WHEN UNE vice-chancellor Jim Barber announced on Friday he was walking away from the role, the tributes flowed in with an eerily similar tenor.
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Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall lauded Mr Barber for guiding the uni to a “very healthy financial position” with “millions of dollars poured into on-campus infrastructure improvement”.
Chancellor John Watkins also invoked the language of commerce, praising Mr Barber for meeting a range of key performance indicators.
Of course, in the age of economic rationalism, universities must increasingly embrace a commercial model.
Ever since Gough Whitlam abolished uni tuition fees in the early ’70s, successive governments have pruned back funding for higher education.
With that has come a quantum shift in the operating environment for unis.
Where once lecturers could speak with impunity on issues of public concern, they now risk being sacked.
Unis are also clamouring for new customers, casting a global net for fresh online and on-campus students.
And courses are constantly being reviewed for their economic viability.
When viewed through that prism, UNE’s decision to virtually obliterate its computer science department and sack nine out of the 10 lecturers seems like little more than a hard-headed business decision.
Indeed, the uni’s management claims the move was simply about calibrating its course structures with demand, opting instead for a new multi-disciplinary school called “computational science”.
But the National Tertiary Education Union has raised concerns about the integrity of the review process, saying it lacked transparency and logic.
It claims student numbers in computer science are buoyant and there remains more than enough work for 10 lecturers.
It begs the question why, then, has the uni taken a salami slicer to the department?
The uni’s PR team was as silent as a trappist monk when contacted by The Leader yesterday about the claims.
It may be true that universities have been thrust into a brave new commercial world, but that does not absolve them from a fundamental responsibility to communicate with their staff and students.
UNE owes the lecturers it is cutting, and the students part-way through their degree, a more thorough explanation.