CUT Annual Report 2008

1Message from the Vice-
Chancellor and Principal
The spurts of energy experienced in 2007 as part
of remaking CUT and building a firm foundation for
it to realise its mission propelled us even more in
2008.
We continued to make various interventions through:
institutional introspection and information sharing
(communiqués); deliberation (public lectures and
lunchtime talk-shops); inculcating values, discipline
and the work ethic required of any successful institution
(the Leadership Charter); incrementally revising our
processes so that they transfer some responsibility
and accountability to other executives and managers;
and embedding quality management principles at all
operational levels.
As reported in the 2007 review, the four major tasks set
by Council in 2007 continued to attract focus, namely:
managing a salary budget that had been progressively
bulging; revitalising institutional and operational planning;
establishing strategic partnerships; and expediting the
institutional restructuring process.
With regard to the salary budget difficulties we faced
in 2007 – and the challenge to reduce the budget from
about 72% of the subsidy plus tuition fee income to
within 65% – I am pleased to report that we managed
to bring the salary budget down to 66% in 2008,
having ended the year 2007 at 69%. We optimised
executive functions and thereby reduced the number of
executives from nine (plus an additional highly graded
but non-executive position) to only four.
We also scoured the whole staff establishment and either
removed or combined a number of lower level positions.
These interventions allowed us to turn the academic-tosupport
staff salary ratio around to 51:49 by the end of
the year. We can now afford to invest more in academic
positions in 2009 onwards and thereby reduce the high
student-to-instructional staff ratio to more acceptable
levels.
After the Institutional Planning Division was revived
and restructured in 2007, this division started work on
aligning CUT’s operations to the overall strategy through
various strategic sessions and new processes. A 15-
point Institutional Strategy was produced in March 2009
and supported by Council. The 15 points were later
reformatted into three major strategic sets, namely:
building the institution’s foundations as a university;
aligning the academe with the needs of business/industry
and government; and building strategic partnerships.
A strategic budgeting approach to the 2009 institutional
budget was also agreed upon. This is to allow us to invest
in the university’s strategy rather than continuing with
the same old expenditure patterns that do not necessarily
support the strategy.
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