was purchased for nearly $17 million last year for the College of Health and Medicine,
03:31which has now been disestablished.
03:33Although these are difficult and painful cuts, they are not reducing the overall contribution
03:41that both institutions make to Canberra.
03:45Testing times for the knowledge capital of the country.