by Shoshana Dreyfus and Brian Martin

In June 2024, staff at the University of Wollongong (UOW) were informed that cuts in expenditure were needed to meet a recurrent budget shortfall of tens of millions of dollars. Hundreds of positions were to be cut. University management attributed the shortfall to the student cap on international students imposed by the federal government. In a story about responses to the student cap across the country,

The national president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Dr Alison Barnes, said she was “deeply concerned” university managements might be weaponising the commonwealth’s migration policy as an “excuse to threaten staff and students with decisions that damage universities.”

At UOW in 2024, academic staff were targeted (our focus here); in 2025, professional and research staff came under the gun.

Rainbow stairs in UOW. In the background is building 19, with the offices of many of the academic staff who lost their jobs.

            This was a shock: entire academic units were to be “disestablished.” Rumours abounded as to the reasons for the sudden budgetary problems. Were they due to bad investments, poor planning or incompetence?

The metric

To decide what and who to cut, UOW management relied on a consulting firm, KordaMentha. It came up with a seemingly straightforward measure — which can be called a metric, formula or criterion — for assessing the viability of academic units: dollar cost per undergraduate student enrolled. It was simple enough, but woefully inadequate considering all the contributions of academics: in particular, research and administration were not considered, though a standard academic work allocation is 40% teaching, 40% research and 20% governance.

            For decades, academics have been encouraged to apply for research grants, especially prestigious ones from the Australian Research Council. Most of those seeking promotion have listed research as their primary strength, with grants received being a key sign of performance. In research-intensive units, many staff had been promoted to associate or full professor (levels D and E), reflecting their research achievements. Suddenly, the new metric ignored all this, seeing viability only in terms of undergraduate enrolments and associated salary costs. In other words, 100% of academics’ value was being judged on only 40% of their work – their teaching. A unit with high research productivity, in which many staff had accordingly been promoted to D and E, but with modest undergraduate enrolments, would be judged as overstaffed.

            This was the fate of human geography, one of the star disciplines in the university, with a stellar research reputation. It was slated for closure. According to a story in Wollongong’s daily newspaper, the Illawarra Mercury:

Six months ago, Professor Chris Gibson was the toast of the University of Wollongong after securing $3.6 million in federal funding for a project on how the Illawarra would adapt to a clean energy economy. Today he’s staring down the barrel of losing his job after UOW’s job-cutting team identified his discipline as not profitable enough.

Also under the gun were units in the humanities, mathematics and engineering.

            In some cases, after senior academics, D or E, had left, positions were advertised at level A, associate lecturer, a teaching-intensive post with little opportunity for research. Research performance has been disregarded in place of low-cost teaching.

            Additionally, there was a curious anomaly in the metric: it didn’t seem to account for HECS income or the relative cost of different disciplines. As a result of government decisions, students in humanities disciplines were paying more for their degrees than those in science and engineering, so logically it might seem that humanities disciplines needed fewer students per academic to be “cost-effective.” Furthermore, the internal funding model used to allocate funds to faculties strongly favoured technical disciplines, some of which received twice the support from UOW funds per student compared to humanities disciplines. So far as anyone could determine, none of this entered the metric. It seemed that the cuts targeted units that brought in more HECS funding for less expense. The metric was presented as objective even though it was built on arbitrary assumptions.

            There was another problem, more pressing and frustrating: many of the figures used to calculate the metric were wrong. Management had told staff they would use a particular metric but when it didn’t yield the cuts they wanted, they changed the metric with no warning and no accounting for why. Additionally, some of the staff numbers were plain wrong, for example not taking into account people on leave, and some enrolment figures were also incorrect. During the subsequent “consultation” that lasted several months, academics carefully examined the figures provided by UOW change managers and provided detailed lists of inaccuracies, such as the inclusion of wrong classes and wrong enrolments. Yet at the next iteration, the same wrong figures were presented. There seemed to be no respect for accuracy.

            Management repeatedly asserted that the metric was applied fairly, without targeting particular units. Yet academics discovered several instances in which two units had identical figures according to the metric, but only one was to be closed.

            And there was something deeper: a lack of notice. The metric was sprung on staff without any warning. Imagine a different scenario in which management prepared in advance for possible cuts, informing staff that every effort would be made to avoid job cuts but that if they had to be made, a metric would be used — and staff were consulted about and then told what it would be. In such a scenario, people would know whether they would be at risk and plan accordingly. In units overstaffed according to the metric, efforts might be made to boost student enrolments, and some staff might choose to seek work elsewhere. This was not to be. No preparations could be made because the metric came out of nowhere and dealt with only one part of academic work, teaching.

