As chancellor, Mr Thodey will chair the university’s senate, its highest governing body, a position similar to the chairman of a corporation. He said he looked forward to continuing Ms Hutchinson’s work “in striving to ensure the university is known for creating a world-class teaching and learning environment and a wonderful student experience”.

Mr Thodey comes into the top position at a time when the University of Sydney has emerged ­financially strong from the ­pandemic, after managing to retain its lucrative cohort of Chinese students who studied in their homeland during the period of border ­closures.

The university is by a clear margin the most financially strong Australian university, ­reporting a $1bn surplus in 2021, followed by a $300m surplus in 2022.

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott, whose position is effectively CEO of the university, said Mr Thodey was a renowned leader across a broad range of national life. “His career has changed the lives of millions of Australians through telecommunications and digital technologies,” Professor Scott said.

He said Mr Thodey brought to the university “an extraordinary background that demonstrates a commitment to community, innovation and public service – as well as, of course, his extensive leadership and board experience across research, technology and telecommunications”.

Mr Thodey was Telstra CEO from 2009 to 2015 and then chaired the CSIRO board from 2015 to 2021. He chaired the 2019 Australian Public Sector Review and is chair of Ramsay Health Care and accounting technology company Xero.

He signalled he would be focusing on the university’s ability to create valuable applications from fundamental research. “Research translation for real-world impact is what great universities do, and that will continue to be a priority at the university,” he said.

Mr Thodey also said he would pay close attention to people and the composition of the university.

“We know our community thrives through inclusion and diversity and this will also continue to be our focus as we commit to ensuring the success of a greater diversity of students and staff at Sydney,” he said.

Professor Scott thanked Ms Hutchinson for the key leadership role she had played as ­chancellor since 2013, a position that she had performed without remuneration.

“It goes well beyond our campuses, helping us to reach government, donors, business and the broader community,” he said.

“The improvement she has made to the governance of our university cannot be understated. Her vision, hard work and clear focus have been key to our success, making us financially strong, improving risk management and setting us up to become one of Australia’s most successful ­universities.”

Ms Hutchinson said the university campus was now a very different place to when she commenced as chancellor 11 years ago.

“While we have more to achieve, we have made significant strides,” she said.

“Today, women make up over half of our student community. And by focusing on a series of targeted mentoring, sponsorship and network programs, women now represent more than half of our senior executive leaders.”

The partnership will see university credit points allocated to students who complete HEX Ed short courses that have been developed alongside tech-giant Atlassian that teach entrepreneurship, technology and business start-up skills.

Students can then use that credit towards completing a Bachelor of Commerce at USyd or using it to apply to other universities, many of which have different criteria when recognising credit.

USyd deputy vice-chancellor of education Professor Joanne Wright said HEX targets students who are often underrepresented in higher education – something the university wants to improve as per its 10-year plan.

HEX co-founder Chris Hoffman said even though recognising students' prior learning as official university credit is common in the US, this is believed to be the first partnership of its kind in Australia.

“A HEX program could be the difference between a student that goes on to have quite a traditional career path, and a student who embraces the exponential future and all its possibilities," he said.

"HEX gives students a credit-bearing opportunity to explore the world of innovation and entrepreneurship – regardless of whether they’re enrolled in uni."

Short courses are most popular among 30-44 year olds looking to upskill in their current profession, but are becoming more popular among universities as Australia's technology and engineering skills shortage continues to grow.

Manuel Graeber, a neuropathologist with a highly regarded research record who held the university’s Barnet-Cropper Chair of Brain Tumor Research, was found by an internal review committee to have committed “serious misconduct”. Professor Graeber, who has been suspended from his duties at the university since August, has set up a GoFundMe page to support other academic whistleblowers and fund his proposed academic defence union.

“Australia needs good universities where academic values and principles rule and are not stamped upon,” Professor Graeber said in a message to fellow academics. “That’s worth a fight in my opinion.”

Professor Graeber told a Tasmanian parliamentary committee in a hearing last year that his “persecution” by University of Sydney management followed a public interest disclosure he had made involving “managerial abuse” and misconduct.

