Australia’s universities certainly have more front than Myers, as the old saying goes. Not only have they allowed themselves to become blatant enablers of Chinese Communist Party influence in Australia; as the Chinese virus pandemic first began to come to light, they blatantly undermined Australia’s early border control measures.
When the Australian government announced travel restrictions from China, unis responded by advising their Chinese students on how to circumvent Australia’s restrictions by diverting through third countries. In some cases, universities openly paid Chinese students to take a brief holiday in luxury Dubai resorts before swanning on into Australia.
Anything to keep their foreign student river of gold flowing.
Now that that’s cut off, they’ve got the cheek to go to the government, cap in hand.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has, for the third time, intervened to block universities from using the JobKeeper program to retain staff.
The latest rule change means that universities will face a tougher test to get access to JobKeeper than other organisations, being required to show a drop in revenue over the first six months of this year, instead of the one-month and three-month options available to other employers[…]
The University of Sydney, which was confident of receiving JobKeeper benefits for more than 7000 staff, which would have offset its wage will by up to $140m, is not eligible[…]
Two other universities which also expected to receive JobKeeper — Murdoch and Bond — are now also unlikely to do so following the rule change made by the Treasurer, which applies to both public universities, and universities like Bond which [is] not.
Now universities are whining about job losses.
Signalling job losses, Charles Sturt vice-chancellor Andy Vann said the university would make savings in its workforce, courses, campuses and non-salary expenses, and would release plans for consultation with staff by the end of June.
“Unfortunately, we will be unable to achieve the savings required to be sustainable without job losses,” Professor Vann said.
“We do not have a target number — we will review our operations carefully and with respect to ensure we have the right structures to deliver our sustainability objectives.”
He also foreshadowed a second round of “workforce changes” in early 2021, which would help the university return to a balanced budget by the end of 2021.
Perhaps they might want to reconsider the staggering load of “bullshit jobs” they have steadily funded. Ditch the “diversity officers” and other clipboard warriors, who now outnumber actual teaching staff. Cutting bureaucracy would save up to two-thirds of their budgets.
It would be purely tokenistic, in the big picture, but vice-chancellors might also consider prising themselves loose from their million-dollar salaries.
I’d be more inclined to feel some sympathy for universities if they would actually prove themselves fit for purpose rather than being just ideological re-education camps. As I asked (only half in jest) recently, is it time to bulldoze the universities? Well, it looks like they’re saving us the trouble.
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