This means:

1. Smoking will be restricted to specific areas of the University

The Camperdown section of campus has 5 designated smoking areas, the Darlington area has three. 

Their locations can be found here:
Camperdown:   http://sydney.edu.au/ohs/docs/A-smok-Camp-C.pdf
Darlington:    http://sydney.edu.au/ohs/docs/A-smok-Darl-C.pdf 

2. No tobacco or tobacco products will be available for sale on campus

More information can be found here: http://sydney.edu.au/ohs/wellbeing/smoke-free.shtml

The full policy can be found here: http://www.usyd.edu.au/hr/policydev/smoke-free_environment_policy.pdf

We will add though that from the FASS perspective, budget cuts were expected for 2012, which hopefully means there will be less of an impact upon student services within our Faculty.

Q: What changes are proposed?

A: First, we will reduce our non-salary expenditure next year by $28 million. This means that every area will need to examine all their activities and find savings. There will have to be some serious belt tightening.

Second, we must reduce the cost of our administration more quickly. Each faculty, portfolio and professional service unit will be given an expenditure cap restricting the total amount they can spend on professional staff salaries, casual salaries and contractors. Each area will be able to decide how this will be managed, but the cap must be met.

Third, we need to consider the position of that small minority of academics who do not contribute significantly either to our research or teaching. We will immediately put in place a plan to manage this process and we are expecting that a number of academic staff will be offered redundancies, pre-retirement contracts, a rebalancing of their duties and the like. This will be a University-wide, open and transparent process, based on a set of rigorous but very clear criteria and we will be consulting with you about that process.

Q: Why is all this necessary?

A: We must, among other things, invest in our buildings and ICT systems: their current state is of real concern to everyone. We have a backlog of repairs and maintenance, and there is an urgent need for new facilities to better support you and your work. If we are to meet these needs, we must take some stringent measures. We will have to reduce our expenditure: we will have to accelerate the implementation of our plans for reform.

Q: Why is this process occurring now?

A: Upgrades are long overdue for our buildings and our information technology infrastructure. At a bare minimum, in 2012 we need to spend $53 million on repairs and maintenance and replacement of basic IT infrastructure, some of which is 20 years old. These repairs can’t be postponed any longer.

Q: Exactly how big is the total backlog of repairs and maintenance?

A: In May 2011, the Auditor-General reported to the NSW Parliament that the University of Sydney had a backlog of repairs and maintenance of $385 million. There are serious OH&S upgrades required in many older facilities. The critically urgent list of repairs will cost $37 million and the University needs to fund that immediately.

Q: How big are these other budgetary cuts?

A: Non-salary expenditure will be reduced by $28 million in 2012 and every area of the University, including faculties, portfolios and professional service units, will be required to make cuts to their budget.

Q: Will the central portfolios and University-wide programs be asked to make cuts too?

A: Yes. All areas will be subject to parallel processes concerning non-salary budget cuts, staffing cost caps and, where relevant, the academic staff assessment process outlined in the Draft Change Proposal. In addition SEG has made some clear decisions about cutting some of the deputy vice-chancellors’ programs in order to generate further savings.

Q: Why are staff cuts being considered?

A: We can’t achieve the savings we need by reducing non-salary expenditure alone. The University currently spends 56 percent of its revenue on staff – this compares unfavourably with other Go8 universities. The Draft Change Proposal recommends reducing the funds allocated across the University for general staff, contractors and casual staff by 7.5 percent, and reducing the number of continuing and fixed-term academic staff across the University by 7.5 percent.

Q: Why is any of this necessary when it has been reported that the University recorded a surplus of $113.7 million last year?

A: The operating surplus is not profit that can be used at the University’s discretion. Most of the surplus consists of grants from the federal government that must be spent on particular infrastructure projects; income from donations and bequests that the University is legally required to invest in perpetuity, using only the income for particular purposes; and research grants and other government funding for special purposes that cannot be used to support staff salary costs.

Q: Why are these measures necessary when we have had record levels of philanthropy this year?

A: Almost all of the money raised through bequests and donations is designated for specific academic purposes such as new chairs in particular disciplines. The University has very little discretion in how those funds are spent.

Q: When will these proposed staff reductions occur?

A: No decisions have been made about staff reductions. The University’s Draft Change Proposal describes the basis on which any proposed staff reductions would be made. In accordance with the ‘Managing Change’ provisions of the University’s Enterprise Agreement, the University has commenced a consultation process so that staff feedback is provided on this proposal. If after completion of the consultation process the University decides to implement staff reductions, they will be likely to occur in mid-2012 or sooner if staff request.

Q: Why would you reduce the number of academic staff when our student/staff ratios are already very high?

A: The process takes account of situations in which staff are undertaking teaching and postgraduate supervision work that their school must provide in 2013 and which could not be provided through other means. It will also take account of ‘above load’ teaching allocated by the faculty in the past.

Q: Why will academic staff be assessed on the basis of research performance?

