The university is hiring education academics while others are leaving

Last year La Trobe U announced it was “refreshing and renewing” its education course portfolio and planned to hire research-active academics, to “heighten our reputation as a school of choice in the teacher education landscape,” CMM November 21).

Which it is doing – advertising for an associate head, learning and teaching and unspecified numbers of academics in social inclusion and diversity, innovative pedagogies and learning sciences/science of learning.

But some of the new jobs replace staff who are leaving – management estimated last year 25 people could be “potentially displaced”.

Education academic Cathleen Farrelly warns staff will now be “almost entirely” allocated at the metro Melbourne Bundoora campus but “teach intensively” at in the regions on a fly-in, fly-out basis. “These cuts sound the death knell for teacher training at regional campuses,” she says.