‘Rapid action’ on costs spares UNSW from Covid loss
UNSW’s revenue plunged by $196m last year due to COVID but recorded only a small operating deficit after large spending cuts.
UNSW has emerged from the huge challenges of COVID and the loss of international students with its 2020 bottom line virtually unscathed.
The university told staff on Tuesday that, following large spending cuts, it had recorded a deficit of only $19m in 2020, a figure that is insignificant in its $2bn-plus budget.
With nearly all Group of Eight universities now having disclosed their 2020 financial results. UNSW is one of only two to be in deficit.
The other is the Australian National University, whose 2020 deficit is also very small at $17.7m. Monash University reported the largest 2020 surplus in the Group of Eight at $259m, and the University of Melbourne’s surplus is about $180m.
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The University of Adelaide is the only Group of Eight member that has not yet announced its results, but it is understood to have been in surplus last year.
UNSW said its income fell by $196m last year due to the pandemic, and the university had taken “rapid action” to cut costs “with reductions primarily in non-staff expenditure”.
The $19m deficit in 2020 compares to a $39m surplus reported by UNSW in 2019.
The university said it anticipated “ongoing reductions in income in 2021, 2022 and 2023 related to decreased international student enrolment during the recovery phase from the pandemic”.
This year student numbers at the UNSW are well down on the pre-pandemic year of 2019. The university said international student enrolments in the first term of this year were 19 per cent lower than in the first term of 2019.
And although the overall number of domestic university students is rising across the nation, UNSW says its domestic enrolments in first term this year are still 2.5 per cent below the first term of 2019.
UNSW vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs, who will leave the post early next year, said he was “grateful to the UNSW community for responding so energetically and thoughtfully to the impact and challenges of the pandemic”.
“As a result we have achieved a sound financial position and maintained the trajectory of Strategy 2025 (the university’s strategic plan). I am confident that my successor as vice-chancellor will have a strong financial and academic foundation to lead the next phase of UNSW’s progress,” he said.
Last Friday ANU announced its financial results for 2020, saying that the deficit of $17.7m would have been $57m worse except that more students stayed studying than the university initially had expected and there had been a last-minute influx of research money.
ANU said its number of international students (in full-time-equivalent terms) fell by 21 per cent between 2019 and 2020, a loss of 1774. This cost the university $81m in student fee revenue.
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