The University of Sydney Association of Professors (USAP), of which Professor Graeber is president, has strongly backed him in his long-running dispute with the university. A letter signed last month by 17 members of the USAP council linked Professor Graeber’s suspension to public interest disclosures describing “alleged wrongdoing by the university’s management”.

The council’s letter said Professor Graeber’s suspension was “seeming retribution by management for him fulfilling his USAP and fundamental public responsibilities via his public disclosures”.

Professor Graeber’s termination came after the review committee considered three matters alleged by the university – that Professor Graeber had failed to teach a class as directed, that he had barred entry to his office and pointed an iPhone camera at the door, and refused to take part in a meeting about his performance.

Professor Graeber has defended his actions saying the camera was to protect highly valuable scientific material he held – slides of brain tissue used by Alois Alzheimer in the early 1900s to diagnose the first case of what became known as Alzheimer’s disease. He also has said he refused to teach the class because he lacked the required expertise and had offered a suitable replacement. Regarding the performance meeting, Professor Graeber told the committee he believed the outcome was predetermined.

The University of Sydney said in a statement that it couldn’t comment on individual matters but strongly refuted any suggestion that it would take action against a staff member for expressing their opinions. The university said it protected those making public interest disclosures from detriment, in line with its policies and legislation.

“All our community is free to express their opinions, including about our university,” the statement said.

Business students at JPG will be offered joint degrees to allow them to split their study time between India and Australia.

Under the agreement, students will spend two years at JGU’s campus in Sonipat before travelling to Sydney University to finish their studies.

USyd vice chancellor Mark Scott, who signed the deal in northern India today, said it was more important than ever to offer overseas students an "immersive study experience".

“We deeply value our relationship with India and recognise the nation’s vital importance to Australia’s higher education sector,” he said.

“We’re thrilled to be working with O.P. Jindal Global University to give students the chance to earn two degrees in just four years and experience university life in Sydney. 

“We know these students will enrich our community enormously.”

Last week, the Australian government announced it would relax its visa rules to allow overseas university graduates to stay in the country for an extra two years.

Participating students in the USyd-JGU agreement may be eligible to take advantage of the stream visa to remain in Australia and undertake paid employment. 

JGU vice-chancellor professor C. Raj Kumar said this would enable Indian students to “enrich their career prospects enormously”.

“The agreement with the University of Sydney is part of a larger effort to expand and deepen ties between India and Australia,” he said. 

“Our students will gain from this unique experience, which will allow them to pursue two degree programs and benefit from the university experience in India and Australia.”

In July, the University of Wollongong announced plans to become the first Australian university to have a teaching base in India after it signed a deal with one of the country's fastest growing business hubs.

This came after former education minister Alan Tudge signed a trade deal with India to leverage higher education ties between the two countries.

India is Australia’s second largest source market for international student enrolments, accounting for 15.2% of international students in 2019, pre COVID, and 16.3% in 2022.

On Wednesday, people from all walks of university life will be at the picket lines despite management stating that “industrial action will make no difference to the course of negotiations,” said National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) Sydney University branch president Nick Riemer.

Speaking to Campus Review, Riemer said negotiations with university management have been ongoing since August. 

“At a recent bargaining meeting, they told us that they weren't even interested in discussing some of our most important proposals at all.

“This expresses the indifference or maybe even the contempt that they have for their own employees.

“The strike is there as a way to press our point, to show that staff have had enough,” Riemer said.

Due to the pandemic, strikes at the university have not happened since 2017. Riemer believes that this year the level of preparation and commitment to the industrial action is unprecedented. 

“If we don't make progress, we're going on strike for a further day on May 24th and then we'll be back on strike in the second semester. 

“We’ll strike for as long as it's necessary.” 

According to Riemer, the proposals made by the NTEU are “realistic and necessary” and emerged following consultation with academics and support staff. They are:

• recognition & improvement of work
• an end to disruptive change
• reasonable work from home rights for professional staff
• management & performance review practices
• enforceable targets for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander employment
• a fair pay increase
• an end to forced redundancies
• enforceable controls on workload for all staff
• preservation of the right to a 40% research component in academic workloads, and
• an end to exploitative long-term casualisation.

“These are the changes that we think are necessary to the university. It’s the most detailed log of claims that we have ever served on management,” said Riemer. 

