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Speaker 1: We know that caps on international student numbers they were

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Speaker 1: flagged last year and have had a big impact on

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Speaker 1: universities right across the nation. We've spoken about the issue

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Speaker 1: on a few occasions with the Charles Darwin University Vice Chancellor,

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Speaker 1: Professor Scott Bowman, and it is now understood that CDU

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Speaker 1: has had to make some significant cuts to well due

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Speaker 1: to a decline in those international student enrollments. Charles Darwin

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Speaker 1: University's Vice Chancellor, Scott Bowman joins me on the line.

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Speaker 1: Good morning to you, Professor Bowman.

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Speaker 2: Good morning Katie. Good to be with you again.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, lovely to catch up with you. Now, tell us

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Speaker 1: what is the latest on this whole situation with the

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Speaker 1: international student numbers and the impact it's having on Charles

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Speaker 1: Darwin Uni.

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Speaker 2: Oh, look, it's an absolute mess across the country, but

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Speaker 2: I think particularly for us in the Northern territory. So basically,

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Speaker 2: as you know, and we've spoken about how we were

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Speaker 2: really forging ahead building up our capacity to do new courses, medicine, architecture,

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Speaker 2: grow Catherine and Stavenue Campus in nullan Boy and all

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Speaker 2: of that was prefaced on that we were going to

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Speaker 2: move up to eight thousand international students, and as you know,

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Speaker 2: we were heading there, we were doing so well, and

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Speaker 2: then out of the blue we get that cutback. You

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Speaker 2: not allowed to take eight thousand, You can only take

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Speaker 2: up to around about four thousand. So to put that

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Speaker 2: into context, Kdie, what that means is that this year,

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Speaker 2: so for twenty five, we will have thirty million dollars

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Speaker 2: less revenue than we were expecting. And by twenty twenty seven,

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Speaker 2: we will have seventy five million dollars less revenue than

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Speaker 2: we were expecting. And you can imagine for a small

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Speaker 2: unionized quite devastating.

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Speaker 1: That is absolutely messy. I mean, when you're talking multi

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Speaker 1: million dollars like you've just stated there, I have no

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Speaker 1: doubt that that's going to have a huge impact on

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Speaker 1: the university. What kind of things have you had to

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Speaker 1: do since the beginning of the year to try to

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Speaker 1: really mitigate the situation that you're in.

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Speaker 2: Look, what we trying to avoid at all costs is

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Speaker 2: the major blood bath restructures that we're seeing down south,

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Speaker 2: So University of Camera losing one hundred and seventy members

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Speaker 2: of staff, Federation, University I think two hundred and forty

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Speaker 2: and even one university in Queensland talking about four hundred.

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Speaker 2: That would devastate us. I mean, it would just completely

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Speaker 2: devastate us. But we've got to do something. So there's

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Speaker 2: a couple of well three things really we've looked at

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Speaker 2: where we can cut our costs in general, across our

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Speaker 2: general budgets. We are going to have to reduce the

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Speaker 2: number of staff. Now we're doing most of that through

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Speaker 2: not filling vacancies. So where we've got vacancies, we're not

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Speaker 2: filling them where we can. That being said, we're still

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Speaker 2: in in a lot of people and you know, where

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Speaker 2: we need people to teach of course, and someone needs

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Speaker 2: we've got to apply them. And we are going to

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Speaker 2: see some redundancies and we think that's going to end

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Speaker 2: up around between twenty and thirty by the time we've finished.

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Speaker 2: That's going to take you know, round about nine to

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Speaker 2: ten million out of our budget, and that's going to

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Speaker 2: help us on.

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Speaker 1: The twenty to thirty redundancies. What percentage of the workforce

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Speaker 1: is that.

