Good riddance, Julie Bishop. Her legacy at ANU is catastrophic |
Good riddance, Julie Bishop. Her legacy at ANU is catastrophic
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Julie Bishop’s resignation on Friday as chancellor of Australian National University brings to a close one of the most ignominious periods in modern higher education history. Bishop has, over her six-year stint as head of ANU’s council, overseen widespread reputational damage, unprecedented regulatory and political intervention, falling rankings, staff mistrust, falling enrolments and community furore.
While Rome burnt, Bishop deflected blame onto the very people who were doing their utmost to remedy a very dire situation.
Bishop has been in the headlines for months. First, because her hand-picked choice as vice chancellor, Genevieve Bell, had to resign less than two years into a five-year appointment. The reason was wholesale chaos emanating from a badly mismanaged and ill-informed $250 million cost-cutting exercise, known as Renew ANU, that was probably engineered on incorrect and catastrophised financial information but had the backing of Bishop and her council.
This is despite growing evidence that the council was not given sufficient or even correct information to understand the consequences of such a massive restructure in just a year, that they did not scrutinise fully the information they were given and never asked if there were alternative options.
Threats of imprisonment, seized........