University plan is no solution
By Keara Courtney
CANBERRA — The Australian National University (ANU) has found $97 million from within its budget to fund its "Year 2000 growth plan". Of this, $70 million will come from the profit made from investing the university staff's superannuation fund.
Some of the funding will be used to upgrade information technology and reduce the debt of various faculties. However, a large amount of the money is funding commercial ventures: $13 million will establish a commercialisation (venture capital) fund, $8 million will fund ANU's development of "intellectual property", and $5 million will fund one-off investments such as the purchase of part of the Australian Technology Park in Sydney.
The local branch of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) has endorsed the plan, including the commercial ventures.
The growth plan comes only months after the university slashed the budgets of most faculties and departments, and after 630 staff lost their jobs. The NTEU had demanded that staff's superannuation surplus be spent earlier to lessen the impact of the faculty cuts.
However, pro vice-chancellor Chris Burgess has denied that this was possible. Burgess noted that federal government funding cuts of $30 million have had a big impact on the quality of education at ANU. ANU has also slashed its research budget, in anticipation of an escalation of costs due to the GST.
However, the university administration has made no attempt to force the federal government to grant it more funding. The newly found slush fund can therefore be only a bandaid solution.
Resistance organiser Ruth Ratcliff said, "The ANU administration is addressing the funding crisis in the wrong way. And the NTEU has unfortunately supported these short-sighted plans. Both staff and the university administration have to join students in demanding that the federal government increase its funding to tertiary education, not privatise it."