Proposed Australian University Staff Cuts Make The New York Times. (December 5, 2011)

The New York Times' Lis Gooch reports on: "Plans to cut staff at [about a third] of Australian universities next year have provoked anger among academics..."

National Tertiary Education Union president, Jeannie Rea, told Ms Gooch: "We’ve had a plague of universities saying that they need to make redundancies as they finalize their numbers for the year" while Jesse Marshall, president of the National Union of Students in an email told her: "Australian universities are, in many cases, shirking their responsibilities to support and educate students by using overworked and underpaid short-term staff in increasingly significant teaching roles. With more students in each class, there is less room for critical debate and inquiry, and for ideas to be contested and discussed; this trend is of grave concern."

Glenn Withers, chief executive of Universities Australia says: "Any fiscal adjustments to higher education are unfortunate, and there is a danger of death by a thousand cuts as successive budgets drop and defer program commitments each time; universities are therefore wary, though are comforted that major reform programs established by this government are affirmed."

In the article Ms Gooch refers to the video released by Sydney University's vice-chancellor, Michael Spence on November 21 in which he informed staff that the university’s budget projections fell short after more domestic students deferred courses or took lighter loads and the international student market was hampered by a strong Australian dollar and uncertainty about government policy changes: "We are expecting that a number of academic staff will be offered redundancies, pre-retirement contracts, a rebalancing of their duties and the like."

Finally Ms Rea says: "One of the current trends that is very worrying is cutting out tutorials, moving them from once a week to once a fortnight — delivery methods that are making it more and more difficult for students to get the attention and feedback that they need."