Lincoln on the brink?

Having recorded a $6 million deficit last year, vice-chancellor Robin Pollard estimates Lincoln will now need to find $7m to meet the financial standards set by the Tertiary Education Commission.

Pollard was not available for interview before this issue of Rural News went to print, but the university has confirmed that some of Lincoln's thousands of hectares of farmland could be leased or sold, although land used for research purposes would remain untouched.

Lincoln's website lists 19 farms, though some properties are already leased to other parties and some the university does not own, but manages with the owners, including Ngai Tahu and secondary schools in Northland and Waikato.

Among farms it owns is the 180ha Lincoln University Dairy Farm, run as a commercial demonstration farm, and the 355ha Ashley Dene, owned by Lincoln for 100 years and recently converted to a dairy research unit.

Its largest farm is the 2127ha Mount Grand high country merino station in Central Otago. Neither that nor the 433ha Argyle – a dryland beef and sheep property in Marlborough – is listed as being used for research. Both are held in trust to fund scholarships for students.

Blocks already leased to other parties include a 125ha arable farm near the Lincoln campus, leased to Plant and Food Research.

Agricultural science consultant Dr Doug Edmeades blames Lincoln's problems on the commercialisation of science funding started in the 1990s.

"It's a continuation of the same nonsense," he claims. "Agricultural science organisations like Lincoln and Massey universities and AgResearch have stumbled from one funding crisis to the next for over 20 years.

"Reform to reform, based on commercial management theories, which do not apply to science organisations, tears the scientific heart and soul of science to pieces."

Edmeades says AgResearch had "done the same thing" by selling its farms. "That means the products of research cannot be tested, which is most important before they go onto farms."

Edmeades says Crown research institutes and universities need certainty and should be bulk funded.

"Science is very different from business in many different ways, so putting science into a business model, a commercial model, distorts science and undermines its purpose.

"You don't get the best out of people by putting them on the edge of a precipice; it's ridiculous."

Despite about 100 jobs being cut in the last round of restructuring in 2013-14, Pollard says more needed to be done to restore the university's finances. He told the Lincoln University council that a review of less popular courses had to be done before the start of the 2017 academic year.

Lincoln Tertiary Education Union organiser Cindy Doull said the union was struggling to make sense of what that would mean for staff. Based on the numbers affected in the 2013-14 round, she says the savings target could represent about 50 jobs being lost from the total staff of 600 to 650.

Meanwhile, former Invermay director Dr Jock Allison has backed Pollard for "trying to address the problems in a logical way, as he must".

"Any action that a new vice-chancellor takes will cause staff angst, but action must be taken if there is to be any chance of Lincoln surviving and regaining its reputation as the nation's premier agricultural tertiary institution."

Allison believes the university's problems could be "sheeted home" to the previous vice-chancellor, Dr Andrew West.

"The council knew that Dr West's departure from AgResearch came after difficulties and yet they still chose to employ him.

"Clearly the new vice-chancellor has to take firm action now or Lincoln might just as well be joined up with another university," he says. "Probably Otago is the most appropriate."