VICTORIA University is slashing almost 80 courses and more than 100 teaching jobs as part of sweeping changes detailed in a leaked state government cabinet document.
The changes, linked with a $32 million state government funding cut, include selling off the Newport campus and closing the VenU training restaurant.
TAFE teachers walked off the job on Thursday and about 2000 people joined a rally in Treasury Gardens in protest against funding cuts to the sector. The leaked VU transition plan details a shift away from vocational training towards higher education, scrapping advanced diplomas and nearly all certificate I and II courses. VU will cut events and tourism, boat building and animal studies, raise its fees for students and vocational training in schools programs, and pull out of trade training centres in Werribee and Melton. A further 64 teaching jobs will go on top of 50 slashed earlier this year — including 34 from VU College, which provides English programs to international students. About 140 administration jobs are also reportedly to go.
Australian Education Union Victorian president Mary Bluett said the government must be held accountable for the devastation it had caused at VU and other TAFEs.
The leaked document emerged after the university released a structure plan to come into effect from January 1. Vice-chancellor Peter Dawkins said the university would be made up of eight colleges, seven offering a curriculum incorporating further education and TAFE, with the eighth focusing on trades.
Opposition leader Daniel Andrews met with VU students and teaching staff last week to discuss concerns about the impact of the cuts.
“These cuts could spell the end of education, and training might be on its last legs in the western suburbs,” he said. “Ted Baillieu isn’t just robbing TAFEs of funding; he is robbing our children of their future.”
Federal Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Chris Evans said destroying the TAFE sector meant Victoria wouldn’t have the skilled workforce it needed for the jobs of tomorrow.
Skills Minister Peter Hall said industrial action was unnecessary.
“While any period of change causes some uncertainty, I am confident that Victoria’s training system is responding to the changes well and that we will have a stronger, more responsive and sustainable system in the future.”
