Macquarie University (MQ) told staff on 2nd June that there would be a restructure in the arts and science faculties, including the axing of at least 50 full-time academic jobs.
Several majors will be removed, including politics, gender studies, criminology, and psychological studies.
According to the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), there will be 42 job losses in the Faculty of Arts and 33 in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
The most recent available annual report, 2024-25, showed that MQ had reported a $3.7 million surplus, compared to a $81 million deficit from 2023-24.
The MQ administration told staff that this restructure will save $15 million a year.
This follows an announcement in April 2025 from the Faculty of the Arts Dean Chris Dixon, who proposed reducing eight work units to five, and introducing a raft of course cuts.
NTEU Division Secretary Vince Caughley commented, “Every job cut means lost expertise, broken teams, lives upended — for both staff and students. And it sends a message: that those who build knowledge and support students every day are disposable.
“Let’s be clear too: these cuts are a choice. And they’re the wrong one.”
NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes said “Vice-chancellors’ instinct is always to come after jobs and courses, making the federal government’s goal for half of all young people to have degrees by 2035 impossible.”
