UC vice-chancellor Bill Shorten is confident no more staff redundancies will be needed after a “challenging” 2024. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Bill Shorten is “reasonably confident” the institution has done enough to recover its $41 million operating deficit for the 2025 budget to break even.
Mr Shorten previously flagged at a town hall meeting that he felt enough had been done to turn the financial ship around and the full numbers have now been laid bare in the UC’s 2024 annual report (January to December 2024).
“The report recognises that 2024 was a challenging year and the subsequent efforts have been hard for everyone involved,” he said.
UC announced last October it had been spending beyond its means and more than 200 staffing positions would need to go.
The report outlined 2024 student enrolments were $37 million below budget, representing an 11 per cent loss to expected student revenue.
The total number of students studying onshore and offshore (including UC and UC College) was 11,996 for 2024, up from 11,518 in 2023.
Chancellor Lisa Paul noted Australian universities all faced similar pressures.
“In our case, we had made strategic investments in projects which needed the uplift in enrolments to fund. But enrolments remained flat,” she said.
“To deal with our deficit, we had to restructure significantly and by December, 78 professional staff had departed which, along with many non-staff savings, resulted in savings of $7 million net of the costs of our people’s departures.”
The $41 million operating loss for 2024 was in comparison to $11.9 million in 2023. The larger shortfall was detected after anticipated revenue targets hadn’t been reached in Semester 1 of 2024.
“This, coupled with the increased employee-related expenses, triggered a significant cost-reduction and reorganisation program of work, focused on both salary and non-salary expenditure, to better align operational requirements with teaching, learning and research outcomes,” the report noted.
Along with staff redundancies, which totalled more than 170 professional and academic staff, university senior executive roles were reduced from five to three, with a move to a single deputy vice-chancellor and Chief Operating Officer model.
One-off staff redundancy expenses from the organisational change process totalled $10 million.
UC also reported a 23 per cent decline in executive remuneration in the 2024 financial year.
Portfolios were restructured, with Digital portfolio business units moving under Operations portfolio. The Academic and Research and Enterprise portfolios merged into the Education and Research portfolio.
The report highlighted that revenue for 2024 showed a decrease of $8.6 million (2.2 per cent) to $378 million.
“[This is] attributable to a significant decrease in Other Sources of Revenue (-31.9 per cent) offset by small increases in Government Grants and Programs (2 per cent), Domestic Student Fees (4.2 per cent) and International Student Fees (9.9 per cent),” it noted.
Other sources of revenue in 2023 included $23.4 million from a land sale.
Expenditures rose $20.5 million (5.1 per cent) in 2023 to $419 million.
“[This is] attributable to an increase in employee-related expenses, including termination and redundancy payments, of $35 million (16.6 per cent), an increase in academic partner payments of $7.9 million (32.7 per cent) due to third-party teaching delivery, increased student scholarship payments ($2.6 million), and increased licence fees ($3 million),” the report stated.
“These increases were offset by a reduction in impairments during the year ($25 million) and reduced consultant fees ($6.1 million).”
One positive was a large increase in research funding to $47.5 million, which included additional funding awarded to existing projects and the establishment of a new research centre.
“Income for 2024 was up significantly from 2023 at $34.2 million and well above the 2024 target of $34 million,” the report stated.
“Of the total 2024 research income, 74 per cent ($34.6 million) was awarded to the Faculty of Health and its research centres and institutes.”
Student revenue has grown by five per cent when compared to the same period in 2024.
Mr Shorten said this work meant he was “reasonably confident” the UC was on track to break even on operating costs for 2025.
“[I’m also confident] that no further redundancies will be required,” he said.
“We are now going to progress with our plans to rejuvenate UC.”
Ms Paul was also optimistic about UC’s future.
“While we continue to face a dynamic operating environment, I believe UC is now well placed to address the challenges and grasp the opportunities 2025 presents,” she said.
“With a clear purpose, strong and stable leadership, a sustainable operating model and financial strategy and the efforts of our talented staff and students, UC has a bright and exciting future.”
