policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
The disease was already there
It didn’t take a pandemic to make
Australian universities sick.
By Wade Zaglas
Australian universities were left exposed and shocked when
health experts and the government decided to close the
country’s borders due to the coronavirus outbreak. But
this was not a mild shock that would temporarily bruise Australian
universities, leave them scrambling for money and jettisoning
courses, and then lead to a gradual return to normality.
No, this was a mega-shock, something our world-renowned
institutions hadn’t seen coming or prepared for.
In the article, ‘Australian Universities Were Sick Before the
Pandemic’, published in Jacobin magazine, Ben Kunkler (a union
activist and casual academic) explains that Australia’s “deep
dependence on full-fee paying international students means they
have been among the hardest-hit industries in the country”.
“Making matters worse, apart from token spending, universities
have so far been left out of the Coalition government’s newfound
largesse,” he adds.
THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY IN CRISIS
Nearly 40 years of funding cuts to universities and deregulation
on both sides of politics have made Australia’s universities deeply
dependent on the “lucrative” overseas market of foreign students.
While all universities have been impacted by this plunge in
overseas student enrolments, Kunkler contends that it is the
more underfunded institutions (e.g. Federation University and
CQUniversity) that face the possibility of collapse.
Kunkler also asserts that richer universities are a “legacy of a
deliberate strategy to invest in assets rather than staff and students”.
But they too “won’t escape unscathed”.
“Australia’s five multibillion-dollar universities (Melbourne,
Sydney, Queensland, NSW and Monash) have long traded on their
lofty reputations overseas, charging full-fee-paying international
students many tens of thousands of dollars for an education,” he
says. “Now that this revenue has been cut off, universities are left
starved of the funding they need to function.”
To put the situation into perspective, Kunkler cites that this year
alone the University of Melbourne (worth $2.66 billion) is estimated
to lose $500 million.
But in spite of such collateral damage, universities do not qualify
for the JobKeeper subsidy. Although big businesses with a turnover
of $1 million can access financial assistance if their revenue dips
under 50 per cent, the same is not the case for universities.
Due to their non-profit status, universities are officially registered
as charities. The sticking point, however, is that the “government’s
policy treats them as big businesses, leaving them to fend for
themselves”.
Kunkler argues that this contradiction “exposes the strange
hybridity of the Australian neoliberal system”. Although all university
assets are publicly owned, all profits are supposed to be reinvested
back into it.
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