NSW universities would be lost without Professional Staff, the workers who ensure our tertiary education system can operate smoothly and effectively. These are the people who handle the day-to-day operations that keep a university operating at its best. These are the workers who form the backbone of the university. They make it possible for teaching, learning, and research to take place effectively, while enhancing the student experience and institutional success. Without them, even basic institutional functions would stall and the student experience, from admissions to graduation, would be far worse for it.

The university sector is Australia’s third-biggest export, bringing in billions

of dollars as students pay for the prestige and opportunities provided by our education sector. More important, we believe, is the vital role universities play in equipping our country to better face the challenges of the future.

Australia faces a changing climate, an ageing population, overseas instability and an economy about to be transformed by the unstoppable march of artificial intelligence.

The research our universities undertake to prepare our country for these headwinds would be impossible without Professional Staff in the laboratories, libraries and elsewhere.

This sector is vital, so the current crisis afflicting our universities is of genuine concern not just to the people whose jobs are at risk, but to anyone who values Australia’s future.

Too often university administrations are looking at bottom lines, looking too close at profit and loss statements rather than the results our members work to achieve, and looking to cut wages bills by cutting workers. Even when the projected cuts to overseas student numbers failed to materialise, universities still embarked on sackings.

But we should never have found ourselves in this position. When our union’s Higher Education Representative Council (HERC) visited Canberra recently, we met with politicians from both sides of the chamber, including the Federal Minister for Education, to demand more funding for our university sector.

Since the reforms initiated in the 1980s by then Education Minister John Dawkins, universities have increasingly been told to finance themselves. This is despite all levels of government being major beneficiaries of a well-educated workforce and thriving research sector. Much of this funding is now through overseas students paying full fees to study in Australia.

Domestic students are also increasingly in the firing line. An arts degree can now cost $50,000, saddling graduates with enormous debts in their 20s.

The crisis in our universities can be solved without resorting to crude tactics such as drawing red lines through a list of staff members.

As the National Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union SPSF, I recently met with Treasurer Jim Chalmers to talk about the way public services in our states are funded.