Australia’s biggest regional university has blamed a collapse in international enrolments for a string of deficits that could force it to jettison 4 per cent of its staff.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) has unveiled “draft change proposals” that may cost the equivalent of 101 full-time jobs after up to 305 staff have competed for about 204 available positions.

A CSU spokesman said the restructure, set to start in February if it goes ahead, had been necessitated by a plunge in the international tuition fee revenue “that used to subsidise our operations”.

“We have a backlog of costs including A$70 million [£37 million] worth of overdue maintenance and upgrades of essential teaching and research infrastructure,” he said. “We also face significant additional needs for upgrades to our IT [information technology] infrastructure and software.

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“We can’t keep putting them all off without risking a major failure.”

CSU said its international student numbers had crashed from 8,500 in 2019 to 1,620 last year. The university expected an improvement this year, but numbers have instead fallen a further 35 per cent, according to pro vice-chancellor Mike Ferguson.

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He said the success rate of higher education student visa applications lodged from offshore – apart from those from China, which sends few people who want to study at rurally based overseas universities – stood at about 53 per cent this financial year.

Many aspirants from South Asia, where CSU draws most of its students, were not prepared to risk A$2,500 apiece on visa applications which stood a one-in-two chance of being rejected, he said.

CSU’s international operations have suffered a string of setbacks since the policy tide turned against foreign students in late 2023. The government saddled the university with an indicative overseas admissions cap of 1,000 overseas admissions, well down on its traditional annual intake of about 3,000.

Foreign student numbers had taken what administrators thought would be a temporary dive after CSU cut ties with a third-party provider, but the government adopted the depressed figure as a limit.

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The government’s plan for international admissions caps has since been superseded by a visa processing prioritising mechanism based around “indicative allocations” of places for new overseas students. CSU has never come close to reaching its allocation amid record visa rejections.

Ferguson said the university had so far filled just 40 per cent of this year’s indicative allocation of 1,775 places.

CSU has recorded deficits for each of the past four years after international earnings plunged from A$154 million in 2019 to about A$28 million a year in 2022, 2023 and 2024. While they recovered to A$38 million last year, the university’s spokesman said a return to pre-Covid volumes was “unlikely” under current policies.

He said CSU needed to find A$20 million a year to maintain and upgrade its infrastructure. It had saved around A$7.5 million through expense and salary reductions in 2025, and the proposed redundancies could yield another A$12.5 million. The university will “formally consult staff before any final decisions are made”, he said.

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The New South Wales Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social Issues, which recently concluded an inquiry into governance of the state’s universities, said it was “unconvinced” by the financial assumptions underpinning CSU’s reform plans.

The committee’s report highlights the difference between CSU’s published A$12 million deficit and vice-chancellor Renée Leon’s claim of a A$30 million “structural operating deficit”. “This…clearly points to the need for more detailed and robust disclosure of the financial rationale,” the report says.

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Leon said the university’s deficit calculation included an “accounting adjustment” to the way research revenue was recognised on the balance sheet. It also excluded A$14 million of equity funding that was “subject to reconciliation and clawback”.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com