David Lloyd will continue as Uni SA VC until 2027

Professor Lloyd arrived in 2013, inheriting from Peter Høj a university in good shape. It still is, coming through the pandemic all but unscathed. Lloyd warned staff as COVID-19 began to bite last year that he could guarantee nothing, that revenue could fall between $30m and $120m in 2020.  But while he did not rule out cuts he made it clear that the university would work hard to protect jobs. “We’ve got this,” he told staff (CMM April 2020).

What Uni SA also got is a comprehensive teaching restructure, with courses taught by “curriculum communities” rather than by academics organised in discipline silos and with support services reconfigured in support (CMM February 7 2019).

And now there is more to come.

The university has a target of 25 per cent of a 20 per cent larger student community studying on-line by mid-decade.

There’s a curriculum re-design, said to be on the schedule, plus a research and industry engagement programme. The new Academic Enterprise Plan is a pointer.

The solar-wind powered SA rumour mill powered up late yesterday with suggestions that this is somehow linked to a merger with Uni Adelaide. Hard to see for quite a while, Professor Høj, now newly VC at Uni Adelaide, has a bunch of local issues to deal with. But in the past Lloyd has suggested a bigger reform, a comprehensive SA post-school structure, including TAFE (CMM August 10 2020).

Professor Lloyd was appointed in 2013, his contract was extended in 2015, to run to 2022. That was extended in 2019 to ’25 and now to 2027 (CMM January 15 2019).