AUT vice-chancellor Damon Salesa says the proposal is the first of its kind in the university's 22-year history. (File image) Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
As many as 230 staff at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) could lose their jobs.
AUT today announced it would review administration and support roles and a small number of courses with low enrolments.
Costs had increased, international student numbers had dropped significantly, and it had fewer New Zealand students than last year because more people, including school leavers, were choosing to work instead of study, AUT said.
"AUT's fundamentals are sound but we have a responsibility to ensure we continue to meet the needs of our current and future students," vice-chancellor Damon Salesa said.
"The proposals are to ensure our future sustainability so we can deliver what our students, our city, and our country need."
AUT had 4354 individual staff or 2178 full-time equivalents, Dr Salesa said.
The proposal was the first of its kind in the university's 22-year history, he said.
The university was proposing staff cuts that would reduce spending by $21 million a year, Salesa told RNZ.
AUT protected staff during the pandemic while other universities made cuts, but costs were rising and enrolments were falling, he said.
The proposed staff cuts reflected not only the decline in enrolments, but also changes in the courses that students were choosing to enrol in, he said.
"We're looking at a decline of about 1100 students around what we had expected which as you'll understand is very substantial.
"We expect those challenges to continue into 2023 and beyond so it's not just the short-term challenge that we're facing, it's clearly in the middle term and some of these changes have been evident from before Covid.
"Students are interested in different courses and in different ways so part of what we have to address is that middle and longer-term change in student interest and demand."
It would take years to rebuild foreign student enrolments and it was unlikely they would return to pre-Covid levels, Salesa said.
"It is not a one-year problem that we are facing," he said.
Programmes included in the university's proposal included Bachelor's degrees in Social Sciences, Conflict Resolution, Japanese Studies, and English and New Media.
Also under-review were non-core activities including an early childhood centre, a drone lab, a textile design lab and an English language school.
Tertiary Education Union (TEU) AUT organiser Jill Jones said staff were bitterly disappointed by the proposed cuts and the union would do everything it could to oppose them.
"It's a slap in the face for our members, who have been working very hard to keep their university running through the Covid-19 pandemic, a 'hiring freeze' and a voluntary leaving scheme that has already left many with high workloads due to already reduced staffing not to mention a 'travel ban' that has made AUT a less attractive place to work than other universities," Jones said.
The union said the proposal said the cuts would reduce the university's personnel costs from 64 percent to 60 percent in line with other universities.
Its assistant national secretary industrial, Irena Brörens, said research the TEU commissioned showed universities were spending less on staff as a percentage of their operating costs.
"It's a sign that universities are devaluing staff who should be the basis of any human service. This is not a strategy AUT should be trying to emulate. Any university should be proud to invest significantly in staff," she said.
"Staff cuts are never the way to address temporary fluctuations in student numbers. We have seen time and time again that they only result in unsustainable workloads and reduced service for students," Brörens said.
Universities predicted 2022 would be difficult financially because domestic student numbers dropped after a spike last year and foreign student numbers were expected to reach their lowest point after two-and-a-half-years of border restrictions.
In August, Massey University proposed a restructure which the Tertiary Education Union said could affect as many as 150 jobs.
The cuts at Massey and AUT would be in addition to about 700 jobs lost across seven of the eight universities in late 2020 after they failed to persuade the government to reopen the border to foreign students.
Groups representing postgraduate students said universities also slashed the hours of hundreds and possibly thousands of people with casual lecturing and tutoring roles since the pandemic began.
Export education levy statistics showed universities' income from foreign students' fees fell from $579.7 million in 2019 to $348.5m last year, a decline of 40 percent.
The figures also showed universities' foreign student numbers fell by about 7000 a year through the pandemic from 28,150 in 2019 to 21,510 in 2020 and 14,440 in 2021.
Immigration New Zealand said there were 7697 international students with valid study visas at universities when the borders reopened at the end of July 2022.