More questions need to be asked of CDU’s Darwin city campus plan, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM
MORE questions need to be asked before we assume the new CDU city development will truly help the struggling university, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM
Northern Territory
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THERE’S been plenty of scrutiny over the decision to chop down an old Milkwood tree at the site of the new Charles Darwin University city campus.
That scrutiny is not unusual.
What is odd is that the removal of the Milkwood tree seems to have attracted more scrutiny than the $250 million city-campus project itself.
Just a couple of weeks before Christmas, Northern Australia Minister Matt Canavan arrived in town and announced the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility had given conditional approval for a $150 million concessional loan to CDU to build the campus.
This would add to the $97 million in Commonwealth funding through the Darwin city deal.
Great news, we were told. This new university would attract international students who would turn our tired CBD into a booming metropolis. Just build it and they will come.
But how do we know they will, and what happens if they don’t?
The answer to that question is too disastrous to contemplate.
Perhaps that’s why few have been willing to ask it.
One who has is Professor Don Fuller. He was so concerned about the proposal he wrote to Prime Minister Scott Morrison warning about the “expensive, high-risk new infrastructure project”.
“In an attempt to justify the new inner-city development, Charles Darwin University proposes to attract 5000 international students to the new city campus by 2025,” he wrote.
“This is despite failed attempts to relocate the business schools of both higher education and vocational education and training in a high-rise building at the Waterfront close to the Darwin Central Business District.
“It is far from clear how such numbers are to be attracted to the university.”
As a former CDU Professor of Governance, Fuller would seem well qualified to offer scrutiny of this project.
But his concerns were dismissed by CDU vice-chancellor Simon Maddocks who said his letter to the Prime Minister contained “errors, supposition and distorted perceptions about CDU’s current operations and future plans”.
What can’t be denied about CDU’s current operations are that they are a bit of a shambles. That might even be an understatement.
In July the NT News revealed CDU had lost $21 million in 2018/19.
This year the university has been forced to cut Vocational Education and Training courses and sack staff.
It has blamed a Commonwealth Government cap on funding for its dire financial position. But many say the blame rests with the university’s management, not the Commonwealth.
Concerns about the city campus — and criticism of CDU’s management — can’t be dismissed as a partisan attack.
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While Fuller’s links are to the CLP, Unions NT — whose general secretary Joel Bowden is standing for Labor at the Johnston by-election — has also weighed in.
These concerns are being aired by people who have genuine concern for the future of the Territory and its university.
“The main reasons for these financial problems facing CDU rest with bad financial and strategic decisions made by the senior management of CDU and not the federal government,” Unions NT said in a media release last month.
Heading the list of those bad decisions was the 2017 acquisition of Cairns Business College and the Cairns Languages Centre.
An auditor-general’s report tabled in Parliament in August found these centres were running almost $2 million into deficit. There’s been speculation the vice-chancellor has been planning his exit — or having it planned for him — but this has always been denied by the university.
Amid all this chaos, we’re now being asked to believe the new city campus will be the panacea to all of CDU’s ills.
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“With modern, competitive infrastructure in the CBD we’re confident our international enrolments will grow by 500 students to 2500 by the time the city campus is open in February 2024,” Professor Maddocks said earlier this month.
“By 2028 our projections show this number doubling to 5000 students — all living, studying, working and playing in the CBD.”
It’s hard not to see all of this as a triumph of hope over experience. CDU points to a 29 per cent increase in international enrolments in 2019. But in the three years before that enrolments of international students had dropped by more than 500. And we should also question the consequences of pursuing these international students at any cost — a reasonably likely outcome if the university’s financial future depends on it.
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A 4 Corners investigation in March found some Australian universities had become far too reliant on foreign fee-paying students to boost revenue and had subsequently jeopardised the integrity of our university sector.
Darwin desperately needs economic development. This might explain why all levels of government have been keen to back in the CDU city campus plan.
But will the short-term sugar hit leave us in an even bigger mess down the track?
That’s a question that’s worth asking.
Originally published as More questions need to be asked of CDU’s Darwin city campus plan, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM