Vice chancellor Professor Robin Pollard said the project, Refreshing Lincoln, was about rejuvenating the university but would not mean a shift from its core business of being a specialist educator in land, environment and associated social issues but there needed to be what he called “some pruning and some regrowth”.
“Unfortunately it is not sustainable,” he said of the existing structure.
“The university needs to do things so it is financially and academically sustainable,” he said.
In the last five years Lincoln had cumulatively run up $7 million in deficits, contrary to Government requirements.
The review sought to rejuvenate and modernise the university and identify ways to save money from courses and programmes, staffing requirements and the performance of entities and assets, including the 15 farms and small blocks of land it owned throughout the South Island.
Pollard said the merger in 2010 of Lincoln and what was Telford Rural Polytechnic, which offered certificate level farming courses on a 900ha south Otago farm, had only partially worked.
“Early consideration on Telford is under way with a view to improving outcomes at the campus.”
Part of the problem with Telford was that it operated for only part of the year and had 90 students on site, though with distance learning programmes it had 514 effective full time students.
Pollard said “imaginative solutions” were required to rejuvenate the university and one example was Lincoln’s rigid course structure that required students to take specific papers as part of a degree.
“I want to free up the rules around the subject students can choose.
“It would be wonderful to mix people from those who have grown up on a farm in the same class as people attracted to Lincoln for its environmental courses. We could have some super debates.”
Pollard, who started his job in February, said a number of factors had come to a head for 138-year-old institution and could no longer be ignored.
A static roll, a hangover from when it offered a broader range of programmes, financial losses, the impact on staff and campus from the Canterbury earthquakes and the need to modernise had all come to a head.
Born and educated in Christchurch, Pollard spent most of his professional career working in universities overseas and said most transformed in the 1980s and 1990s to adopt modern, attractive programmes and systems.
For those universities evolution had become part of their normal day-to-day activities.
Lincoln’s senior management structure had already changed.
Pollard said the effect of the earthquakes, developing the new research hub and wider issues of the university’s non-performance meant those managers had been effectively paralysed.
There were now fewer positions but greater clarity of their roles and responsibilities.
The pending development of the Lincoln hub with AgResearch, DairyNZ, Landcare Research and Plant and Food Research was a key plank of its future.
He described it as world-leading, which enabled students to interact with scientists on the campus.
Pollard said the first stage of Refreshing Lincoln was consulting with anyone who wanted to have input and a dedicated refresh web page had been added to Lincoln’s website.
Lincoln had deep and historic links to agriculture in the South Island and he asked alumni and the rural sector to support and engage with the university and to understand the reasons why it had to transform.
Tertiary Education Union Lincoln president Stuart Larsen knew little about Refreshing Lincoln but said more than 100 staff had lost their jobs during restructuring in 2013 and 2014.
It had been a difficult few years for staff dealing with change and the earthquakes.
“I don’t think anybody would argue we do not need changes to some things but the way change has been taking place has been difficult.”
