Adelaide University is lurching from crisis to crisis with news that its now $90 million in the red, after it failed to attract enough new international students due to the merger and enrolment fiascos.
International student enrolments are down 40 per cent for semester one.
A video message sent out to staff on Monday afternoon, showed Adelaide University Vice-Chancellor Nicola Phillipsruling out a “radical” restructure of the university or its workforce to fix the “worrying” situation.
“…this situation clearly does have financial implications for us.”
Which means a radical restructure is on the cards.
She said the university would take “a steady and considered” approach to achieve a financially sustainable situation over the next three years.
“Of course, we’re working extremely hard to shore up our student recruitment, both within the university and with partners across our state.”
The new university merger cost taxpayers about $450 million, and it opened on January 5 in chaos, following a merger between the universities of Adelaide and South Australia.
Adelaide University previously said that the merged university would have around 70,000 students, with international students making up roughly 25 per cent of all enrolments.
Dr Andrew Miller for the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), said he was not surprised Adelaide University failed to meet its recruitment targets.
“I think it’s no surprise … because the merger happened at such a breakneck speed that it was hardly going to be really ready and operational,” he said.
Miller did not believe Adelaide University would restructure to fix the shortfall, saying it could instead tap into state government funds and reduce the millions of dollars spent on external consultants.
“With the massive instability and distress caused to staff over the last couple of years, it would be highly unlikely and devastating for the university to contemplate further massive changes to the workforce,” he said.
Which means a restructure is highly likely.
“Over the past 12 months, a range of factors have significantly affected international student recruitment across Australia, with students increasingly delaying decisions, considering alternative destinations, or facing visa uncertainty later in the process,” she said.
“This has created challenging conditions right across the sector, and particularly for a newly established university building awareness in global markets”.
The NTEU claimed that “poorly administered provisions lead to staff overload, burn-out, and devastating flow-on psychosocial impacts to individuals, families, colleagues, students, and the communities we serve”.
An announcement to Adelaide University staff on May 19 said the agreement included the adoption of a “significantly improved” academic workload clause to be included in a new enterprise agreement.
Staff fleeing Adelaide University will find help at Republic Resumes