Students launch petition at University of Western Australia against cuts to courses Students at the University of Western Australia’s (UWA) School of Social Sciences have launched a petition titled “Save Social Sciences at UWA,” seeking to halt a new round of job cuts and restructuring at the university. In just four days, there has been an outpouring of support. There are nearly 5,000 signatures and hundreds of comments expressing disgust at the escalating pro-corporate restructuring of universities at the expense of scholarship and genuine education. According to WA Today, the UWA’s School of Social Sciences is just the first to suffer in a $40 million cost-cutting program, “with almost all staff in sociology and anthropology axed and their disciplines to disappear.” Eight of nine positions are being eliminated in anthropology and sociology. Three jobs are going from political sciences and international relations, three from geography and planning, and one each from Asian studies and archaeology.