The stoush between staff and senior management at the University of Melbourne has claimed its second victim after the chief architect of the university’s controversial internal restructuring process announced her decision to stand aside.
Crikey can reveal that that Elizabeth Baré, the head of university services, will call time on her 20-year career at the institution, as controversy rages over her implementation of “responsible division management”, which has seen key decision-making devolved to individual faculties.
The resignation comes just days after the dean of the university’s law faculty, James Hathaway, jumped ship in the wake of a bitter brawl with staff aggrieved at an internal RDM restructure, as reported by Crikey.
Under RDM, a key component of vice-chancellor Glyn Davis’ widely criticised Melbourne Model, faculties are expected to take responsibility for their finances as individual “business units” and employ new layers of corporate staff to oversee the transition.
Senior academics have told Crikey of a growing sense of ill will engulfing the university’s several campuses, with the battle likened to a previous stoushes with Davis in 2007.
Last month, staff at the Victorian College of the Arts slammed the RDM process, after it was revealed only 3% of existing positions will be continued in their current form into the new year. A damning survey showed 40% of VCA staff would quit their positions rather than deal with further rationalisation directives from new dean Sharman Pretty. At the same meeting, 84% per cent of staff expressed a vote of no-confidence in Pretty.
A spokesperson for the university, Christina Buckridge, denied the brawl over the cross-campus reforms had led to Baré’s resignation. She said that Baré would depart on December 31, with the RDM process set to be implemented on January 1. However, Crikey understands that the process will continue in her absence, with staff displaced under RDM given until May 31 to find an alternative job.
In an email announcing Baré’s resignation, Buckridge described the RDM process as “one of the most significant and innovative programs of administrative reform undertaken at Melbourne — and indeed within Australian higher education.”
“RDM is about working more efficiently. Liz has been involved in a broad-ranging organisational restructure, improvement of university’s purchasing arrangements and business process improvements.”
Buckridge said that Baré’s departure had been “brewing” for some time and that vice-principal major projects Lin Martin will temporarily take on the role of head of university services.
However, National Tertiary Education Union branch president Ted Clark told Crikey that Baré, as one of the key instigators of this RDM process, was “a key person in carrying forward the cost-cutting exercises that are associated with RDM” and that the pressure had become untenable.
Meanwhile, Victorian arts minister Lynne Kosky has agreed to receive a 15,000-signature parliamentary petition tomorrow to freeze the controversial curriculum changes at the VCA and ensure the institution receives sufficient government funding.
After a furore erupted in state parliament over the VCA’s future in September, Kosky said the creative nursery deserved to have its funding lifted to the same level as comparative institutions such as the National Institute for Dramatic Arts.
Celebrities including Eddie McGuire, Geoffrey Rush, Corinne Grant and Hugo Weaving have signed the petition, calling on the government to “save” the college.
I don’t see how ‘responsible division management’ is necessarily related to the so-called ‘Melbourne model’ of the curriculum. It seems to me the sort of devolved responsibility for administration and budget that is routine in several universities that have a standard undergraduate curriculum such as the University of Melbourne’s near neighbour Monash University.
The ‘Melbourne model’ isn’t ‘widely criticised’ as Crook claims. It may be criticised by some within the University of Melbourne and by some conservatives in the Melbourne establishment, but that is a rather narrow group despite Crook’s heavy reliance on it. The Melbourne model is widely admired within Australian higher education, emulated by some, and of course absolutely standard in elite US universities.
http://www.administration.unimelb.edu.au/project_rdmi/background.html
“Responsible division management”… “business units”…new layers of corporate staff… This is the organisational corollary of corporatist language. I can hear Don Watson retching in the corridor, groping through the toxic Prickspeak.
“Universities” are not universities any more. (I walked out in 1993).
Even then corporates had started drowning the academic kittens. I’d rather be a feral cat.
The humanities and pure sciences have been choked one by one. Corporatism is the real culture war. It’s colonised politics, academe and everything else. The brawls between Windspittle, Manne et al are mere tribal spats. The suits don’t give them a glance..
Of course those seeking to introduce responsible division management or any administrative change in any university relate it to the university’s academic plan, but the relationship here is contingent, not necessary.
In its background to the project the university says ‘The University of Melbourne’s Growing Esteem strategy is conceived as a triple helix – three strands of core activities in teaching and learning, research and knowledge transfer – each sharply focused and well-resourced, and all mutually supportive’.
The so-called triple helix is of academic activities. The university makes clear that ‘Ensuring that the University is equipped with cost efficient enabling support services which deliver quality services within the available resources’ is (correctly) only a supportive activity.
My God, they can’t help themselves, can they?
“Growing Esteem strategy…sharply focused and well-resourced and all mutually supportive.” Which of the following does this describe?
(a) The Richmond Football club
(b) A group of unemployed MBAs
(c) The Fairfax board
I wonder if Don Watson has an armed wing? Has he declared independence? Can I seek asylum in Watsonia?