Acting UC vice-chancellor Michelle Lincoln says courses will also be reviewed. Photo: UC.
The cash-strapped University of Canberra has announced a round of voluntary redundancies for academic staff and will review its course offerings.
The move is another cost-saving measure for the university, which is battling to return its budget to balance by the end of next year and needs to cut $50 million from its recurrent spending.
It comes on top of UC saying more than 200 professional and academic positions will be axed.
Acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Michelle Lincoln said the voluntary separation program would be available across all five faculties.
“The introduction of the VSP is part of our strategic approach to rebalancing our finances and charting our way towards a self-sustaining position,” Professor Lincoln said.
“This is an opportunity for interested academic staff to submit an expression of interest to resign from the university in return for a separation payment based on their years of continuous service,” she said.
Submissions for the expression of interest will open on 16 December 2024 and close on 17 January 2025.
While the VSP is underway, the university will review faculty operations where staffing is considered “excess to operational need”, with an emphasis on courses with consistently low enrolments, and where changes in course offerings may need to be considered.
“The VSP and localised faculty organisational change proposals will be managed to ensure we maintain our excellence in student experience, education and research, and we take a transparent and compassionate approach with our staff as much as possible,” Professor Lincoln said.
The university says it is making every effort to limit the number of staff redundancies across both professional and academic staff cohorts; however, in some instances, staff redundancies will be inevitable.
Last week, the University’s Council approved the university-wide organisational restructure and the budget for the 2025 financial year.
“Staff impacted by the disestablishment of their roles across our professional staff areas have the option to choose redundancy or redeployment,” Professor Lincoln said.
“This process is still in progress and our staff continue to be supported through career planning support, access to fee-free degrees, mentoring and networking opportunities.”
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