Adelaide Uni staff pay cut delayed as finances improve on extra international student enrolments
Three weeks ago staff at Adelaide Uni voted to take a pay cut to save 200 jobs. Now, they’ve been told the cut won’t be needed this year but full financial recovery by the uni will take years.
SA News
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Staff at Adelaide University will be spared a pay cut this year with the institution’s finances improving on earlier estimates.
Just three weeks after staff voted to accept less pay and loss of other conditions to safeguard jobs, interim vice-chancellor Mike Brooks announced that higher than expected enrolments of overseas students has eased financial pressure.
While the sudden turnaround ”may be surprising”, Prof Brooks said it reflected the volatility in making predictions during the coronavirus pandemic.
A 3.5 per cent pay cut will be deferred until at least February, a 1.5 per cent pay rise scheduled for March might now be applied rather than delayed and annual leave loading will be paid for this year. However, the university will still insist staff take 15 days unpaid leave in a significant saving for the administration.
Despite the improved 2020 picture, prospects for 2021 remain grim and Prof Brooks added that revenue shortfalls are likely to continue into 2022 and beyond.
The university had forecast a $100m shortfall compared to its pre-pandemic $1bn budget for 2020 which would require $65m in savings and $35m in borrowings.
“It now appears that we will recoup approximately $40m this year and that borrowing may no longer be necessary in 2020,” Prof Brooks said on Tuesday.
“Better than expected offshore enrolments have been the main contributing factor to the improved 2020 position.”
The extra enrolments were attributed to visa changes by the Federal Government allowing students trapped abroad by COVID-19 restrictions to retain continuity in qualifying for post-study work visas.
Prof Brooks said even though overall enrolments were better than feared, the number of new overseas students signing up this semester was down by a quarter compared to 2019.
This would cut revenue by $55m to $60m in 2021.
Prof Brooks said Adelaide, like most Australian universities, felt “the greatest financial challenges are likely to be faced in the next two years, and that international enrolments may only return to former heights four or five years hence, if at all”.
The university still expected to lose about 200 staff through attrition but would retain the 200 jobs saved by the staff vote.
Meanwhile, the university administration has agreed to student requests that the name of disgraced former vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen can be removed from their testamur, the legal document certifying their graduation.
Documents issued from January 2018 to May 2020 which carried the Rathjen signature could be returned and replaced free with one bearing the signatures of the current Chancellor Catherine Branson and Prof Brooks.