Casual staff on the frontline 

According to Riemer, “the permanent threat of redundancy that hangs over [staff’s] head that management uses as a controlling tool” must come to an end.

One of NTEU's proposals is to resolve the issue of long term casualisation. 

“Over half of the workforce at Sydney University is in precarious employment,” he said. 

According to Jeffrey, a casual tutor in the School of Economics, most academic staff such as PhD students and other tutors rely on being casual as their main source of income. 

“It is a difficult situation, especially when you don’t know if you’ll have a job in six months,” Jeffrey told Campus Review. 

“You have to keep reapplying, keep proving to the university your worth, when it feels like the university has really relied on casual staff’s labour without giving too much back.

“A lot of academics saw the threat of being out of work due to administrative changes.

“The university didn't communicate or consult with us, nor made decisions with regards to staff needs.”

Since the pandemic, university staff conditions have worsened due to redundancies, leaving remaining staff to pick up the slack. 

The economics tutor says the university expects academic staff to take consultation hours, respond to emails and student queries outside of class hours. 

“We are expected to do quite a lot of work for no pay; this is a big financial challenge.”

Jeffrey believes finances also play a part in casual staff decisions to strike as they won’t get paid, unlike people on salary. 

“It is a really difficult decision but ultimately a really strong message choosing to strike,” he added.  

Casual tutor in the arts faculty and University of Sydney Casuals Network branch representative, Dani Cotton believes that casual staff often find themselves in a difficult position. 

“There is a lot of fear. A lot of casuals are incredibly fearful to sign a petition, let alone striking,” Cotton told Campus Review.

“They are not confident to speak up about their conditions. They're worried that if they do so, they might be singled out.”

According to Cotton, the current university hiring system is ”incredibly chaotic” with people teaching outside of their field of expertise as management is trying to find "anyone they can possibly get as classes start next week".

“They end up hiring someone who frankly is not appropriate for the job,” added Cotton.

“Job security means having tutors who know their discipline, and they know the latest cutting-edge research and they can bring that to the classroom.

“We need long-term casuals converted into permanent roles, and we also want long multiple year fixed-term contracts for those casuals.”

Cotton believes that this insecure job environment pushes talent overseas, as “it is the only place people can get a job”. 

“So many amazing tutors and teachers leave and students end up being the ones who lose the most out of this.”

Students back their lecturers up

University of Sydney Student Representative Council (SRC) president Lauren Lancaster says the students’ union is standing in solidarity with academic and teaching staff. 

“We've been trying in the campaign to build up the strikes, to make sure that students understand that staff working conditions are our learning conditions,” Lancaster told Campus Review. 

“We've seen mass casualisation at campuses across the country that hit women and vulnerable people the most because they're overrepresented in those lower levels of academia.”

Since the pandemic, Lancaster has seen an increase in the caseworker service at the SRC, where students come for help with special considerations, assessment problems or if they've been mistreated by the university.

“We've seen a massive uptick in cases, 150% since pre-pandemic, and that shows that students are really struggling with their mental well-being. 

“They're struggling to complete their assessments to a standard that is good enough, and there's just an extraordinary amount of pressure being placed on people.”

“[The University] doesn't support students with disabilities or people who are vulnerable in terms of COVID, for example.”

Lancaster believes that the pandemic exacerbated stress for students making it apparent that “the university is operating like a business”. 

Third year environmental studies and political economy student Alana Ramshaw will be striking alongside her lecturers this week.

“For the strike to be effective, they need support, they need their students backing them up,” Ramshaw told Campus Review. 

According to Ramshaw, students can see to what extent their tutors are struggling while doing the best they can to provide a good education. 

“Casual teaching staff are here because they care. 

“One of my tutors lectured and taught classes from her bed when she had COVID.”

Ramshaw says the lack of lecturers impacted her studies as some of the classes she wanted to take were not made available.

“I don’t feel like I get what I paid for in my degree.

“It all comes down to the university not supporting their staff and therefore not supporting their students,” added Ramshaw. 

USyd response

Campus Review contacted the university which said via a spokesperson that this strike is "a disappointing move, with premature and unnecessary action" as management is still in negotiation.

“It’s been a difficult time for the higher education sector, and we still face an uncertain future. We want to make sure that we reach an agreement that enhances our sector-leading wages and conditions and supports research and teaching excellence.

