Thirty-nine UTAS academics slam recent direction of university

In a submission to a Legislative Council inquiry into the operations of UTAS, the group of 39 academics said almost all of the decisions made within the university were by people with little or no genuine academic expertise and experience and its declining academic quality had caused the loss of the most senior and best-qualified staff.

"Genuine attention to teaching quality has been replaced by empty slogans, generic teaching templates, and naive and poorly founded pedagogy," they said.

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"This is directly tied to the loss of control of academic staff in relation to their teaching as they are increasingly constrained by requirements imposed from above by managers who frequently have little ability as teachers and little or no experience in teaching."

The group said there was a seeming contempt for academic staff and a tendency to view any staff that challenged managerial decisions as hindrances.

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They said junior staff were fearful to speak out in case it jeopardised secure employment or the chance of a promotion.

"As a result of centralised decisions that were neither properly canvassed in the institution at large nor supported by the majority of staff, the university is now faced with the impending loss of what is widely recognised to be one of the most attractive campuses in the country," they said.

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In a joint submission, university Vice-Chancellor Rufus Black and Chancellor Alison Watkins said the separation between corporate and academic governance was a long-standing tradition, but strict separation was somewhat artificial.

"The two are necessarily and inextricably linked," they said. "Maintenance of some links between academic and corporate governance is necessary to address this interdependence, to achieve coherency of governance overall and to meet the

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