Governing body bypasses academic senate to greenlight controversial degree in bid to stave off legal challenge

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The University of Wollongong has bypassed its own academic senate and greenlit the controversial Ramsay Centre-funded western civilisation degree in a bid to head off a looming court challenge.

On Monday the university announced its top governing body had taken the unusual step of intervening to approve the degree, despite it never being considered by its academic senate.

The university chancellor, Jillian Broadbent, said in a statement that the council had “full respect for the university’s academic process” but had decided to intervene in order to “remove any uncertainty about its commencement at UOW next year”.

“By approving the degree the council has acted in the best interests of the university,” she said.

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“It will enable progress to continue despite any continuing legal challenge to the vice-chancellor’s earlier approval decision.”

The Ramsay Centre’s western civilisation degree was the brainchild of the late Paul Ramsay, a healthcare mogul 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”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest University of Wollongong chancellor Jillian Broadbent said by approving the Ramsay Centre-funded western civilisation degree ‘the council has acted in the best interests of the university’. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

Much of the criticism of the degree spurred from an article by former prime minister Tony Abbott (a Ramsay Centre board member) in the conservative publication Quadrant, stating that the centre was “not merely about western civilisation but in favour of it”.

The latest decision comes after the National Tertiary Education Union announced in April that it was launching action in the New South Wales supreme court in a bid to stop the degree’s rollout.

The NTEU’s challenge centred on Wollongong vice-chancellor Paul Wellings’ decision to fast track the formal approval of the degree, which meant it was not considered and approved – as usually occurs – by the university’s academic senate.

But under UOW’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”, and its intervention is a clear attempt to force the union to back down.

In her statement, Broadbent, who chairs the council, “invited” the NTEU to withdraw its court challenge.

But the NTEU national president, Alison Barnes, said the decision was “another example of the university not following its normal procedures in approving new courses”, and that the union would now consider its next steps.



“The NTEU’s case centres around the university’s bypassing of the normal academic governance processes,” she said.

“Universities’ internal academic governance processes play a vital role in quality control and are fundamental to ensuring academic integrity and quality.

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“The university’s latest step is again another example of the university not following its normal processes, at the expense of the academic governance. The NTEU is again disappointed at UOW’s disregard for its academic staff and the broader university community.”

When UOW announced the deal with the Ramsay Centre in December, it came as a shock to many in the university’s humanities department.

Under the terms of the deal announced, Ramsay Centre staff would sit on academic and scholarship selection committees, but will not chair the committees or have a majority vote.

On Monday Broadbent said the UOW council had acted to end uncertainty around the delivery of the degree.

“The council was mindful of the tight timeframes involved in preparing to begin teaching the degree in 2020 and the potential impact of any uncertainty regarding the course’s approval status,” she said.