“We have ongoing fortnightly meetings scheduled to July and are working to reach agreement on a range of matters, some of which have not yet been raised for full discussion.

"While we respect the right of staff to take industrial action, we are disappointed that the NTEU has chosen prematurely to pursue unnecessary industrial action.

“The University will continue to be open and operating on those days.

“Our position will not be shifted by industrial action, but by good-faith negotiation at the bargaining table. On our side, we will continue to engage transparently and in good faith and keep our community updated,” the spokesperson said.

Comprised of 28 universities around the world, The University of Sydney joins fellow Australian institutions the University of NSW, the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne.

University of Sydney vice-chancellor and president, Professor Mark Scott, said joining U21 “reflected the institution’s deep commitment to global engagement”.

“The University of Sydney has a long history of collaboration with partners around the world. As we look to further strengthen our global engagement activities, the U21 network will offer rich opportunities for collaboration across teaching and research.

“In sharing ideas, resources and bringing people together, we can find new ways to approach the challenges that face the higher education sector and address the world’s most pressing problems,” said Scott.

Universitas 21 was created in Melbourne in 1997 after a group of 11 universities came together to create an international network that would facilitate research, collaboration and global opportunities for staff and students.

According to President of U21, Professor Tan Eng Chye, the University of Sydney is a formidable addition to the network.

“The University of Sydney is already doing outstanding work with partners around the world. The University has the largest student exchange and study abroad program in Australia. Its success in tackling key global issues is evidenced in its second-place ranking in the most recent THE Impact Rankings, which assess universities against the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

“The University of Sydney will bring a wealth of knowledge, ideas and experience to the network and we look forward to working together,” said Eng Chye.

But, in what might appear to be an unusual move, the university has incorporated the striking artefact into a core Master of Commerce unit. The fish helmet from the Republic of Kiribati, an island nation comprising a string of atolls in the Pacific Ocean, is just one of many objects from the museum used to teach the Analytic and Creative Mindsets unit. 

“The unit was designed to teach postgraduate business students about creativity and analytics and to emphasise that both mindsets are complementary and necessary graduate attributes,” the course designers and researchers say. 

“Students often think that a creative mindset means you must be born creative.

“There is also a myth that creative people are not analytical, but the truth is that creativity is enhanced, guided, and validated by data and analytics (Gibbons, 2019).”

The collaboration between University of Sydney business school and the museum was published in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, citing the benefits of Object Based Learning (OBL). The paper ‘Collaborating on a creative solution to teach creativity to business students’ was authored by Wardak and Dr Abdul Razeed from the business school and Chau Chak Wing Museum academic engagement curators Jane Thogersen and Dr Eve Guerry.

The authors contend that “incorporating a museum OBL experience acted as a disruptor for students, initially placing them in unfamiliar territory and removing the standard support structures that they find in a traditional accounting classroom.”

OBL, as a teaching method, “is particularly effective for group work and skill development around empathy, communication, observation, analysis, deductive reasoning, problem solving and creative and critical thinking, all wonderfully transferable skills for future employment,” the researchers state. 

“Although creative and analytical mindsets are often perceived as opposing, taking a multidisciplinary approach to curriculum design can foster smoother integration between the two mindsets.”

Working in groups of four, students wove a “creative narrative” to connect four seemingly disparate specimens, artefacts and artworks. This then provided the foundation for an assessment that required them to develop a business problem and respond with a creative solution. 

Dr Dewa Wardak from the business school’s Co-Design team, which worked with unit coordinators to develop Analytic and Creative Mindsets, said: “creativity is increasingly recognised as an important aspect of business education.”

“More and more companies require staff to look at existing problems in different ways, to find novel alternatives. As a hands-on component, this exercise enhanced students’ knowledge retention and was fun to boot.”

Other items in the unit were a 1940s anti-gravity suit, a bronze thumb from an ancient Greek statue, a 1980s poster promoting anti-nuclear policies, and a specimen of a giant beetle.

The Chau Chak Wing Museum opened at the university last year and, when COVID-19 restrictions allow, is open free of charge to the public. The museum brings the university’s collections of antiquities, natural history, historic photographs, cultural artefacts and art under one roof. 

