26 November 2024: The Â鶹´«Ã½ (UC) today released the professional staff Organisational Change Implementation Plan for consultation.
As announced in September 2024, the University is taking proactive and necessary steps to rebalance its financial standing by the end of 2025, and today’s release of the Implementation Plan is a step closer towards achieving its financial sustainability goals. Consultation on the Implementation Plan will close on 2 December 2024.
“Our staff have engaged constructively with the process so far and have provided valuable feedback to the change proposals. This feedback has been considered and has contributed towards the development of the Implementation Plan,” said Professor Stephen Parker AO, Vice-Chancellor of the Â鶹´«Ã½.
The Implementation Plan provides staff with an outline of how the organisational change will be undertaken and indicates the functional positions that will be disestablished.
“Importantly, we need to remove a significant amount of recurrent spending in a very short period of time. We have said consistently that we expect over 200 professional and academic positions will be removed across 2024 and 2025. At this stage we cannot say how many of these will be compulsory redundancies, compared with staff leaving voluntarily and vacant positions not being filled,” said Professor Parker.
“The timing is regrettable, and we genuinely empathise with our staff who are facing redundancy ahead of the upcoming holiday season. Our intention is to minimise redundancies and, where possible, we will offer redeployment opportunities and continue to provide support to our affected staff.”
Earlier this month, the University announced that it would offer debt-free postgraduate courses to eligible staff as part of the University’s approach to supporting its affected staff, and staff from other universities facing similar circumstances.
Today, the University announced that it would add the following undergraduate degrees to this offering, providing further opportunity for affected staff to pursue study in an undergraduate degree.
These courses include:
- Bachelor of Nursing
- Bachelor of Primary Education
- Bachelor of Primary Education (Creative Arts)
- Bachelor of Primary Education (Health and Physical Education)
- Bachelor of Primary Education (STeM)
- Bachelor of Secondary Education (Arts)
- Bachelor of Secondary Education (Science)
- Bachelor of Secondary Education (Health and Physical Education)
- Bachelor of Early Childhood and Primary Education
- Bachelor of Information Technology
- Bachelor of Business Informatics
The postgraduate courses include:
- Master of Primary Teaching
- Master of Secondary Teaching
- Graduate Certificate in Cyber Security
- Graduate Certificate in Data Science
- Graduate Certificate in Building and Construction Information Management
“In acknowledging that this is a very challenging time for our professional and academic staff facing redundancy, we sincerely hope that the opportunity to pursue further study in areas where there is significant workforce need will be a life changing one,” said Professor Parker.
Staff seeking to enrol in one of these undergraduate courses will need to commence their study in Semester One, 2025. Their course will be debt-free for the first two years of study regardless of their study load.
“The two-year debt free option aligns with the University’s existing postgraduate degree offerings. This ensures fairness and equity across the board for our staff irrespective of their chosen path of study,” said Professor Parker.
Further information on the fast-track degrees and courses is available on the University’s website here.