Management briefs staff on the state of the books but assures them “our priority is not to reduce our workforce”

The university expects international student revenue this year to be $89m this year, down from $171m in 2019. Overall income in 2020 was down $44m on ’19 and will drop $86m in 2021.

COO Damien Israel warns that while UoW is “on the path to recovery” “our financial outlook continues to be challenging.” This means “savings measures” now in place to 2022 should stay. “Prematurely bringing the end of these arrangements forward could place the university in financial difficulty,” he states.

The backstory to this is a university agreement with the unions last year in which staff accepted savings (including no pay rises as scheduled) in return for job protections (CMM July 17, 20 2020).

UoW states “no staff member has been forcibly retrenched or engaged in redeployment,” however 56 academic and 80 professional staff have taken voluntary redundancy.

The deal required management to report finances to the campus unions – which has now happened, albeit after more poking than prompting from the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union.

One particular issue management has had to address is $350m increased debt (CMM April 28), needed, in an unspecified part, to buy out a student accommodation partnership which built 800 new beds.

The good news in the university’s staff briefing is, “this also means all student accommodation revenues are returned to Uni Wollongong and these will be used to service the cost of the additional debt raised to terminate the project.”

No faulting management for optimism.