“Aside from being an important cultural asset in Sydney, our museum stands out from others by offering our students and staff unique opportunities to incorporate objects and artefacts spanning millennia into their learning experience,” museum director David Ellis said.

Called “Future Fass”, the SRC says the proposal to cut some courses and merge departments “threatens the very nature of what an arts degree is at USyd by destroying diversity and specificity within the faculty and student’s educational experiences”. Various petitions to oppose the proposed changes have also garnered support from students, with almost a 1000 being submitted to management with feedback.

A leaked list of FASS enrolments seen by Campus Review, as well as the university’s draft change proposal (DCP), show that up to 250 undergraduate units are potentially on the chopping block. The SRC says that “non-essential undergraduate units of study with less than 24 enrolled students are set to be cut”, as well as all postgraduate units with fewer than 16 enrolments. 

The “Future Fass” proposal also includes “unit of study mergers”, which the SRC states is a way of condensing educational content by “co-tabling units of study between different departments”. According to the council, this could result in subjects in sociology relating to feminism and subjects in cultural studies on gender being taught “collectively”. 

The rationale for the proposed changes is covered in the DCP document.

“The faculty has six schools, four of which are further structured into departments. The financial viability of our nearly 50 teaching subject areas is uneven with a very small number of disciplines with high concentrations of international student enrolments cross-subsidizing the rest…” it says.

“The faculty proposes to realign the disciplinary mix of its schools in order to support disciplinary synergies in the arts, humanities and social sciences that will enhance teaching and research performance; rationalise cognate teaching programs by increasing flexibility between disciplines; and reduce internal EFTSL competition between departmental or disciplinary groups.”

The SRC believes that such moves threaten to strip “the disciplinarity of learning sociology or learning gender studies”. 

“The autonomy of our department to design its own coursework and develop its own learning opportunities is at risk. The teaching of our specific methodologies and the expertise of our educators will be diminished through the merging of courses with other disciplines. This gravely jeopardises the future of our department and students wanting to learn about gender and cultural studies at the University of Sydney,” third year gender and cultural studies student Ell Haber said.

The SRC adds that the FASS restructure appears to be turning “departments” to “disciplines”, resulting in disciplines being merged together. Some examples include writing studies with English; Indian subcontinental studies with Asian studies; peace and conflict studies with sociology; social policy, biblical studies and studies in religion. 

The SRC education officer Maddie Clark says the proposed cuts belie the “concept that going to university is about learning and student choice”. This is particularly relevant, given the fact that USyd is renowned for having the largest arts faculty in the country.

“These changes are being made by management to maximise their profits and show how even the richest unis like Sydney Uni are pursuing a strategy of corporatisation and streamlining,” she says.

USyd students have called these cuts “baseless and cruel”, and have pointed to management’s own figures that state FASS is projected to make a $135 million surplus in 2021 after making a $61 million surplus in 2020. 

“FASS management justify these cuts on the basis of declining government funding and rising costs, however their surpluses tell a different story,” the SRC said. 

Kelton Muir, of the Education Action Group, said that “more and more there is a push for interdisciplinary studies, which have many staff concerned". He added that this could have a significant effect on the methodologies being taught in different disciplines, and also questioned how these proposed changes would affect honours students. 

A spokesperson for the university told Campus Review that of roughly 1800 units of study about 80 will be “rested or or retired” within the faculty.

“Approximately 80 – all with small or no enrolments – will be rested or retired by our Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Other units will be rested as part of our usual annual process of accommodating staff movements and course changes,” they said.

“The aim of the faculty’s highly targeted curriculum reform project is to reduce bureaucracy and double-up between disciplines, enable greater cross-disciplinary collaboration and produce a more consistent student experience across the faculty. These changes will improve our students’ experience and will not affect their progression.

“As with all higher education institutions, we need to look for ways to ensure that our high-quality teaching and research is underpinned by financial sustainability going forward. This is because the sector is facing significant challenges – from the impacts of COVID-19 as well as pre-pandemic factors such as years of reduced government funding, revenue being outstripped by costs and over-reliance on international student fee revenue.

“The faculty has been in extended discussion with staff to understand their preferences for how to best position itself to navigate these challenges. Discussions have encompassed the possibility of restructuring the current six schools (including the merger of some disciplines) as well as agreeing on a set of principles for the reform of our curriculum.

