Previous concerns as to the direction of agricultural education at Lincoln University have now come to a head, with a major staff restructure.
The Farm Management Group have passed a vote of no confidence in the Senior Management of the Faculty of Commerce who have reprioritised course direction.
These decision makers have little background in grass roots agriculture and have no understanding of the importance of farm management in rural education.
The spin doctors from the Vice Chancellor's Office have glossed over staff leaving, by citing most went through voluntary redundancies but the issue lies in the disestablishment of positions and how the existing staff will handle the increased workloads and retain a quality service for the students.
Lincoln has been going through some fairly major restructuring to balance the books to get onside with the Government regarding the rebuilding programme. Most agree that some rationalisation needed to happen especially with courses where this institution has little competitive advantage.
2 Comments
I'm not surprised they're trying to close down Lincoln.
With the new Fonterra regs for _this_ season, they're trying to drive the agricultural sector from behind a desk.
No thanks.
Has never worked in the past. And I'm not putting my 20 yr mortgage and family at rest for that. If Fonterra want to run the farm, then they can buy it and do it themselves, amongst all their (unrenumerated) paperwork.
The problem is that Farm Management is no longer understood for what it really entails and has been subsumed by "Commerce" people who simplistically assume it is about accounts based business. It is not. It is a discipline in itself that relies heavily on production economics as part of a systems approach which must also encompass attitudes and beliefs of those involved in changing resource use in a logical manner.
It could be argued that the "Agribusiness" title and thrust has been the major contrbutor to the productionist era of farming that has led to the problems now being faced. Banks of course have encouraged this wrong turn as they see themselves as Agribusiness without the credentials to actually understand that Farm Management is not all straight line input/output relationships that can be controlled by cash flow decisions.
Cue up another win for the ignorance of those who control the direction of education and a major loss for farming and the environment.
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