Staff tell board proposed cuts will be significant

Massey University staff have expressed their displeasure at an academic board meeting after being told they could not table a proposal they say has significant implications.

The meeting yesterday attracted more than 25 people, not including the board itself, many of whom wanted to address the potential cuts to two schools in the colleges of humanities and social sciences proposed in October. The university has also proposed cutting its engineering and plant science offerings.

The proposals will result in job and course losses, with students having to switch universities, but Massey says it is facing significant financial challenges that need to be addressed “urgently”.

Associate professor Claire Matthews, who chaired the meeting, said there had been ongoing interest in the academic meetings, which was “pleasing” to see.

But professor Lisa Emerson said she was disappointed to see the proposal for change was not on the day’s agenda. She had received 17 emails from staff wanting the document put before the board.

Matthews said that was not possible due to privacy concerns. She would allow discussion on the summary document, but not any about whether it should be brought before the board.

Emerson “pushed back on that” and said there were “strong grounds” for the request to be considered.

The proposal violated the university’s strategic plan and its commitment to honouring treaty principles, she said.

“The thing I most want to argue ... is that it presents a considerable academic risk to the college and to the university.”

She said they were looking at a loss of about 40% of staff in the two colleges.

As someone who had seen the proposal, she said she could assure the board the quality of education would decrease and there would be insufficient staff to cover their “academic offering”.

“There is some real concern our postgraduate programmes in themselves are at risk, and I would ask the question, ‘is that who we want to be?’”

College of humanities and social sciences pro vice-chancellor Cynthia White said they were facing a $7m deficit and had considered

carefully what each school needed.

She responded to criticism about a lack of transparency, particularly when choosing which staff would lose their positions, but said it was focused on “roles” and not “individual performance”.

There would also be “no change” to the university’s 2024 academic offerings in a bid to give students certainty, she said. “In the past decade … about one-third of the college has dropped away. There is no tolerance at any level for us to continue to cost the taxpayer that amount of taxpayer funding when we speak about the value and relevance of what we do.”

Vice chancellor Jan Thomas said years of underfunding for universities would “naturally” result in losses of capability, and New Zealand should be “worried” about that. But they had to operate within their means.

Te Tira Ahu Pae vice president Flynn O’Hallahan said student morale had plummeted, and it had been compounded by the proposals.