University staff to consider future

WELLINGTON: Falling enrolments, particularly in some humanities subjects, have prompted Victoria University of Wellington to invite staff who are ‘‘ready to leave’’ to take voluntary redundancy.

The university’s vicechancellor, Grant Guilford, sent an email to all staff this week outlining the voluntary programme. That prompted the Tertiary Education Union to issue a statement calling on him to ‘‘come clean’’ about the university’s future.

Prof Guilford said the university’s 201920 budget was completed and showed the 3% surplus required by the Government of all universities.

But falling numbers of New Zealand school leavers and competition for inter national students meant the university felt it should take the ‘‘prudent step’’ of seeking a buffer against unexpected events.

‘‘This is about giving us some freeboard in case there are shocks,’’ he said.

In some areas, including science, healthcare and engineering and ‘‘some parts of the humanities’’, enrolment growth was strong, but staffstudent ratios were getting out of kilter in some parts of the humanities, which he declined to name.

There were no targets for voluntary redundancies and the university reserved the right not to accept applications from academics in areas where there was strong enrolment demand.— BusinessDesk