Jon Sullivan22h ago

It's a weird time to be working at #LincolnUniversityNZ.

We've bounced back from the earthquakes and covid lockdowns and there's been an optimistic buzz in the air. The earthquake damaged buildings are mostly replaced and in the last few years Lincoln has had some of its highest enrolments ever. Last year it graduated the highest number of graduates in its 147 year history.

Ironically, getting more enrolments than expected has been bad because that doesn't equate to more government funding, which instead continues to decline in real terms. NZ universities receive about *a third* less funding than the OECD average.

The solution, we learned from the Vice Chancellor Grant Edwards yesterday, is that the university is going to have to lose 40 of it's about 700 staff. Presumably those that remain will, once again, need to pick up the slack.

This kind of austerity is squeezing the life out of NZ's universities. The same thing is happening to the science sector. NZ's newly combined Bioeconomy Science Institute also going through redundancies so it can survive on less government funding.

Please remember this at the upcoming election. Investing tax dollars in research and higher education is *good* for the country.

😔

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/590629/lincoln-university-to-cut-40-full-time-equivalent-jobs

https://insidegovernment.co.nz/record-graduation-for-lincoln-university/

#LincolnUniversityNZ #jobcuts #austerity #science #universities #AcademicChatter

Lincoln University to cut 40 full-time equivalent jobs

The university says the move is to maintain financial stability in 2026 and beyond.

RNZ
Show threadPete's Mom 🍉 🇺🇦 ☮️21h ago
@joncounts
USian here so totally out of my lane but #US schools from k-12 to community colleges (first two years of college/associates degree) to universities are constantly and continually trying to cut programs, teachers and pay.
IMO any time any education institution that receives any public funding proposes to cut teachers or pay they should have to publicly post every admin position and the pay rates for those positions for everyone to see.
Its a no brainer here that educational institutions across the board are grossly top heavy in #s and comparable pay of admin staff to teachers.
And as we see every day of every year, there is never a shortage of funds for war.
#Education
#FundTeachers
#USOpinion
Show threadZeborah

@Petesmom @joncounts Does "admin" only mean senior management to you by chance?

Because otherwise if it just means "everyone who's not a teacher" bear in mind that that includes the library, IT, student admission, student support, facilities management, those people who process your paycheck, the secretaries who do all the admin the teachers are supposed to but don't have time for and also know all the secrets about how to get anything else done you could ever want, etc. And yes, managers whose jobs when done well are equally invisible, when done badly are a pain, but if they're not there at all there's a *lot* that can't get done.

When you cut "admin", things break. Badly. For everyone.

The thing I hate the most about these situations is when staff *instantly* start turning on each other. I especially hate it when people turn on admin staff because all the admin staff I know are working themselves to death to help teachers and students, but I also hate it on principle because we should be teaming up to fight the government, not each other.

1:03amWeb
Show threadJon Sullivan15h ago
@zeborah @Petesmom Excellent point. I agree completely. Good luck to all of us. We need to work together to push back against this.