His 18 months in the role is by far the shortest tenure in the University of Otago’s history.
Now the university is facing the question of what comes next — sticking with tradition and appointing another academic or hunting outside the academic world for a business-savvy operator with a hard focus on solving its financial problems.
Since the role was created in 1948, the university has had nine vice-chancellors.
All nine have been academics and most either studied or worked at Otago before being appointed.
The last three have all continued their research while in the top job, a job which is fundamentally akin to that of a chief executive.
The university has already indicated it might be casting the net wider than usual by emphasising at the outset it will carry out a "global search" for Prof Murdoch’s replacement.
Whatever comes next, it is clear the next vice-chancellor will be faced with the toughest environment since the upheaval of the 1990s when the government carried out painful reforms of the sector.
The clocktower should be asking whether confining its "global search" to the academic world will prevent it from finding a person with the chops to guide them through the financial maelstrom.
It is clear management of the university has contributed to the mess it has found itself in now.
The university launched a massive capital spending spree only for construction costs to spiral and interest rates to climb in the wake of the pandemic.
At the same time, any increases in funding from the Government are not matching inflation.
Some of the risks were foreseeable and possible to mitigate robustly through prudent operational budgeting and capital development within means.
Yet the university has, with academic indulgence, allowed a situation where it is teaching more than 500 papers which attract so few students they fall below Otago’s self-imposed guidelines for economically sustainable courses.
Prof Murdoch clearly had the support from academics who liked his empathetic style and supported his passion for transforming the university into a Te Tiriti-led organisation.
Whether he had backing of senior leadership — even before his absence with illness — when it came to guiding the university through its financial storm is less clear.
After being dealt the worst possible hand, acting vice-chancellor Prof Helen Nicholson is clearly taking the university’s financial position very seriously.
However, her unfiltered communication of the university’s woes has raised questions about whether she has gone too far in running down the institution to justify the cuts to staff that we have been told are coming.
Informing staff the university is in a "downward spiral" and warning the Government it could take generations for Otago to recover might not be the best way to attract staff and students.
The next leader requires the skill and steel necessary to reverse this narrative and start pulling Otago clear of the mess it is in.
■Vaughan Elder is head of news at the Otago Daily Times and previously covered the university.
