BY SARAH PEART

MELBOURNE -- La Trobe University faces its gravest ever crisis. If a new, budget-cutting plan prepared by university management is implemented, it will mean the end of countless subjects across nearly all of the university's faculties and a $1.5 million cut in staff funding over the next five years.

Over the summer break, the architect of the changes, Dr Raoul Mortley, the former vice-chancellor of the private Bond University, drafted a “regeneration plan”, the core of which is a proposal to junk every arts subject which attracts less than an average of 25 students over a three-year period.

Arts subjects that “fail” to attract more than 10 students in the first few weeks of semester would also be automatically abolished.

If implemented, the cuts could abolish approximately half the language, history, culture, philosophy, media, women's studies, and theatre and drama subjects, and a quarter of the politics, legal studies, English, art history, cinema, archaeology, sociology and anthropology subjects before 2005. The music department was abolished last year. No department will be allowed to offer more than six first-year subjects per semester.

Mortley has also given senior lecturers from the philosophy and law departments a choice once they become “too expensive” for the university to continue employing them: accept a “generous” retirement package or work for free.

Mortley's plan is accompanied by a code of conduct for university council members and staff, from vice-chancellor Michael Osborn. The code's main aim is simple: to silence staff dissent, or as Osborne put it, to “maintain and enhance the reputation of the University”.

Chris Atkinson, a member of the newly formed Save the Arts Coalition and of the university's Resistance club, told Green Left Weekly: “The university administration claims these cuts are being proposed in order to save the university money. The truth is that arts was the only university department that made a profit last year.

“This is an attack on students' basic standard of education. If these cuts aren't stopped we are looking at La Trobe taking a massive step down the road of corporatisation of education.”

The student-initiated Save the Arts Coalition is collecting signatures on a petition calling on Osborn not to commit to more cuts to the arts faculty for the next five years, reverse all previous arts cuts and provide an extra $1 million to the library. Two thousand students have signed the petition so far.

The coalition is planning a speak-out on May 25, featuring representatives of the coalition and the National Tertiary Education Industry Union. Plans have been made to present the signed petitions to the vice-chancellor and to launch a “log of claims” campaign similar to those which have been successful at other campuses.

To get involved in the campaign, phone 9639 8622.

Tools

• Bookmark This Page
• Print This Page