UTAS out of touch with public

University’s planned move from Sandy Bay to the CBD appears more unpopular than ever, writes Michael Foster

HAS there ever been a been a Tasmanian institution as steadfastly indifferent to the interests of the public as the University of Tasmania?

The Tasmanian Parliament is now so deeply concerned about UTAS decision-making processes and its lack of accountability that on May 15 both major parties and three Legislative Council independents combined to establish a parliamentary inquiry into what’s going wrong. This Legislative Council select committee will look specifically at management and at the treatment of academic staff.

Several Hobart City councillors have expressed serious concerns as well. Because UTAS has refused to seek a “social licence” for its proposal to relocate from Sandy Bay to the Hobart CBD, on March 11 the council unanimously resolved to call on ViceChancellor Rufus Black to conduct a genuine public consultation process where the university is open to compromise and alternative options.

Even Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds, up until recently a longstanding supporter of relocation, is now calling on UTAS to pause the rezoning application – which the university lodged with the council on December 6, 2021 – until there has been what she calls a “collaborative engagement process with the community to co-design a future” for the Sandy Bay campus.

UTAS doesn’t seem to care that it was actually created by the Tasmanian people (in 1890), or that Tasmanians contribute about $30m annually, or that it operates on land gifted to it by Tasmanians. Ironically the current plan to abandon the Sandy Bay campus only arises because in 1992 Tasmanians unwittingly let their parliament amend the University Act so that UTAS no longer has to give back the Sandy Bay land if it is not to be used for education.

Instead of gratitude to Tasmanians UTAS management presides over the slow destruction of the state’s only university.

The Law School’s preeminent reputation is not what it used to be and many of its highly-regarded staff have already gone.

Senior academics are aghast at a management style which ABC News described as “brutal”.

Even when the university recently established an online survey for a week to get staff feedback it is understood it had to close down the survey after only two days under the embarrassing weight of overwhelming criticism of UTAS management.

And to make matters worse inept decision-making will soon destroy the international reputations of faculties which UTAS intends to relocate to the CBD.

Students and staff in the CBD will need to take a bus trip to Sandy Bay in order to access the immovable but essential collections upon which they rely for study and research.

UTAS might well say, as did the poet Percy Shelley , “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”