On November 5, 2009, you published a “correction” to Andrew Crook’s story (“Ill will across Melbourne uni claims another victim“) supplied by Christina Buckridge, manager, corporate affairs, University of Melbourne.
I am writing to correct the correction. Buckridge said:
Andrew Crook cavalierly claims in his article that “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% of staff expressed a vote of no-confidence in Pretty”.
To set the record straight:
The meeting referred to in the statement was held on October 14, 2009 and organised by the “SAVE VCA” campaign. The university understands it was an informal gathering of approximately 40 staff members – which is approximately 20-25% of the Faculty of the VCA and Music (VCAM) staff members in total.
All staff at VCAM Southbank (the former VCA) were sent an email invitation to a “Critical VCAM Staff Meeting” by film lecturer Ros Walker. Forty-eight staff attended included one head of school. There was nothing “informal” about it. The purpose was to refine the staff’s proposal for a curriculum consultation process. It was around a quarter of Southbank staff — a good representation given that many VCAM staff are part-time, and many others are practising artists who only teach one or two days a week.
Item two on the agenda was an anonymous staff ballot run by the National Tertiary Education Union. It was held to find out if perceptions about the depth of unhappiness at the faculty were correct. Forty four staff completed the ballot and staff were given the option to abstain from answering any question. Results were relayed back to the staff during the meeting.
Key survey results included:
- 37 out of 44 staff (84%) had no “confidence in the management of the current Dean of VCAM” (an additional three staff members were “undecided”)
- 17 out of 44 staff (39%) “plan to seek employment outside of VCAM in the next 12 months”
- 31 out of 44 staff (70%) of staff were undecided or thought their professional advice had not been sought in “consultations about curriculum changes that have happened or are under way”.
It’s clear from this sample group that the dean’s leadership is not generating confidence, there is an imminent threat of talented teaching staff leaving VCAM and UoM “consultation” processes have not engaged with staff.
Buckridge goes on:
The views of staff in attendance at this particular meeting are not representative of the views of all VCAM staff.
Unfortunately, the University of Melbourne have made no move to garner the opinions of all VCAM staff. In lieu of that, I would have thought a 25% sample was pretty good litmus test. Newspoll certainly rely on a lot less.
Meanwhile, vice-chancellor Glyn Davis was hitting the airwaves last week to play the victim:
Jon Faine: Do you commit to consulting with the broader community? I understand the university’s quite surprised at that depth of emotion and feeling from the graduate community from VCA and the arts community in Melbourne. Do you now listen?
Glyn Davis: Yes but the suggestion is that we weren’t listening before.
Faine : That is the feeling people were given.
Davis: That’s the perception it doesn’t mean it is the reality.
Really Mr Davis? But your publicist wasn’t too keen on listening to the views of 25% of your VCA staff?
According to Buckridge:
No poll has been taken or other survey conducted of all VCAM staff on the subject matter of dean Pretty’s leadership.
Yes good point — when is that poll happening? Certainly overdue isn’t it?
We’re hearing the word “consulting” a lot from UoM. Indeed, Glyn Davis announced only on Friday that the elusive VCA “discussion paper” will now happen sometime in the first quarter of next year. This sounded promising until he clarified that UoM would hand pick the “group of people drawn from staff and students and external arts community who will consult with people both inside and outside the institution.”
Why doesn’t UoM just save everyone the time and tell us what the “discussion paper” results will be now? That is:
- Melbourne Model = Good
- Specialised and practical-based studio training = old view
- Dean Pretty = effective financier saving VCA from itself and;
- The concerns of staff, student, alumni and arts industry = misinformation.
I’m not quite sure what happened to the “fully independent, transparent” and “inclusive of independent and civic stakeholders” review undertaken of the VCA’s curriculum and pedagogy, together with other matters, including its finances and funding requirements”, which Davis promised to all living former Victorian arts ministers back in August.
Maybe it’s like the promise vice-chancellor Davis made to Victorian arts minister Lynne Kosky that all VCA courses would remain 75% specialised under the Melbourne Model. Davis forgot to mention that “specialised” doesn’t necessarily mean practical/studio based training (just ask a VCAM first year music student whose credit points for practical subjects drop by 31.25% from next year). Did Davis also mention to Kosky that VCAM semesters are being cut by up to 25% from 2010 “to move to a less intensive teaching delivery model that aligns to the University academic calendar”, according to the VCAM 2010 Business Plan?
Buckridge claims:
Given that the phrase “84% of staff expressed a vote of no-confidence in Pretty” is factually incorrect and potentially defamatory to Professor Pretty, these facts should be noted.
It seems the only thing Buckridge’s “correction” has achieved is drawing attention to UoM’s outrage that 25% of VCAM staff dare express their opinion.
Note, Buckridge takes no issue with Crikey revealing that the VCAM staff present voted against implementation of the “Responsible Division Management” staffing changes (as did the UoM Law School) or that 17 highly skilled, valuable staff members from this group are actively seeking to leave VCAM. Buckridge doesn’t dispute the claim that RDM process leaves only 3% of VCAM professional staff in unchanged positions.
