‘My heart just sank’: Macquarie University plans ‘savage’ job cuts

Macquarie University is set to introduce cuts to university courses, leading to redundancies for staff.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has hit out at Macquarie University, which is set to scrap a number of courses due to a “brutal” restructure – leading to over 75 job losses.

Bachelor of arts course majors such as politics, gender studies, criminology, and psychology are set to be discontinued, along with master degrees in electronics engineering, ancient history, and two IT fields.

“I and so many other staff at Macquarie had an absolutely sick feeling in our stomachs when these cuts were announced. My heart just sank,” said NTEU MQ branch president Dr Nicholas Harrigan.

In terms of the job cut split, the arts faculty is expected to face 42 job losses, with the science and engineering faculty to face 33.

“We are real people whose lives are being turned upside down for the sake of thin arguments about budgets and prioritisation. Macquarie just released their annual report, and the budget is more or less balanced,” said Harrigan.

“These cuts are particularly cruel because, in many cases, individual staff members are being specifically targeted. This raises concerns that these cuts are really about targeting individuals’ management dislike, not actual business needs.

“We have been stuck in an atmosphere of crisis since August last year when they attempted to sack 700 casuals. The months of agonising uncertainty have taken a severe mental and physical toll on staff.

“The clear targeting of humanities and social sciences is an attack on the fundamental inherited legacy of human knowledge that charts over 2,000 years. To see that being sacrilegiously burned by managers is despicable.”

With Macquarie planning to cut these roles, the overall job losses at NSW universities in the past year is over 1,000 – as similar undertakings have been carried out at UTS, University of Wollongong, and Western Sydney University.

“Right now, across NSW, we’re fighting job cuts at four universities. Four. That’s not a coincidence – that’s a crisis. A crisis of governance, a crisis of priorities, and a crisis of values,” said NTEU division secretary Vince Caughley.

“Every job cut means lost expertise, broken teams, lives upended – for both staff and students. And it sends a message: that those who build knowledge and support students every day are disposable.

“Let’s be clear, too: these cuts are a choice. And they’re the wrong one.”

NTEU national president Dr Alison Barne said: “These savage cuts are a hammer blow for future students, who have had their education options slashed in a tragic outcome for the community.

“Scrapping courses and cutting jobs slowly picks away at the fabric of our society that needs world-class higher education to thrive.

“This terrible decision is yet another shocking example of poor university governance, which needs urgent reform so we have accountability and transparency.

“Vice-chancellors’ instinct is always to come after jobs and courses, making the federal government’s goal for half of all young people to have degrees by 2035 impossible.”