Universities did not use the boom in international student fees to build safety margins and now ten are at “high risk of financial default,” Tom Smith and James Guthrie (both Macquarie U)  explain in CMM this morning

“The current crisis in the Australian higher education system, caused by large-scale academic and professional redundancies, is excused by the precipitous drop in international students’ numbers. However, universities had not previously expanded their academic staff to meet the preceding rise in international enrolments.  Australian universities used these fees for internal research purposes and self-funded about 70 per cent of research expenses,” they write.

They point to their new paper, setting out why ten universities are, “currently highly financially vulnerable.”