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Speaker 2: Well, we have about one thousand and five hundred, so

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Speaker 2: as a percentage it is fairly small. I mean, if

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Speaker 2: you had taken you know, a purely economic rationalist approach,

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Speaker 2: you'd probably be looking at somewhere between one hundred and

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Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty. And I don't, you know, I

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Speaker 2: just don't know where we would find that CADID. You know,

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Speaker 2: I don't know how we would fulfill all our regulation

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Speaker 2: and be the University of the territory needs. Now I

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Speaker 2: go down Canmeber and if I had a dollar for

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Speaker 2: every southing nice word I heard in Canberra, we wouldn't

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Speaker 2: have any financial problems at all. And I keep being told,

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Speaker 2: you know, we can hear your starving, but you can

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Speaker 2: have some cake tomorrow, And I say, well, we might

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Speaker 2: not survive to tomorrow, so on these not like that.

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Speaker 1: I mean, just to be really blunt about it, that

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Speaker 1: must be really piscing you off, because you're, you know,

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Speaker 1: you're staring down the barrel of having to cut jobs.

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Speaker 1: You're staring down the barrel of you know, having to

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Speaker 1: make all these changes at the university or you know,

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Speaker 1: like all the platitudes mean nothing if they're not actually

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Speaker 1: going to do something to be able to make it

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Speaker 1: more workable for you.

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Speaker 2: Exactly right. And I'm not going to Canberra with a

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Speaker 2: begging bowl. I'm not saying please, can we have more money?

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Speaker 2: I'm going down there. Can you please allow us to

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Speaker 2: generate the money by bringing in international students at the

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Speaker 2: Northern Territory desperately needs to fill job shortages and skill shortages.

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Speaker 2: You know this this and it's both sides of politics.

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Speaker 2: They've both had a knee jerk reaction around migration and

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Speaker 2: that's fine, that's their job. But to problems that they're

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Speaker 2: facing down south in Sydney and Melbourne, they've put in

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Speaker 2: this blanket cut which is massively effecting us and in

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Speaker 2: fact it is not helping in Sydney and Melbourne. And

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Speaker 2: it's we see it again and again. You you talk

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Speaker 2: about it all the time, Katie. We have this one

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Speaker 2: size fits all approach for Australia and it's great for

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Speaker 2: those big states down south, and it kills us up

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Speaker 2: here in the territory.

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Speaker 1: So where too from here? From your perspective, like, what

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Speaker 1: can you do now in terms of you know, trying

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Speaker 1: to trying to really push the federal government, trying to

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Speaker 1: change the way that you're doing things.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, look exactly right, we've got to change it

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Speaker 2: so that it isn't a one size fits all that

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Speaker 2: actually you know, give us a limit of eight thousand,

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Speaker 2: give the territory limit of ten thousand. Down South, you've

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Speaker 2: given some universities a limit bigger than that. One university

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Speaker 2: has got twelve thousand, a limit of twelve thousand for

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Speaker 2: the whole territory. You're only giving us around about four thousand,

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Speaker 2: and here's another one only ninety for take so change that.

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Speaker 2: We want that changing. We want to be paid for

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Speaker 2: the domestic the Australian students. Where we're over our domestic cap.

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Speaker 2: Other universities are being paid for students they haven't actually got.

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Speaker 2: We're not being paid for since we've got, But that's

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Speaker 2: another story. And three, we need to start pivoting. If

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Speaker 2: they won't allow the students to come to us, then

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Speaker 2: we're going to have to go to them and do

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Speaker 2: more transnational and work overseas. And that's why we launched

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Speaker 2: the new Associate Vice Chancellor for Indonesia this week. That's

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Speaker 2: why we're looking at maybe setting up centers overseas.

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Speaker 1: To be expensive though is that more expensive than actually

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Speaker 1: delivering that here in the Northern territory.

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Speaker 2: Look, it's going to cost us some money, but we

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Speaker 2: are looking that we would get a return on that

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Speaker 2: investment in two or three years. But we've got to

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Speaker 2: find the money to do that. So we've got to

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Speaker 2: revolutionize how we deliver our degrees become much more flexible

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Speaker 2: and I am thinking if we can get those ready

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Speaker 2: for delivery overseas, it will help us in Australia as well.

