Clouded optimism at Uni SA

Vice Chancellor David Lloyd is not entirely his sunny self

In a message to staff Professor Lloyd looks forward to the vaccinated state of SA and  “a return to life under our control, not in the control of some unseen malevolent microscopic life-threatening foe that somehow infringes on our civil liberties by remote control.”

“We are positioned so much better than most in the sector – let’s not lose sight of that, and the opportunity that privileged position affords us.”

Which is sunny. What isn’t is his warning  the university will be in shade for a while yet as the loss of ‘2020, ’21 and maybe half of 2022 commencing international students impacts on finances. The impact, “is unseen and it’s travelling. It’s unseen in annual reports. It’s travelling in the actuals – the reduced budgetary projections, where ironically we hope that our forecasting is for once, not accurate. But the gap is certainly there, and it is material.”

There is a likely reason for this. While Uni SA got through 2020 in ok shape, (“we emerged from 2020 with only a little scathe,” the VC writes in the annual report, (CMM August 26)) perhaps he wants to discourage great expectations.

Especially now, enterprise bargaining is underway and management is facing a tough team from the National Tertiary Education Union.