The peak union for university academics and staff has been forced to drop legal action against the University of Wollongong over its approval of the controversial Ramsay Centre-funded western civilisation course.
The National Tertiary Education Union announced on Friday that it had withdrawn its action in the New South Wales supreme court over what it had described as the “unlawful” approval of the degree by the university late last year.
It comes after the university took the unusual step last month of having its top governing body – the university council – approve the degree, despite it never being considered by its academic senate.
In a statement on Friday the national president of the NTEU, Alison Barnes, claimed the university council’s intervention was an admission there was “a real case to answer in court”.
“We initiated the court action against the university because it didn’t follow its normal procedures when it fast-tracked approval for the new course,” she said.
“The university bypassed its normal academic governance processes, which play a vital role in quality control and are fundamental to ensuring academic integrity and quality, and the council has done that again by making this decision.”
In December last year the university announced it had agreed to a $50m deal with the Ramsay Centre over the controversial degree. The centre, which is funded through a bequest from the late healthcare magnate Paul Ramsay, announced the deal to bankroll the new degree for the next eight years.
Unlike other universities, the deal between the Ramsay Centre and University of Wollongong occurred without wide consultation with staff or the approval of the academic senate. Instead, the vice chancellor, Professor Paul Wellings, signed off on the deal after discussions with what the university called at the time a “small team”.
In April the NTEU announced it was launching legal action against the university, saying Welling did not have authority to make the decision.
But in a deliberate attempt to head off the legal action, last month the university council intervened to sign off on the deal. Under the University of Wollongong’s governing laws the council has broad authority to “act in all matters concerning the university” and to “provide such courses, and confer such degrees … as it thinks fit”.
The decision has forced the NTEU to back down, despite remaining opposed to the degree.
On Friday Barnes said the council’s decision “disregards the overwhelming majority views of its academic staff and the broader university community”.
“Just because the council’s decision is legal doesn’t make it the right decision,” she said. “The council decision underscores the lengths to which university managements have gone to erode the centrality of academic governance within universities.”
The Ramsay Centre’s western civilisation degree was the brainchild of Ramsay, who established the centre with a $3.3bn bequest.
The degree has proved enormously controversial at other universities.
The Australian National University pulled out of a deal with the centre over concerns about academic freedom, and at the University of Sydney some academics accused the degree of “embodying a kind of academic racism”and said adopting it risked turning the university into an “intellectual backwater”.
