Written by Brianna Elliott
If you thought the course and job cuts at ANU were bad, they are, unfortunately, far from unique. The Renew ANU financial restructure caused months of protests and strikes led by staff and students against the imposed cuts.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) Division Secretary, Dr Lachlan Clohesy, states that since April 2024, “ANU has lost more than 1000 staff [members]”.
However, on Thursday 18 September, Interim Vice-Chancellor Rebekah Brown announced that there would be no further job cuts as part of Renew ANU, “no longer need[ing] any more involuntary redundancies”.
The NTEU Division Secretary says this decision was credited as “the collective work of union members which has saved these jobs at ANU”.
Despite ANU’s recent updates, across Australian universities, job and course cuts have become the new normal. The NTEU found that across 22 Australian public universities, there have been over 3500 job cuts since 2024, with at least 50 schools of study being merged or completely disbanded.
The University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) restructure proposed for more than 1100 subjects across all majors and minors to be cut, the discontinuation of 167 courses, and a further 134 full-time jobs lost, on top of the already announced 400 staff losses. In addition to closing its international studies, education, and public health schools, UTS will also echo ANU’s merging of schools by combining its previously separate business and law faculties into one overarching ‘Faculty of Business and Law’.
Charles Sturt University (CSU), while facing significantly smaller financial concerns than ANU and UTS, also still needs to “remove $35 million from the university’s operating budget” by 2027, according to their Vice-Chancellor Professor Renee Leon. However, despite primarily focusing on non-salary savings, Leon further stated that “there will also be job losses”.
The University of Canberra (UC) was in a similar financial situation to Charles Sturt University, facing a $30 million deficit. Despite seeing 200 jobs cut at the beginning of the year, with 120 of these being professional roles and 71 being academic positions, UC flew under the radar in making major headlines, unlike ANU.
In an alarming trend across multiple universities, the arts and humanities disciplines are disappearing rapidly. ANU is planning on merging or closing down the School of Music, amongst other humanities majors. Macquarie University is also facing drastic restructuring of the humanities disciplines, with Bachelor’s degrees in music, archeology, ancient languages, history, and sociology being revised, redesigned or disestablished completely.
Likewise, the University of Wollongong is cutting its cultural studies, languages, archeology and linguistics disciplines. The University of Tasmania is merging its humanities and social science school with the politics and international relations school, while also entirely removing German studies and languages from its curriculum.
More regional-based universities, like the Southern Cross University, are discontinuing their undergraduate degrees in music, art, design, and digital media.
The NTEU National President, Dr Alison Barnes, claims these job and course cuts are “picking away at the fabric of our society” and are “a hammer blow for future students” as they reduce the quality and diversity of higher education in Australia. She argues that “scrapping courses and cutting jobs” is “making the federal government’s goal for half of all young people to have degrees by 2035 impossible”.
While many universities are following the trend of financial restructuring through cuts across faculties and disciplines, ANU’s recent decision to end forced redundancies stands out against the crowd. ANU’s Interim Vice-Chancellor also announced that the Australian National Dictionary Centre, which was set to close under ‘Renew ANU’, will now be preserved.
The NTEU Division Secretary responded to these comments by emphasising that “removing forced redundancies is a significant step forward” and that “every university staff member in the country facing job cuts can take heart from what has happened at the ANU”.
Graphics by Fatima Usman
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