CDU’s 2023 annual report reveals 182 per cent profit drop over 12 months

Charles Darwin University’s profits plummeted in 2023 after a ‘year of investment’. Read what it means for the uni.

Charles Darwin University Vice-Chancellor Scott Bowman. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

The Northern Territory’s only university continues to “walk along a cliff edge” after its profit plummeted by around 182 per cent in the last financial year.

Charles Darwin University recorded a $22.247 million surplus in 2022, but that number dropped to a deficit of -$18.135 million.

It comes after the university’s profits dropped by 65 per cent in 2023, raising concerns over job security at the institution.

But like last year, Vice-Chancellor and president Professor Scott Bowman said there would be no job cuts as a result of the university’s financial woes.

Professor Bowman said CDU would likely post another deficit in 2024 but he did not believe the university was “in any dire straits”.

“We’re not bankrupt or anything, we’ll hold our nerve because the people that will bring us out of this are our people,” he said.

“I don’t think you can cut to greatness.”

Professor Bowman said the deficit was a result of the university’s “year of investment”.

In 2023, staff got an eight per cent pay bump, buildings got upgraded and more were built, and the uni “poured a lot of money” into new IT, HR, finance, and student systems.

An example of the univserity’s infrastructure investment is the new CDU City Campus, which is very close to completion.

Professor Bowman said some of the deficit could also be attributed to a drop in student numbers across a range of faculties such as health, which enrolled 2.3 per cent fewer students than the previous year across a range of courses.

Professor Bowman said part of the faculty’s overall population drop could be attributed to a deliberate cut in nursing student numbers.

He said CDU usually enrolled about 800 students per year in the course, but capped those numbers at 150.

“We came out of Covid with a big backlog of placements – students couldn’t get placements during Covid,” he said.

“We had a lot of students that more or less finished their course, but they just couldn’t practice as nurses because they hadn’t done their placements in hospitals.

“So we made a decision last year to really cut the number of nurses coming to the university.”

In total, CDU’s student population grew by 63 pupils from 2022 to 2023.

Professor Bowman said he had expected that number to be higher due to the increased international student population, but it was counteracted by declining enrolments domestically.

The number of international students attending CDU skyrocketed by 77.9 per cent in 2023, but domestic enrolments dropped by 13.4 per cent.

Professor Bowman said rebuilding student numbers as a whole would be key to getting out of the red.

“It helps right across the board – it helps us to do the things we want to do, and to be honest, it helps us to do things that are going to lose money,” he said.

“We need to go into remote communities (but) it’s expensive to deliver there.

“We need to run courses in Katherine, Alice Springs, Nhulunbuy, Tennant Creek.

“It all costs money, and... because these are thin markets, you only generate a few students, so they’re always going to lose money.”

But Professor Bowman said CDU had a responsibility to remote Territorians to make tertiary education accessible.

Originally published as CDU’s 2023 annual report reveals 182 per cent profit drop over 12 months