Once proud bastions of learning and critical inquiry, Australia's public universities have been quietly but efficiently gutted by the very people charged with protecting them. As The Australia Institute's recent report Elective Spending at Australian Universities reveals, these institutions have morphed into hollow corporations — more preoccupied with glossy branding and executive travel than the sacred mandate of teaching and research.
In 2023 alone, Australian public universities splashed out $363 million on advertising, $410 million on consultants, and an eye-watering $390 million on travel — with $11 million in travel racked up solely by executives at the Australian National University. These are not trivial sums; they are damning symbols of a system that has lost its way.
While Vice-Chancellors enjoy million-dollar salaries, staff endure casualisation, job cuts, and crumbling support systems. Courses are slashed, student-to-teacher ratios balloon, and the very quality of education deteriorates — all while institutions plead poverty.
Let's be clear: this is not a funding crisis, it's a governance failure. The ANU, for example, holds $3.65 billion in net assets. Many universities are sitting on war chests built from student fees, property investments, and state largesse, yet behave like resource-starved NGOs.
Instead of safeguarding teaching and scholarship — their core purpose — universities have embraced the logic of the private sector: branding, outsourcing, and image management. Vice-Chancellors function as CEOs, not educators. Faculties are run like cost centres, with learning viewed as a product, and students as "clients" or worse, revenue streams.
The consequences are already visible. Australian universities are dropping in global rankings, not because they lack funds, but because they have chosen to starve core academic functions in favour of discretionary extravagance. They spend millions trying to appear excellent, while actively undermining the foundations of excellence.
We are witnessing the corporate capture of education. And it is a betrayal.
Worse, there is no meaningful oversight. No transparency in how consulting firms are chosen. No accountability for bloated travel budgets. No public justification for why advertising trumps investment in teaching. Staff, students, and the public are left in the dark while university councils — often stacked with business elites — sign off on spending that would scandalise any honest educator.
This isn't merely disappointing — it's disgraceful.
Universities are not airlines. They are not ad agencies. They are not travel clubs for six-figure administrators. They are, or were, supposed to be the custodians of knowledge, the crucibles of critical thought, and the engines of democratic society.
But if universities choose to live by the corporate sword, then they should die by the corporate sword. That means ending their charitable status and stripping them of tax exemptions that were originally granted in recognition of their public mission — a mission they've long since abandoned. If they want to behave like profit-driven enterprises, then they should be taxed like them — to the hilt.
Until universities return to their core purpose — teaching, research, and public good — they have no moral claim to public privilege. The time for indulgence is over. It's time to call them what they are, and make them pay accordingly.
Tax them now!
"Australia's universities spend hundreds of millions of dollars on travel, marketing and consultants, while cutting costs, staff and courses, according to new research by The Australia Institute.
The report, Elective Spending at Australian Universities, exposes the enormous sums university executives spend on themselves, with little oversight or transparency.
The boom in discretionary spending comes at a time when Australian universities are plummeting down international rankings, largely due to sweeping cuts in core areas of their business, like employing teachers and providing high-quality courses for students.
The report finds there is no reason for our uni's to cry poor, with most holding vast reserves of assets. The Australian National University's own annual report states it has net assets worth $3.65 billion.
Key findings:
§In 2023, Australia's public universities spent at least $363 million on advertising, marketing and promotion.
§Ten universities spent $390 million on travel in 2023. The Australian National University spent $42 million on travel, with executives spending $11 million on their own.
§In 2023, 27 of Australia's public universities spent $410 million on consultants, or roughly $15 million each.
"Instead of crying poor, university leaders need to show their staff and students how the enormous wealth they already have is being used," said Joshua Black, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Australia Institute and author of the report.
"Universities are knowledge-making institutions. They don't need to spend up to $50 million on external advice to be capable of making strategic decisions.
"Instead of spending millions of dollars competing with one another using advertising campaigns that no longer work, universities could improve their reputations by investing properly in staff and lifting the quality of their courses.
"Improved disclosure rules would allow the public to see how much universities spend on their overseas travel, and how fairly that money is distributed among ordinary and executive staff."
https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/elective-spending-at-australian-universities/