A: As a research-intensive University, we are judged, and receive funding, based on our research performance. The University’s proposal is that assessments of academic staff will be based on their research outputs as defined in the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) guidelines, or research outputs assessed by the Faculty Assessment Panel. The process will be based primarily on relative research performance on a University-wide basis.

Q: Will any academic staff be excluded from the assessment process?

A: The following categories of staff will not be included in the process:

• casual staff
• staff on long term sick leave
• staff who have formal resignation/retirement arrangements in place (such as staff employed on pre-retirement contracts or who have given notice of their retirement/resignation)
• staff on existing teaching-focused contracts
• fixed-term appointees where appropriate (ie having regard to circumstances of their contract)
• staff whose salaries are wholly funded from external sources
• postgraduate fellows and other early-career researchers
• staff who joined the University after 4 November 2010.

Q: Will there be any flexibility for staff to move to teaching-focused roles?

A: Yes, teaching-focused roles may be an option depending on the faculty’s operational needs and budget and the agreement of the member of staff concerned.

Q: How will the University decide which professional staff will be considered for redundancy?

A: Each faculty, portfolio and professional services unit will be responsible for managing within an expenditure cap, which in most cases will be lower than their 2011 budget allocation. Reductions may be achieved through a combination of ways, such as reductions in the use of casual staff and contractors, natural attrition and other measures, which may include restructures and redundancies.

The report is broken up into 4 parts:

a. Structure – A multidisciplinary school

b. Structure – New formations within a multidisciplinary school

c. Administrative reform

d. Infrastructure

Part A & B.

Four different models for structuring SSPS were considered by the Review panel. The model that was chosen on, due to the ‘very clear and strong preference’ for it, was a single school. This will be the equivalent of model 1(b) (relevant pages are 4-5) proposed in the background paper which we have summarised previously.

Model 1(b) is a multidisciplinary school (i.the School of Social and Political Sciences will not be split up), but within this single school there will be large, multidisciplinary “politics” department. This department will be made up of Government and International Relations (GIR) and the Centre for International Security Studies (CISS). The report recommends that the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) should join either GIR or Sociology or Social Policy.

The motivation behind these mergers is to improve teaching and research within these departments, to pool the limited resources so that they can be used in a coordinated manner, and to raise the profile of these areas of study at USYD.

We know that there has been a lot of concern about the future of Political Economy, so we’ll quote directly from the report: “The panel does not [our emphasis] recommend placing the Department of Political Economy (PE) within the new larger politics grouping at this time” (pg. 7). To repeat that, PE remain a separate and distinct department within the SSPS. What the report emphasises is that there is a greater potential for PE to collaborate with the School of Economics at all levels (including undergrad) in order to broaden students’ learning experience and to ease teaching burdens.

The specific recommendation that the Review Panel makes is that “a working party be formed to develop proposals for closer collaboration in teaching and research in economics in the Faculty, including engaging with colleagues in agricultural economics in the Faculty of Agriculture”. Furthermore in the conclusion of the report it is stated that: “It accepted, however, that staff and students in political economy currently position themselves in relation to research and teaching in economics, broadly construed, rather than political science.“

Likewise the Graduate School of Government will remain separate.

Part C – Admin Reform

The main recommendations relating to admin that will impact upon students is the recommendation that a single School counter and student support desk be created (to be housed in Merewether).

Part D – Infrastructure

It was noted in the report that the current infrastructure for SSPS leaves a lot to be desired, 1). because it is spread all over the place, and 2). the quality of what infrastructure there is low (the lack of a computer lab fr social sciences was specifically mentioned). The report recommends that infrastructure for SSPS be made a priority in the Faculty.

That’s it. We hope this was of some help. We recommend that you do actually look at the whole report, as I’ve said, it’s only 9 pages long, with lots of bullet points an (comparatively) little university jargon.

We also promise to get the last SAC and Faculty Board summaries up some time by the end of November.

Simon Wyatt-Spratt

But there is a very important caveat on all of this. Before any book is put into storage, before multiple copies are deaccessioned, academics and research staff will have a chance to assess the items which have identified as being underused, and can recommend that they remain in the Fisher stack. And that brings us back to the new information that has been released. That the review process has now got underway. Books with Dewey decimal numbers of 000 to 373 will be assessed by academics up until 16 of November (almost a month away).We haven’t been given any information about when the rest of the collection will be assessed.

