Special Reports

Australia's University Crisis Is Not a Recent Development. It's Been Decades in the Making.

Australia's university crisis — marked by 26 of 39 institutions operating in deficit, a 44% rise in sector debt to A$10.5 billion, a 25% student dropout rate, and simultaneous cuts to international and domestic enrollment — is not a recent development but the culmination of nearly four decades of underfunding, over-reliance on international student revenue, and marketplace logic embedded in public institutions since the 1987 Dawkins reforms.