Charles Darwin University is facing budget cuts, stalled expansion plans, and up to 20 staff redundancies following a nationwide cap on new international student enrolments. With semester one fast approaching, the university has less than half the international students it had anticipated for its new Darwin CBD campus.
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00:00What once were plans to grow the territory's population with 8,000 new international students
00:09by 2030, now more a pipe dream.
00:12Before all of this happened, we would be looking at bringing probably at this point something
00:17like 2,000 international students in for semester one.
00:21With these caps and everything, we will probably be bringing in 850.
00:25In December 2023, the government prioritised larger universities in Sydney, Brisbane and
00:31Melbourne for new student visas.
00:34That decision was revoked a year later, but for Charles Darwin University, the damage was
00:39already done.
00:40We've made around about a 10% cut across the board in all budgets.
00:45People there's no doubt people are having to work harder.
00:49There are some vacancies that we haven't replaced.
00:52We've looked for efficiencies across the board and it just gets harder and harder.
00:57CDU can now fast track visa approvals for up to 80% of its international student cap
01:03before time frames are slowed down.
01:06It means students who miss out are at risk of being forced to defer.
01:10If let's say students they don't get an opportunity to get the visa or apply the visa this year,
01:15if they have to wait for another year, they might not be eligible to get the offer letter
01:18from the university because the university considered gaps as a risk.
01:23The business case for this brand new $240 million campus in Darwin CBD was premised
01:29on a target of 8,000 new international students in line with a territory-wide population growth
01:35strategy.
01:36But representatives of the tertiary sector say that strategy is now a casualty of the
01:42election cycle.
01:43We've seen international education system and international student visas being used
01:49as a political plaything in an election year over the last 12 months.
01:54We went out and we started to bring those international student numbers, we were online
01:58to meet that business case and now you've cut our legs out from it.
02:02It's a bit of a dirty trick.
02:04Growth in the Northern Territory, the victim of a go slow in immigration.