Just another Corporation

Australia’s universities face $5 billion in losses and are crying poor. Their highly paid bosses can make more money in a week than the casual staff, many of whom they have consigned to the dole queue, make in a year. Michael Sainsbury runs the ruler over the numbers and asks why those universities with high reliance on international students have shown such poor risk management.

The COVID-19 virus has exposed the emerging contradiction at the heart of Australia’s public university system; that it is both a network of learning institutions and a string of highly competitive, profitable and often rapacious businesses.

Hailed in recent decades by politicians of all stripes as Australia’s “third largest export industry” after iron ore and coal (gas also bested it last year), universities are now crying poor. Yet, with honourable exceptions, there has been a near-industry wide failure of risk management.

Australia’s now-corporatised universities, are warning of combined losses of between $3 billion and $4.6 billion this year, according to their peak body Universities Australia.

via Overpaid university bosses cry poor as their foreign-student riches evaporate – Michael West