BY JO HARNEY & MICHELLE BREAR
SYDNEY — A scandal involving a university's burial of library books has inspired students to re-ignite a struggle for better quality education and more equitable funding.
In 1995, approximately 10,000 books, some donations from other universities, were secretly buried at the Campbelltown campus of the University of Western Sydney (UWS). The university administration has claimed it had no option but to do so, due to lack of funding, but has since recognised that it was a thoughtless act and has guaranteed not to let it happen ever again.
The public exposure of the book burial last year has aroused a debate about claims for further funding. UWS receives the third lowest per capita funding of all universities in Australia, at $10,500 per student, while older, more established universities receive over $17,000 per student.
"UWS does suffer from a funding crisis, however this does not excuse books being buried", said UWS Blacktown student and library employee, Laura Sewell. "The books could have been sold or given away. Burying them is a complete waste. It's like when big companies throw away food, knowing that people all over the world are starving. The university is more interested in saving a few dollars than providing quality education."
UWS was restructured this year in an attempt to save $10 million, apparently an objective in line with its principle of "providing high quality and accessible higher education and research in a region of metropolitan Sydney historically under-resourced and undervalued".
The restructure proposal, outlined in a document named Shaping the Future, sparked massive opposition from students and staff.
In November, staff were forced to strike and delay student results when university vice-chancellor Janice Reid failed to guarantee that the restructure would not lead to a 30% cut in staff or an increase in class sizes to a minimum of 100 students. The strike managed to stop many immediate cutbacks but not the overall restructure.
The essence of the proposal was to amalgamate the three universities, Nepean, Macarthur and Hawkesbury, into one university with seven campuses. This would mean that students would enrol at the university without a home campus and may have to travel long distances between campuses to attend classes.
Students have also faced increased fees for the student union, library fines, parking and access to computers.
A new four semester year, with regular semester classes as well as summer and winter school, also threatens the quality of education on offer at UWS. Students attending during regular semester have had their teaching time cut by a week per semester and are now expected to complete the same amount of work over a shorter period of time with less lecturer contact.
The university, however, will benefit from increased revenue from the extra semesters, which will provide a majority of places to full fee-paying students.
"Students at UWS deserve the same levels of funding as those at other universities", said UWS Kingswood student Owen Richards. "There is no doubt that the money which has been slashed from education funding in the last 10 years effects students at every university but we also need to create awareness of the lack of funding UWS receives."
Richards said that, since the university was designed to accommodate the needs of those in the western Sydney region, especially those from lower socio-economic and non-English speaking backgrounds, UWS's dispersed structure "has made it possible for people to obtain a tertiary education who would not ordinarily have had the opportunity to do so".
The book burial scandal and the university's restructure, however, shows that university administration is allowing "these fundamental ideals [to] now [be] clouded by a purely economic focus."