Savage new cuts at La Trobe Uni

Students at La Trobe University are bracing for cuts on a scale unprecedented at a single tertiary institution in Australia. Vice-Chancellor John Dewar has announced that $65 million will be sliced from La Trobe’s budget in 2015.

The university administration has revealed that it is planning a “root and branch” restructure of the entire university. La Trobe’s five faculties will be reduced to two “super-faculties”. Hundreds of academic positions will be lost. General staff will also be shed, but the university is holding back the total number of positions at risk.

Early indications are that student services will be also targeted for savings. Socialist Alternative’s Jay Wymarra, the Indigenous officer at La Trobe Student Union, explained students’ concern: “We need more services, more funding, not less.”

“Any attack on student services is going to hurt vulnerable students first – already La Trobe students and others around the country have lost services they had only a few years ago”, he said.

The latest round of attacks comes after a serious fight around the university’s threat to gut the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2012. A student campaign against the plans regularly mobilised hundreds. For a period, occupations and sit-ins occurred weekly on campus.

The fight back culminated in a militant demonstration at the university’s Open Day – despite the Vice-Chancellor banning protest under the threat of expulsion. The year-long campaign forced the university to scale back its plans.

Those plans, however, look set to be dwarfed by what’s now on the cards. Dewar’s preference for savage “restructuring” has been fuelled by recent cuts to federal funding for universities. The previous Labor government held back $2.3 billion in funding for the tertiary sector. Unsurprisingly, this policy has been maintained by the incoming Liberal government.

Universities across the country are now looking to protect profits by passing on the impact of these cuts to students and staff.

Students from all states are gathering at La Trobe University in December for the National Union of Students national conference. La Trobe activists are organising a protest to coincide with the conference in order to strengthen the campus campaign and build the broader national fight against education cuts.