Michael Still, UOW Chancellor

The process

Use of a flawed metric was bad enough. Not correcting errors in it was further frustrating. Then there was the process of negotiation. From the beginning of the “change process,” staff were invited to contribute their ideas, but this was only after they’d been told their jobs were going. In any case, it turned out that most ideas were ignored, so the consultation seemed like a sham.

            Because of the enterprise agreement, negotiated with the unions on campus, certain processes must be followed by law. But there is no legal requirement that these processes have to be meaningful or carried out genuinely. It seemed to many staff that management was just jumping through mandated consultation hoops.

            Academics are skilled practitioners of their disciplinary expertise. Among the experts on campus are some who have studied change management and know best practice. However, these local experts were never consulted by management.

            There was never any suggestion by management of examining a different path. This contrasted with the process of expenditure cuts during Covid when the local NTEU branch proposed an alternative way to make cuts: reducing the salaries and numbers of the senior executive, thus making impressive savings while maintaining operations. During the 2024–2025 cuts, options along this sort of line remained off the table.

            For years, the skyrocketing salaries of senior Australian university executives have been a source of grievance among university staff.

That has been true at UOW. During the cuts process, a proposal was made to add another highly paid position to the executive team. After some bad publicity, the proposal was withdrawn.

            The interim Vice Chancellor, John Dewar, was criticised for a conflict of interest. According to a 5 February 2025 article in the Illawarra Mercury:

Documents revealed under freedom of information laws show UOW Chancellor Michael Still had known interim V-C Professor John Dewar would continue to work one day a fortnight for KordaMentha — as early as June last year.

            Yet when asked about this apparent conflict late last year, UOW had repeatedly responded that Professor Dewar was on leave from KordaMentha (KM), where he was a partner.

            He had actually been doing one day a fortnight unpaid “leadership” work with KM’s higher education consultants, while working a nine-day fortnight for UOW for the pro-rated equivalent of a million-dollar annual salary.

Reciprocally, KM was also in a conflict of interest by consulting for the university whose VC was a partner.

John Dewar, with the university library in the background

The impact

Every member of university staff was offered a VR. Many decided to take one, especially those in units targeted for reductions or elimination. Indeed, it seemed that everyone who lost their job obtained a VR, even when their departures were far from voluntary.

            Languages and linguistics were hard hit. Initially, all disciplines within this program (English, French, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish) were to be shut down. Students majoring in languages were to be left without options, unlike the usual process of teaching current students to the end of their degrees. As negotiations proceeded, a key complaint was that the International Studies program would be left without any language component, so a small amount of teaching in French, Spanish and linguistics was salvaged. Mandarin and Japanese were closed down entirely; they just happen to be the languages of Australia’s two biggest trading partners. The retention of some Spanish and French was only first and second year subjects; students partway through their degree cannot complete a major because all third-year subjects in these languages have been cut.

            Staff and student morale plummeted. The cuts were bad enough, but even worse was the feeling of bad faith engendered by management’s unilateral imposition of an arbitrary metric. Many hard-working and productive academics, committed for years or decades to their professional responsibilities, left their jobs with a bad taste in their mouths. This could not be a good way to promote the university’s reputation.

            Many of those who took a redundancy were senior high-profile researchers with large nationally competitive grants, which they took to other universities, meaning a loss in research, research expertise, grant income and projects with local, regional, national and international significance.

Resistance and lessons

The UOW cuts process reflected decades of gradually reduced academic participation in decision-making and the triumph of managerialism, something occurring across Australia and some other countries. Although Australian universities never approximated the ideal of a community of scholars, even the vestiges of such a vision have been squeezed out in a seemingly relentless move towards a factory model of education. At UOW, the union has long been strong compared to most other comparable universities, yet its efforts could do no more than limit the damage. One of the academics made redundant was the president of the NTEU branch.

            The union took a case to the Fair Work Commission. For this, it was necessary to undertake a forensic analysis of documents provided by management, which was an arduous task. Although Fair Work usually supports employers, the union had some victories because UOW management had been so blatantly contravened the enterprise agreement.

            The union’s use of official processes was a safe approach given that Australia’s industrial relations laws restrict industrial action to limited circumstances. Union members also promoted publicity and built alliances in the wider community. The Illawarra Mercury ran many good stories presenting the views of the union and disaffected staff as well as university management.

In November 2024, staff and students participated in protests.

