UTAS Leadership’s Decline – Call for Fresh Direction

UTAS Vice Chancellor Rufus Black finished his 5 year term in March 2023 but then accepted the invitation of his Council to an indefinite appointment as UTAS vice chancellor.

Black is still paid $1M a year yet is rarely seen or heard. These days UTAS is mostly represented publicly by senior staff, often Professor Nicholas Farrelly.

UTAS Council has good reason to keep Professor Black out of sight. After 7 years of his leadership the decline of UTAS continues.

Enrolments are down, courses have been slashed, highly talented academic staff have been retrenched.

The regular UTAS internal surveys reveal that most staff have no confidence in UTAS leadership or the future of the university.

At least $250M, including money allocated for regular maintenance and renewal of campus facilities, has been diverted to the now-abandoned plan to move the entire campus from Sandy Bay to various properties around the Hobart CBD. This has left a backlog of work at Sandy Bay and empty city land where there should have be housing and retail development.

The failure to maintain and renew the campus makes it hard to attract enrolments, particularly young Tasmanians who want up-to-date facilities and a qualification they can be proud of.

The person with responsibility to oversee the work of the Vice Chancellor is the Chancellor, Alison Watkins.

She finishes her own 5 year appointment this December. The state of UTAS under her watch may not feature prominently in her CV.

The replacement of both Vice Chancellor and Vice Chancellor by the end of this year gives UTAS the best chance of restoring its reputation as one of Australia’s best universities and the first choice of young Tasmanians.

Fresh leadership will restore hope to academic staff and relieve the well-documented psychological stress which results from UTAS’s brutal management style.

By 2022 the UTAS Law School had lost two thirds of its academic staff under the weight of aggressive management. Leaked internal staff surveys have consistently revealed no confidence in management. A June staff report describes UTAS as an ‘unsafe place to work’.

Our political leaders bear much of the responsibility for the damage to the university. The UTAS Council correctly asserts that it is largely unaccountable for its decisions, a deficiency recognised in last year’s Legislative Council report.

But Labor and the Liberals have been worse than spectators of the UTAS debacle.

Instead of encouraging new leadership and a change of direction they have been stout defenders of UTAS’s poor management decisions.

Hopefully in a new parliament the independents and the Greens will be able to force Labor and the Liberals to stand up for young Tasmanians who would prefer to get their tertiary education at home.

Michael Foster, is a retired Hobart lawyer, a UTAS law graduate and co-chair of SaveUTAS.

Tasmanian Times (TT) is a community-based news and current affairs service covering the island state of Tasmania. It exists to provide a diverse view of Tasmanian issues. TT creates and supports independent media content utilising the best of modern technologies and tried-and-true practices of public-interest journalism.

Support us in expanding our coverage and developing new content by and for Tasmanians. 

New initiatives on the way include:

• a weekly podcast covering current affairs
• a revamped website
• a monthly cartoon competition
• a user-friendly app for both Android and Apple devices
• a weekly roundup of key stories