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Speaker 2: But so all the strategy that we've been talking about

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Speaker 2: for the last four years around bringing international students to

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Speaker 2: the territory, you know, we've got to pivot to a

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Speaker 2: different strategy if the stupid, stupid policies of the federal government,

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Speaker 2: you know, just kill us up.

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Speaker 1: There, Scott. The thing that's stuck out in my brain

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Speaker 1: then that you've just seen, I mean the fact that

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Speaker 1: there's some universities down south where they're enabling twelve thousand

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Speaker 1: international students. I think with the numbers that you gave me,

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Speaker 1: like to me, I go, are we trying to get

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Speaker 1: people to move to regional parts of Australia. Why would

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Speaker 1: you do that for a UNI down south and not

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Speaker 1: do it for a place like Northern Australia.

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Speaker 2: You're exactly right. And last year most of the regional universities,

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Speaker 2: not just us, we came to a screaming stop on

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Speaker 2: our international students because they couldn't get their caps sorded out,

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Speaker 2: so they actually just stopped issuing visas or slowing down

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Speaker 2: the visa issuing for all regional universities. So at the

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Speaker 2: same time you had the group of eight universities and

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Speaker 2: I like the Group of eight. I don't want to

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Speaker 2: knock them, but their international students went through the roof

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Speaker 2: because they couldn't get into the regional universities and they

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Speaker 2: were getting their visas actually given their numbers, went through

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Speaker 2: the roof. And where are those universities. They're in Sydney,

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Speaker 2: They're in Melbourne, They're in Adelaide, They're in Perth, they're

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Speaker 2: in Brisbane, they're in all the big center. So you

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Speaker 2: actually saw a massive increase of international students in the

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Speaker 2: cities yep, and a massive decline in the regions.

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Speaker 1: Which is all the places where they're carrying on about

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Speaker 1: a housing crisis, which obviously there is, but so you go,

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Speaker 1: it just doesn't make sense to me. I think if

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Speaker 1: you're talking about, you know, the infrastructure strains in large

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Speaker 1: capital cities, if you're talking about the housing concerns and

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Speaker 1: accommodation concerns in large capital cities and I'm not saying

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Speaker 1: that we're perfect in the Northern Territory, but we could

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Speaker 1: do with some population.

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Speaker 2: Growth and people want to come here, Kadie. You know,

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Speaker 2: I go over to India and Bangladesh and the word

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Speaker 2: is on the street. People know about the Northern Territory.

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Speaker 2: They know if they come here and doing an accountancy degree,

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Speaker 2: a nursing degree, a teaching degree, they will get a

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Speaker 2: job in the area that they do their degree in.

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Speaker 2: They also know if they go to Sydney or Melbourne

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Speaker 2: they do their two year accountancy degree and then spend

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Speaker 2: two years driving an uber. The words on the street.

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Speaker 2: That's why we were doing so well. I mean, I'd

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Speaker 2: love to say it's because we're such a fantastic university

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Speaker 2: and everyone wanted to come to us. It's not. It's

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Speaker 2: because the Northern Territory is the land of opportunity and

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Speaker 2: if you come here, you can get a job while

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Speaker 2: you're studying, and you can get a job in your

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Speaker 2: speciality when you graduate. Yeah yeah, professor, it's sad what's.

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Speaker 1: Happening like it is, And it just seems to me

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Speaker 1: like we've got it all wrong. We've got the policy

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Speaker 1: settings all wrong. Wrong. Look we'll continue to talk about it.

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Speaker 1: I really appreciate you having a chat with me this morning.

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Speaker 2: Look, thanks very much, Katie. I know you've been really

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Speaker 2: interested in the university and what we're trying to achieve,

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Speaker 2: and it's just a shame that this is just you know,

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Speaker 2: all the plans and all the dreams at the moment

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Speaker 2: are laying in Taber's But you know, we're resilient, we

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Speaker 2: get through it and hopefully, you know, the buggers down

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Speaker 2: south will see sense.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope so. Professor Scott Bowman, thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for having a chat with me this morning.

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Speaker 2: Thanks Katy up a great day you two