            Many academics were not directly affected, their units not being on the target list. Still, many of them supported their at-risk colleagues. Some of those in the firing line acquiesced by taking voluntary redundancies and getting on with their lives. Others did what they could, through the negotiation process, to contest the changes, including by pointing to flaws in the figures used in the metric.

            Although UOW management claimed in meetings to follow the numbers without favouritism, there was much activity behind the scenes, with academics using connections with management to change decisions. There were small victories, a position saved here, a unit retained in reduced numbers rather than abolished. Some academics, whose jobs were not at risk, did what they could using back channels to protect colleagues at risk. Others apparently did deals that saved their own positions by sacrificing colleagues in their own unit or a related one.

The Union met with local federal Labor politicians Alison Byrnes and Stephen Jones, presenting their case and a request for some action on the part of the federal government, but to no avail.

            Overall, the cut story is one of unbridled management power taking little notice of scholarly expertise, giving no consideration to alternative paths, and failing to plan for a fair and compassionate process in a time of financial stringency. The core values of universities include a commitment to evidence, rationality and dialogue. The cut negotiations, in trashing these values, were insulting and galling to the academics involved. The mental health toll on staff, both those made redundant and those left behind, has been heavy.

The wider picture

Wollongong was not the only university affected by cuts. News reports revealed similar processes at several other universities, including the Australian National University (ANU) and University of Technology Sydney (UTS), among others. The processes imposed by university managements were similar in two important ways. One, management relied on external consultants, to which they paid eye-watering fees, for guidance about what units to abolish or reduce in size. However, the external consultants were different in each case: Nous Group at ANU and KPMG at UTS. Strangely, the criteria used by these different consultants were different. At UOW, staffing costs per student served as the central criterion, whereas at UTS, it was research output.

Protest against cuts at ANU

            Given that universities have many knowledgeable and competent staff capable of analysing budgets and formulating strategies, there would seem to be little need to pay external consultants huge fees for reports that show ignorance of what makes universities effective as educational institutions. This leads to suspicion that when university managers couldn’t find internal justifications for their preferred policies — to slash staff numbers and keep managers in charge — they turned to consultants willing to provide their desired recommendations.

            At the different universities, despite using different consultants and different criteria, there seems to be a pattern: humanities and social science disciplines have been hardest hit. This is strange, considering that Australian universities receive more money per student from student fees in the humanities, yet it is far cheaper to teach these students, given little need for expensive laboratory and other facilities, as well as support staff. The apparent targeting of the humanities has led some to suspect they are being targeted because they teach critical thinking that might be turned against the powerful. Few humanities scholars engage in political issues themselves, even in public commentary, so presumably it is their teaching, or the students they teach, who are seen as a threat by their political masters.

Participatory budgeting?

Could university finances have been handled differently? If cuts need to be made, one option is to agree on criteria well in advance of any financial crisis, so everyone knows how decisions will be made. Another option is collaborative decision-making. Rather than management implementing cuts with only a façade of consultation, budgetary challenges could be turned over to those affected, who are tasked to develop ways to increase income and/or manage savings. This might unleash lower-level infighting but might also enable the considerable skills of university staff to be turned to finding equitable ways to cope with austerity.

            The problem is that collaborative decision-making means top managers have less power and control. They would see this as a threat. Participatory budgeting has been used successfully by cities. Why not at universities?

Acknowledgements

We thank the many colleagues who have shared their stories and struggles. Adam Lucas, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey and Andrew Whelan offered many astute comments on drafts. Kelly Gates and several others gave useful feedback.

Further reading

For many stories about the UOW cuts, see https://www.facebook.com/unionuow/.

On Australian university use of consultants, see Adam Lucas and James Guthrie, “Feeding the beast: the use of private consultants by public universities and its implications for tertiary education.”

On the use of consultants in the Australian public sector generally, see Adam Lucas et al., “The Australian public sector and the PwC affair.”

Authors

Shoshana Dreyfus is an Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong. She was in the English language and linguistics program prior to it being gotten rid of. A modicum of this program now exists as part of the Major in Global Communication. Shoshana’s research focuses on language and power (e.g. here), the nonverbal multimodal communication of people with intellectual disabilities (e.g. here), genre analysis (e.g. here)  and activist discourse (e.g. here).

Email either shooshi@uow.edu.au or shooshid9@gmail.com

Brian Martin is emeritus professor of social sciences at the University of Wollongong. Web: https://www.bmartin.cc/; email bmartin@uow.edu.au