Charles Darwin University faces budget cuts and staff redundancies due to drop in international student enrolments

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Charles Darwin University is facing budget cuts, stalled expansion plans, and up to 20 staff redundancies following a nationwide cap on new international student enrolments. With semester one fast approaching, the university has less than half the international students it had anticipated for its new Darwin CBD campus.

Transcript

00:00What once were plans to grow the territory's population with 8,000 new international students

00:09by 2030, now more a pipe dream.

00:12Before all of this happened, we would be looking at bringing probably at this point something

00:17like 2,000 international students in for semester one.

00:21With these caps and everything, we will probably be bringing in 850.

00:25In December 2023, the government prioritised larger universities in Sydney, Brisbane and

00:31Melbourne for new student visas.

00:34That decision was revoked a year later, but for Charles Darwin University, the damage was

00:39already done.

00:40We've made around about a 10% cut across the board in all budgets.

00:45People there's no doubt people are having to work harder.

00:49There are some vacancies that we haven't replaced.

00:52We've looked for efficiencies across the board and it just gets harder and harder.

00:57CDU can now fast track visa approvals for up to 80% of its international student cap

01:03before time frames are slowed down.

01:06It means students who miss out are at risk of being forced to defer.

01:10If let's say students they don't get an opportunity to get the visa or apply the visa this year,

01:15if they have to wait for another year, they might not be eligible to get the offer letter

01:18from the university because the university considered gaps as a risk.

01:23The business case for this brand new $240 million campus in Darwin CBD was premised

01:29on a target of 8,000 new international students in line with a territory-wide population growth

01:35strategy.

01:36But representatives of the tertiary sector say that strategy is now a casualty of the

01:42election cycle.

01:43We've seen international education system and international student visas being used

01:49as a political plaything in an election year over the last 12 months.

01:54We went out and we started to bring those international student numbers, we were online

01:58to meet that business case and now you've cut our legs out from it.

02:02It's a bit of a dirty trick.

02:04Growth in the Northern Territory, the victim of a go slow in immigration.

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