Adelaide University bargains with graduates to fill international gap

Adelaide Uni is scrambling to plug the holes left by international students – and it’s offering thousands of dollars in savings to do it.

Graduates of Adelaide University are being offered savings of thousands of dollars to sign up for further study and help fill lecture rooms stripped bare of international students by Covid-19.

The loss of international students has left the university with extra teaching capacity and a need to generate $20m in extra revenue.

The discount on postgraduate courses – worth for example $11,100 on a Master of Data Science, $9900 on one of the MBA courses or $7950 on a Master of Public Health – aims to help the uni and benefit its alumni.

Adelaide University, North Terrace, Adelaide Picture: Kelly Barnes

“When we look at programs that normally would be full with international students, clearly there’s going to be capacity to teach our local students,” deputy vice-chancellor Jennie Shaw said.

“And we want to boost our postgraduate enrolments generally, we have been very undergraduate heavy,”

“We have mainly relied on the school leaver market, the undergraduates, and that is overflowing. We have no problem recruiting undergraduates.

“But we have a lot of capacity at postgraduate level.”

A project to bring in international students via quarantine at Parafield airport has approval from the federal government but remains stalled.

The project would first bring back existing students, not new enrolments – meaning unis face years of diminished numbers and revenue.

Professor Shaw said deciding to improve skills or change a career through extra study was “quite a big move” and discounts could make the difference.

Professor Jennie Shaw. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

The discount, for domestic enrolments in 2022, is available for more than 120 courses.

It is restricted to full-fee programs by coursework.

It includes Masters, Graduate Diploma and Graduate Certificate programs.

Courses subsidised by the Commonwealth, such as the Masters in Teaching, are excluded.

The uni won’t offer the discount on fully online courses and has excluded some specific programs, including a Graduate Diploma in Law.

Eligible students will be able to get a FEE-HELP loan from the federal government.

Professor Shaw said this was the first time Adelaide uni had offered such a discount so it was difficult to put a target on enrolment numbers.

If popular “it would be great” as it could lead to more staff being needed.

The uni is now negotiating redundancies and savings from cutting courses to avert a projected $22m shortfall in 2022, followed by $47m in 2023.

It needs to cut spending by $30m and increase revenue by $20m.

The discounts were one revenue raiser, with the uni also looking at developing new postgraduate programs and other courses from 2023, Prof Shaw said.

Flinders University said it constantly reviewed its scholarship programs for domestic students, but had not considered a broad discount.

Flinders introduced a 20 per cent discount this year for international alumni continuing studies.

The Flinders Alumni Scholarships are available for another undergraduate degree or for postgraduate study.

“There is no limit on applicant intake and it will be available until 2025,” a Flinders spokeswoman said. So far, 12 alumni have taken up the offer.

UniSA provost Allan Evans said most of the postgraduate programs at the uni were subsidised by the Commonwealth rather the full-fee courses.

“There are, however, various scholarship schemes available to all our postgraduate students, whether they have studied with us before or not,” Professor Evans said.