As John says, the HR management sounds abysmal. Since so few academics are in the union these days, let's put that to one side.

I am unclear whether the changes are Tehan driven. I thought STEM was viewed favourably under that system. Are the redundancies more Covid related? Math and Stats are highly vulnerable to the Chinese market which may never come back in the previous numbers.

Perhaps any members from Murdoch could bring us up to date on who have lost their jobs, the final shape of the "restructure" and what they see at the root causes of the changed.  

Some shocking news to share about goings-on at Murdoch university (received from Graeme Hocking, via a colleague.)

Surely this behaviour can't be legal? It is certainly immoral. Message follows:

Dear Learned friends and colleagues,

I apologise for this email, and for sending it en masse. However, I think that it would be of some use for me to explain what has happened today at Murdoch University. It is a national outrage and should be unreservedly condemned.  I will be in contact with all of you individually of course.

On Friday, staff in Maths and Stats, Physics and Chemistry were sent emails requesting (demanding) meetings (this is the clean version – in fact this was a very messy process with meeting invitations being sent, retracted, modified and resent) for today, Monday. Each was told they had a meeting on their “future” and they should bring a support person. Meetings were attended by someone from HR and at the meeting we each received a letter putting the following information in writing.

Meetings were held with multiple “senior” staff, and in each, people were told whether their Voluntary redundancies had been approved (none in Maths were). They were also told that their position as a “teaching and research” academic would be made redundant, but that they would be offered a “teaching only” equivalent position. This means you would be required to fill 80% of your workload with teaching. They were then told that if they didn’t take that new position, they would be deemed to have resigned. You could continue to do research, but NOT for “credit” – except as “service”.  This is a thinly veiled attempt to force staff out without having to pay for the redundancy.

It gets worse. In the Provost’s (et al) "town hall" this afternoon, it was explained that these disciplines would be called “foundational” and all majors would be hitherto cancelled. Engineering, whose staff had NO meetings, were told that NO undergraduate students would be taken in for S1 next year. Students who had already enrolled would be told to take another course or go elsewhere.  It is not clear what will be done to Engineering staff.  No students have been admitted to any of the technical STEM disciplines for 2021 - even though a number applied.

It is the end of STEM at Murdoch. They are saying “we will put STEM EVERYWHERE”, just no major. We have 10 days to comment on the proposal.  Past evidence suggests this will be ignored.  I don’t need to say anything about how outrageous this is, or how distressed staff are, or even how mad it is.  They claim they are fulfilling the "intent" of the Tehan "Job Ready Graduates" package by doing this.

In the recent ERA research assessment, Chemistry received a 4 and a 5, Physics a 4, Applied Maths a 4.  Statisticians contributed to a 5 in Biomedical science.  Now research in those disciplines will no longer be supported by the University (for non-Australians, this is out of a possible 5 and termed "above world average research quality"). 

Two years ago I predicted that this administration had a goal to make Murdoch a teaching college. This is now coming to pass.

I'm not going to say any more now.  None of us have any idea how we can proceed. However, knowledge can be powerful, so perhaps the more people that know .....

Professor Graeme Hocking
Mathematics and Statistics
Murdoch University