Wednesday, February 12, 2025

UC announces voluntary separation program for academic staff

The University of Canberra (UC) has announced a round of voluntary redundancies for academic staff and says it will also review its course offerings as part of cost-saving measures across its five faculties.

As part of the University’s ongoing measures to achieve financial sustainability by the end of 2025 as announced in September 2024, it will implement a voluntary separation program (VSP) for academic staff, said acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Michelle Lincoln.

“The introduction of the VSP is part of our strategic approach to rebalancing our finances and charting our way towards a self-sustaining position,” said Professor Lincoln.

Professor Lincoln confirmed that academic staff are not required to participate in the VSP.

“This is an opportunity for interested academic staff to submit an expression of interest to resign from the University in return for a separation payment based on their years of continuous service,” she said.

Academic staff will have a few weeks to consider their options. Submissions for the expression of interest will open on 16 December and close on 17 January 2025.

While the VSP is underway, an organisational change consultation process at faculty level will be undertaken in cases where staffing is considered excess to operational need. This will be managed within the faculties, with emphasis on courses with consistently low enrolments, and where changes in course offerings may need to be considered.

“The VSP and localised faculty organisational change proposals will be managed to ensure we maintain our excellence in student experience, education and research, and we take a transparent and compassionate approach with our staff as much as possible,” said Professor Lincoln.

She said the University is making every effort to limit the number of staff redundancies across both professional and academic staff cohorts, however, in some instances staff redundancies will be inevitable.

Last week the University’s Council approved the university-wide organisational restructure and the budget for the 2025 financial year.

The University’s budget outlines a strategy for removing a significant amount of recurrent spending in the 2025 financial period. Part of these cost saving measures is the expectation that over 200 professional and academic positions will be removed from the institution across 2024 and into 2025.

“Staff impacted by the disestablishment of their roles across our professional staff areas have the option to choose redundancy or redeployment. This process is still in progress and our staff continue to be supported through career planning support, access to fee free degrees, mentoring and networking opportunities,” said Professor Lincoln.

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