Buckridge doesn’t blink an eye about the resignation of Elizabeth Baré, the head of university services (and architect of RDM) or the “growing sense of ill will engulfing the university’s several campuses”.
This attitude is much like the acting-vice-chancellor telling Victorian Upper House MPs to keep their opinions to themselves when they went to debate the SAVE VCA motion in August (which they nonetheless passed unanimously).
Let’s cut the spin, University of Melbourne.
The university can “consult” and “discuss” as much as they like. The day-to-day reality at VCA is staff opinions are shot down, courses have been cut and practical curriculum content will be lost from next year.
UoM should know by now VCA staff, students, alumni and industry will not stand by and watch this senseless trashing of an Australian arts icon.
The Vice-Chancellor is a wily old politician, isn’t he? Notice that he didn’t deny that they weren’t listening before: he said that “the suggestion is that we weren’t listening before”. He followed up by saying that a perception isn’t necessarily the reality. Both statements are true, and both leave open the possibilities that the University authorities have not been listening and that the perception is accurate.
The Orwellian language in which decision-making is framed and, indeed, by which decision-making is determined at the University of Melbourne is something I experienced first-hand a few years ago. All members of staff from my Faculty, academic and professional (does anyone else find it curious that academics are not considered “professional”?), were invited to hear the Dean’s update on recent strategic developments. We all assembled in a large lecture-theatre, and the General Manager of the Faculty and then the Dean spoke about management decisions and their implications and took questions.
It was a strange and desultory affair. The decisions had already been made and were not going to be altered: quite why we had been brought together was, therefore, unclear. My most vivid memory is that the Dean seemed genuinely surprised at the lack of enthusiasm and interest in the audience, but she vowed to continue with the “consultative process”.
This is the sinister effect of managerialist language: the Dean was genuinely incapable of understanding that consultation does not mean getting people together to announce what has already been decided.
War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery . . .
http://www.rodbeecham.com.au
So what’s your solution: for the other faculties to continue subsidising the Victorian College of Arts to have student:staff ratios and facilities far better than they have any prospect of enjoying?
Gavin, they have enough money to run the show, it is how they are making decisions to spend the money that is the problem. Do you believe the financial figures coming out of Glyn’s office? Do you see the enormous building works going on the Melbourne University campus, and the ones that are planned? A current example is the Neurosciences complex. A planned one is the huge “Nobel Laureate” Institute of Whatever’ planned on Grattan St. They are ploughing millions of their own money into these things (although they are probably hiding as much as possible in the budget figures), while at the same time increasing the layers of highly paid administrators, getting rid of staff, and increasing student numbers. The upper management do not involve the broad community of academic staff (or indeed students) in the decision making process. As Rod stated above, you are told only after the decisions have been made. I think someone tried to calculate the many thousands of ‘man-hours’ of experience that were NOT consulted before the ‘Bologna/Melbourne Model’ policies were simply ordered to proceed from Glyn Davis’ office. It is not as if there are no brains among the academic staff of the university. All were selected on the basis of high standards of academic merit, but we are treated like idiots by Glyn and many of the Deans.
Gavin, just imagine Rupert Murdoch walking through an office and sacking half the journalists at the newspaper, and then telling the remaining ones to write only the drivel he gives them, and not to complain about it either because the decisions have been made and are final. Sadly, this might work in commercial news but it is not what works in education, particularly higher education.
I have mixed feelings about this one.
I can see some educational advantages in the MM which are generally not mentioned when people get stuck into it. The trend has long been towards very narrow vocational degrees. IMHO accountants who never learn about anything under the sun except the accounting standards will be less use to the world than accountants who have some grounding in the liberal arts.
The performing arts are a bit different, since they are by nature about performance. Also the economic realities of these professions are daunting and there is little incentive for performers to delay practice-based training until after they have completed a generalist first degree because their chances of getting a greater return out of this are nil. Most of them will be lucky to get paid employment at all. It is a totally different scenario from accounting, let along law.
The studio-based approach is great, and there should be a place for it IMHO. But it is expensive. The extra funds to sustain it have to come from somewhere, and the Feds have never agreed to cough these up.
So I understand why people are upset, but someone needs to come up qith a solution to these dilemmas, and not just ask the other faculties to subsidise them. The building programs are irrelevant – universities are funded for building programs by specific formulas.
Finally I don’t know of any management model in the world, even in universities, where institutions have been successfully run according to opinion polls of staff.
My background is in university management, and since I have gone into governance roles. I can tell you that Rule No 1 of corporate governance is – stay solvent!
There is no need to believe any figures from the vice chancellor’s office. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations publishes the funding rates for each discipline cluster on its web site. The funding available for the creative arts in 2009 is $10,317 per equivalent full time student from the Commonwealth + $5,201 maximum Hecs = $15,518 per equivalent full time student per year. Out of that the VCA should set aside at least 9% contribution to capital and a reasonable contribution to utilities and overheads. The VCA should be expected to operate within this amount and not continue to be subsidised by other faculties, typically commerce which, incidentally, is funded at a much lower rate ($10,386).