A comment on UCT aims to shed staff -- By Ashleigh Furlong 26 May 2016 and Austerity measures and costs savings by Max Price 19 May 2016

So, weeks ago, when Ken Hughes disclosed that the University of Cape Town was going to encourage academic staff to take departure/early-retirement packages to cut its budget, he was right. How many other of his predictions/criticisms will also prove to be correct?

Let’s begin with the best policy for UCT to stay within budget. First, decimate admin, especially senior, centralized administrative staff before touching academics. If UCT is serious about meeting the expectations of the educationally disabled students’ it admits for study, i.e. that they will succeed and find careers, it needs more (and harder working existing) academics to mentor these kids. Hughes and I know it and so do “unit heads” and the UCT Executive.

Furthermore, over the years, the growth of highly paid, centralized admin staff at UCT has far outstripped that of academics and departmental support staff. When I joined UCT, there were no deputy ‘anythings’ and the registrar actually registered students. Chop at least two deputy vice-chancellors and all deputy registrars and make them share many fewer personal assistants/secretaries.  Then there is this giant Faculty - Centre for Higher Educational Development - created primarily to deal with helping educationally disabled students.

Prune off CHED staff who don’t teach or publish high-quality (peer-reviewed/cited) educational research and let the rest be administered by the relevant departments they serve. If this doesn’t solve the problem, revisit the policy of out-sourcing the rest of any centralized admin staff. UCT’s status (indeed its raison d’etre) depends on graduating high-quality students who have successful careers and attracting academics who teach them and produce high quality (peer-reviewed/cited) research. Everything additional is just additional.

The real danger of “incentivizing” voluntary retirement/departure is that highly competent, portable academics will take the money and move elsewhere or seek jobs in the real world where they’re appreciated. Yes, there could be academic retrenchments, but not on the basis of ‘race’, gender or age. Academics who deliver the ‘goods’ described above should stay and be rewarded. Those who don’t, also irrespective of ‘self-identity’, should go (or at least not be promoted ‘ad hominem’).

The “targets” that the UCT Executive and “unit heads” set should not be cut-rate education and mediocre rsearch. Furthermore, the UCT Executive’s encouragement that “Unit heads may also, in appropriate circumstances, solicit interest in or invite applications for incentivised early retirement or voluntary separation if this will support the initiative to achieve the required cost savings.” smacks of academic ‘cleansing’.

The result of all of this proposed cost-cutting is adding “all-time low staff morale” to the existing general fear of intimidation and violence. All the UCT Executive seems to be interested in is justifying the rare incidences in which it takes inadequate punitive action against criminals (not criminalized ‘anythings’).  Now, a handful of the criminals will have to move their fire bombing elsewhere.

It’s disingenuous for the academics to complain that they do “not know under what criteria someone was accepted or rejected for voluntary retirement or separation”. There are none, except the hope that the attrition will improve UCT’s ‘demographics’. It is even more disingenuous for all concerned to complain about “a lack of time for staff to consider the offers and the impact of redistributed work on staff workloads”. UCT has had more than two decades to transform and “restructure” in order to do just this. But, where was the vision and the will to implement it?

Despite all this, UCT chose “insourcing” workers and no cost-related fee increases. The results of this will likely involve retrenching some of these workers, admitting fewer (or more fee-paying) students, and poorer mentoring of those who get in.

So, in the end, what is the Executive’s parting shot? “We ask all of you to keep working with us to secure the long term financial sustainability of the university.” What about “securing a high-quality academic future”?