Christopher Cordner, Head of Department at Melbourne, is circulating the following e-mail to philosophers, seeking support for their efforts to rebuild in the face of massive cuts:
The University of Melbourne is one of the two oldest and most prestigious universities in Australia, with a strong tradition in liberal arts education. The university has over 25,000 undergraduates and was ranked 38th in the world in 2008 by the Times Higher Education Supplement. Recently, however, the viability of the Melbourne Philosophy Program has been jeopardized. We would like to solicit your support in petitioning the University to save the philosophy program.
Here is the situation. At the end of 2007, the Philosophy Program lost 6 full-time continuing faculty out of a total of 13. The effective halving of our academic staff has severely overstretched the teaching, administrative and research capacities of the philosophy program; it also threatens our ability to retain our current staff. We currently have just 4.5 regular faculty available to teach the undergraduate philosophy major and participate in administrative tasks, due to research fellowships and cross-postings. Yet the university administration has, as of today, committed only to the addition of one junior position to the program. In the past few weeks, the administration has raised the possibility of adding two further positions to the philosophy program. However, this possibility is subject to significant economic and political contingencies. This week, the Vice-Chancellor announced that the University would seek to shed another 100 academic positions throughout the university.
We believe that letters of support from outside the university will help to focus the administration’s attention on the plight of philosophy and will significantly increase the chances of putting the discipline on a viable footing once again. With full support of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, I would like to invite your department to write to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne to remind him of how damaging this situation is to the university’s international reputation and to urge him to devote significant resources to immediately rebuilding the philosophy program. I will attach a fact sheet with more details about the situation here at Melbourne, as well as the letters of support written by the Australasian Association of Philosophy and the British Philosophy Association.
We would be very grateful if were you were able to write a short letter on our behalf. If you are able to do so, could you please send a copy of your letter to us, so that we can keep track of how substantial our external support is. Dr Laura Schroeter will be our contact person for all inquiries related to this effort. Please feel free to contact her for any further information you might need. The email address of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Glyn Davis, is here.
I post below the fold the information from the "fact sheet":
Fact Sheet: The Philosophy Program at the University of Melbourne Staff Departures: Due to a chronic budget deficit, in 2007 the Arts Faculty at the University of Melbourne set the goal of shedding 20% of academic staff by the end of 2009. (The Arts Faculty includes both humanities disciplines and the social sciences.) In order to avoid firing staff and violating union contracts, the administration established a program of voluntary departures for academic staff who were deemed ‘research inactive’ (i.e. 5 publications or fewer in the previous 5 years). These people were offered a small ‘golden handshake’ in return for retiring by the end of the calendar year. They were aware that if the target of 20% was not met by this strategy, they might face having their contracts terminated in the near future without any such compensation. In 2007, the philosophy program lost 6 of13 permanent faculty: one had already planned to retire, the other 5 took the so-called ‘voluntary departure packages’. At the time, the program was assured that it would be able to immediately replace 2 of these positions in 2008. This did not happen. Because the overall 20% target for the Arts Faculty was not met, there was a faculty-wide hiring freeze in 2008. Finally in 2009, 10 academic positions were made available for ‘bids’ from programs in the Arts Faculty. Philosophy was provisionally awarded one junior position. The program was asked to establish that the proposed position would generate sufficient income from new enrolments and grants to be self-sustaining – a process that has not been resolved until very recently after some negative press coverage of the current situation in the philosophy program. Curriculum Issues: The university as a whole has undergone a major restructuring, aimed at fostering interdisciplinary links and economies of scale. Academic departments have been folded into interdisciplinary schools (philosophy was required to merge with the anthropology department), and there have been significant changes in the undergraduate curriculum. Some of these changes pose a problem for the viability of the philosophy program. The administration has set strict limits on the number of courses that can be taught by any discipline. The philosophy program is now allowed to teach only 12 courses per year for the three-year undergraduate major. Each course must be repeated every year, and students may only enroll in courses that are designated for their year-level. Schools will incur a financial penalty if a course has fewer than 30 undergraduate enrolments. This policy represents a severe restriction on the breadth of the undergraduate major. We believe the resulting curriculum fails to meet international standards of best practice for a research university of Melbourne’s standing. Moreover, the restriction in course offerings significantly undercuts our ability to attract students to the discipline. Current Staff: The Philosophy Program currently has 7 continuing academic staff: Of these, only 4.5 are available for regular undergraduate teaching and administration. Howard Sankey has a 50% appointment in the History and Philosophy of Science program, with attendant teaching and administrative duties. Graham Priest and Laura Schroeter are currently on five-year fellowships, with no undergraduate teaching or administrative duties. Moreover, Graham Priest will be away 50% over the next two years. The program has not been allowed to hire fixed-term replacements for these two fellowship positions. In addition to the regular Philosophy Program, the School also hosts a branch of the Centre for Appplied Ethics (CAPPE). This is an independently-funded research institute, whose members have no permanent contract with the university and no commitments teaching into the undergraduate major. However, CAPPE staff are available to supervise graduate students, and some have temporary contracts to teach undergraduate courses on an ad hoc basis. News Coverage: The plight of the philosophy program and other humanties departments has been highlighted by a number of recent articles in the Australian press. Coverage of the AAP’s denouncement of the staff cuts at Melbourne: Editorial criticizing the lack of support for the humanities at Melbourne: Peter Singer on the problem: Coverage of the proposed 2009 staff reductions: Television report on the cuts at Melbourne from ABC Stateline:
Recent Comments