Your views: on axing top academics
Today, readers comment on Flinders University job cuts.
Commenting on the story: Warning for SA political research as Flinders Uni confirms staff cuts
Academic staff are promoted purely because of the quality of their research and other academic-related activities. They provide leadership in their discipline and mentor more junior and developing staff.
Given this self-defeating move by the leadership of the university in removing those who have proved themselves to be of the highest quality, why in the future would any rational academic at Flinders seek to make themselves potentially vulnerable by doing top-quality research, publishing in top-quality journals, and providing leadership for the next generation of academics?
As Dr Miller so eloquently put it, “Promotion now seems to come with a potential job loss attached to it if you dare climb the tree and succeed?” Not just tall poppy syndrome writ large but also a seeming display of kamikaze management. – Alistair McCulloch
This action is nothing new. The university has been shedding senior and experienced staff for some years now as a money-saving exercise.
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Once a liberal education institution, it’s now now a corporatised degree/research factory, wanting funds from foreign students, research quanta and replacement of senior staff. No wonder its message to senior staff is “F U”.
Present staff need to watch their backs – there is no such thing as tenure anymore. New junior staff are just fodder for the staffing machine, so should not think of academia as life-long pursuit. – Peter Brinkworth
Ageism of the highest order! Disgusting move by Flinders University. There will no longer be anyone like Dean Jaensch. – Pam Kelly
At a time when the function and foundation of democracy and democratic institutions need to be strengthened, this short sighted and knee jerk reaction by Flinders University is a tragic mistake.
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As a graduate of Flinders I can attest to the quality, expertise and hard work of the senior Political Science professors within the school and out with the wider community. The Morrison government’s almost cynical decision to double the cost of these courses has taken a toll, perhaps felt perhaps most acutely by the reflex nerve of the Flinders Vice Chancellor.
Whilst first stating that the university intended to lessen senior staff to allow more chances for the promotion of junior staff, it seems now that the costs of talent retention is the true thorn in their side. This coming from a university administration whose current ranking to Vice Chancellor salary ratio doesn’t quite add up.
This dramatic lack of faith in accomplished peer-reviewed, grant winning and respected academics looks to further the decline in a revered politics department that has already been forced to let internationally networked talent slip through the funding holes. This threatens to leave South Australia in a bland and homogenous state of academia as the big three universities clamber over each other to offer the same banal courses that will eventually implode in an oversupply of certain professions and further South Australia’s well documented brain drain.
With such talent at their disposal, one would think that Flinders would market this potential niche rather than squandering this knowledge base in an ill visioned book balancing that will only hurt future generations. – Alex Gordon-Smith
The numbers in the story don’t add up – 13 staff currently employed, take away five out of eight senior staff, then add back 2.2 EFTS does not add up to 16 staff. Does the 16 include “support staff” as well as academic staff?
It pains me to see, as a graduate of Flinders, it now being run as a business not as a university. It is all about cash flow, revenue streams and profits – and what are they doing with the profits given that they do not have shareholders? – Geoff Sauer
Commenting on the story: Treasurer cautious about power price relief
So Nationals leader David Littleproud wants consideration of nuclear power to be part of an urgent national discussion about quick remedies to the current acute energy price crisis. Sounds like the perfect way to pointlessly bog things down.
Its right up there with ultra-zealous state persecution and incarceration of climate protestors as a senseless, myopic response to an emergency. – Jim Allen
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