“FASS is currently forecasting a $130m surplus in 2021, driven almost exclusively by increases in international student enrolments,” the spokesperson said.

Australia’s oldest university is still evaluating its options that could result in it selling off 13 properties at least, a decision many Australian universities have had to make in the last 12 months, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported.

Such decisions have been brought about by a plunging local international student market, more online learning and more competition in the online learning sphere.

The new approach is seeing Australian universities flip "the traditional property script”, transitioning from “owners to renters, and holders to developers while increasingly swapping low-rise campuses for high-rise towers of learning”.

University-owned student accommodation has been hit hard by the pandemic, with the inner-city University of Technology Sydney (UTS) selling three of its student accommodation buildings to Scape for $95 million. Expressions of interest have also closed at the University of Wollongong, too, regarding a “trio of lodging assets”. 

Based on a 72-hectare campus in the inner Sydney suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington, USyd will be downsizing part of its housing portfolio across 12 primarily Victorian terraces, including Arundel Accommodation Triangle and Forest Lodge, to free up capital and better projected changes to student accommodation needs.

“Four have already been sold, two are currently on the market and six will be put up for sale by the end of the year, including Selle House, a 14-bed older apartment building previously used for student accommodation,” a spokesperson told AFR.

“To take advantage of Sydney’s current strong real estate market, we are considering which of our off-campus properties are surplus to our needs and suitable for sale,” the University of Sydney spokesperson said. The spokesperson called the assessment “ongoing”, keeping opportunities open for other “non-core asset sales”.

The capital will then be “recycled through other projects” such as the redevelopment of 39 terraces to the tune of $40 million. The project has already received State Significant Development Approval and is intended for “affordable” student accommodation in the future.

“Any revenue made from sales of our property will be reinvested into new developments or our Future Fund to support our core teaching and research objectives, and we are only considering buildings that won’t be required for our current or future operations,” the spokesperson added. 

Revenue raising through property sales and cost-cutting has been widespread across the sector, with institutions expressing that their priority is “more efficient use of capital". One of these institutions is Western Sydney University (WSU), which has partnered with fund manager Charter Hall, to commit to long-term leases on two high-rise campuses in Parramatta, including its new $300 million Engineering Innovation Hub.

WSU also developed and sold a shopping centre, Caddens Corner, for $80 million to Holdmark Group in late 2020, reinvesting the proceeds into teaching and research.

“Education and capital assets provide an opportunity for the university, investors, the property sector and stakeholders to identify and act on shared opportunities including public-private partnerships and innovative leasing arrangements,” WSU told AFR.

“Victoria University has partnered with super fund ISPT to develop a $400 million vertical CBD campus and La Trobe University is looking for a partner to help accelerate the proposed $5 billion transformation of its Bundoora campus."

However, based on the activity, distinguished professor of accounting at Macquarie Business School James Guthrie still thinks Australian universities are in property development mode.

“We’re not talking millions, we’re talking a billion-dollar industry or even more at the moment,” he said.

“The amount of property they had and what they’re selling – they’re only selling off little bits and pieces.” 

What to do about non-core university property and capital was discussed at length at an Australian Property Council seminar earlier in the year.

"Right now, universities are experiencing huge disruptions to their cash flow due to COVID, coupled with significant changes in the demands for on-campus space,” Nikki Robinson, partner in charge at law firm Clayton Utz’s Sydney office, said.

“They are looking for a fast injection of capital, new or different infrastructure matching the changing demands of the sector and its students, and connections to industry for training, research, development and employment purposes.

Robinson added that reassessing property portfolios could serve two functions for universities.

“It can work with universities to develop smarter, more sustainable and more strategically located campuses, and it can provide the capital required to redevelop land no longer needed by universities," she said.

In this episode, Professor Jennifer Whyte of the University of Sydney joins the HEDx podcast to reflect on culture, leadership and partnerships as an Australian Head of School in a Go8 compared to her experiences at Imperial College in the UK.

She outlines opportunities for Australian universities to take advantage of new modes of connections, in particular a forthcoming Olympic Games in 2032, to reintegrate with the rest of the world by harnessing technology and global perspectives.