The university proposes staff cuts in the business school – people in leadership have nothing to worry about  

The cuts continue at Macquarie U, with a management proposal on how the business school reach its savings target by shedding academic staff.

But selectively, “staff in teaching and leadership positions are excluded … as these positions disproportionately contribute to teaching delivery and leadership of teaching and are therefore not redundant in the current context,” the workplace change proposal states.

And lest anybody miss the point, the proposal separately states, executive dean positions (in this case the one held by Eric Knight, who joined in September), “are part of the University Executive Group and are therefore also proposed to be out of scope.”

Others exempt include new hires and externally funded positions.

Which means the rest of the 190 or so FTE will have to be the source of 17 to 27 FTE positions to go. There is no word of what this could mean for casuals. And there is not much anybody given a black spot can do about it, with allocations of savings, “informed by an assessment to the teaching and research needs and not any assessment of individual performance.

There’s more of the same in two other faculties

The same process is also underway in the medicine-health-human sciences and science and engineering faculties. Arts is exempt because it made its savings targets through voluntary redundancies.

Management wants overall academic staff costs down a further $19.2m to reach the original overall target for them of $25.2m. Professional staff have been through the same savings-process (CMM February 16).

“Our emphasis throughout is that change is managed in an equitable, transparent and organised way underpinned by our commitment towards ongoing engagement as we consult on these proposals,” Vice Chancellor S Bruce Dowton told staff yesterday.