The details we received (with a few bits edited out) are below -

The renovation of Fisher Library is beginning and will run through 2012. The project involves renewal of the basic infrastructure including air-conditioning, lifts and toilets; and refurbishment of all levels of the building to create a variety of flexible learning areas and quiet study spaces. The building will be upgraded to meet current building code, disability access and occupational health and safety regulations. More information about the project is available at: http://library.usyd.edu.au/about/fisher-dev/

Our priority task is to complete the review of the collections in Fisher and transfer little used materials to an archival storage facility by 16 December 2011.  Items in storage will be available on request within 24 hours during weekdays, articles will be scanned and sent via email unless print volumes are required. As part of the project, items not currently in the online catalogue will be added. The focus of the Fisher collection will continue to be Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, while other Libraries in the University of Sydney Library system will continue to specialise in other discipline areas. http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/libraries/libsubj.html

• Monograph material purchased or borrowed in the last 5 years and the last ten years of current serial subscriptions will be marked with a small mauve ‘Fisher’ label.
• Items that do not have this label attached will be moved to storage, unless academic/research staff recommend otherwise.
• Rare Books staff are also removing rare materials from the collection for storage in the upgraded Rare Books Collection on level 1 of the renovated Fisher.
• All volumes of a multi-volume work will be kept together in the Fisher collection if any of the volumes has been borrowed.

So that’s all the information we currently have. We’ll keep you updated if we receive any more information. 

Simon Wyatt-Spratt

Attached are the minutes from the Faculty Board Meeting from 9th of May, 2011.

The strategic plan is roughly broken up into 3 parts:

1. Statement of Purpose and Values (Very Vague)
2. Strategic Goals (Quite Vague)
3. Strategies and Initiatives (Merely Vague)

The Statement of Purpose and Values is comparatively short, so we will quote it here in full:

Our mission is to conduct research and teaching across the breadth of the humanities and social sciences that makes a difference in the lives of our students, staff and the broader community, both in Australia and globally.

We aim to create and sustain a community of scholars committed to:

• free and open inquiry;
• academic excellence and the inherent value of teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences;
• providing opportunities for our students to develop the attributes and capacities required for leadership and global citizenship;
• bringing the methodologies and insights of our disciplines to bear on many of the fundamental questions facing humanity today through basic research and engaged public comment and debate.

Through our research we aim to discover new knowledge and ways of understanding human experience and culture. Through our teaching we aim to foster critical and creative thinking and intellectual breadth. Through the diversity and rigour of our programs we seek to provide our students with opportunities for learning that reflect and manifest these values.

Our goal is to become the leading Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, and among the top 20 faculties of our kind in the world.

It’s pretty hard to find fault with any of these, but then they’d also apply to pretty much every Faculty of Humanities in Australia.

The Strategic Goals are a little better, but it is the Strategies and Initiatives which provide the most information about what changes are in the works (or have already been proposed). As in the actual document, we’ve listed the various strategies under the strategic goal they are attached to. We haven’t included all of the strategies; just the ones we think are directly relevant to students. For the full list of strategies please look at the actual document.

To include them all in a single blog post would be too much for even the most ardent lover of official university jargon, so we have split them up, according to Strategic Goals. Click on the Strategic Goal you wish to find out more about below, and you’ll the condensed version of what the Strategic Plan says, and our summary of it.

1. To achieve our vision of an integrated, dynamic and sustainable faculty of Arts and Social Sciences that takes advantage of its diversity and breadth to become among the best of its kind in the world.

2. To put in place the distinctive “Sydney Arts and Social Sciences offer” for both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

3. To develop our capacity to identify and promulgate excellence in teaching to achieve improved outcomes in learning.

7. To plan, develop and seek support for major new infrastructure (both buildings and technology) that manifests and enables our commitment to innovative teaching, world-leading research and community engagement.

Enjoy,

Simon Wyatt-Spratt

Strategy 1: Ensure the efficient delivery of sustainable, high quality programs using the planning tools provided by the University and Faculty.

1.1. Seek new sources of income and investment through our UG and PG coursework programs and especially in collaboration across the Faculty, Division and University.

Strategy 2: Conduct a strategic review of the School of Social and Political Sciences with a view to determining the organisation and structure that will best deliver excellence in administration, teaching and research in the social and political sciences.

Strategy 5: Develop a comprehensive admissions and load plan that continues to reduce low-enrolment PG and UG units of study except where academically justified; identify targets for the ratio between UG and PG load over the next 5 years.

Strategy 7: Reflect the importance of language study to all areas of the Humanities and Social Sciences by increasing the number of students studying languages, both at first year and in the BA.  

What does this all mean?

S1. The new sources of income are likely to be from International students, with the Faculty looking to increase its share of the international student market. International students

S2. The review into SSPS is just starting, and is something we have reported on previously.

S5. Obviously a plan that ‘continues to reduce low-enrolment PG and UG units of study except where academically justified’ is a cause for concern. Both postgrad and undergrad units have been cut this year (several MA course have been cut and the final Heritage Studies UG unit is this semester). We have previously asked the Dean about this, and were told that the Faculty wants to contain its broad subject area. We will reiterate what we’ve been told by the Dean, if you love a subject say so! If students are vocal about subjects they love they are less likely to be cut. Important to note though is the term ‘academically justified’ and the Faculty’s commitment to make sure it retains its impressively broad subject areas means we are hopeful.

S7. This may include official recognition of the study of a language, even if not enough units were completed for it to be a major. We will be asking for more details for this proposal in the upcoming Student Advisory Committee meeting.