Earlier this year, Dr Raffaele F. Ciriello, a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney, claimed corporate elites have hijacked Australian universities.
Dr Ciriello’s claims followed a National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) investigation of 545 council positions at 37 universities, which revealed that members from the Big Four accounting firms and industry groups held up to half of the roles, with some university councils having more finance or mining executives than current academic practitioners.
“Australian public universities are no longer run for education”, Dr Ciriello said. “They have been taken over by a managerial elite that prioritises profits over academic integrity. Vice-chancellors earn more than the Prime Minister, with 16 of 41 making over $1 million annually”.
“Casualisation has led to rampant wage theft, with universities underpaying staff by over $400 million nationally”.
“Universities have become addicted to international student fees, which account for up to 40% of revenue”, Dr Ciriello said.
Around the same time, the Guardian’s Caitlin Cassidy reported the views of more than a dozen academics who complained that Australian universities have devolved into little more than “degree factories” with “voluntary attendance, online classes, student numbers swelling” and soft marking.
In March 2025, more than 200 ‘old-school’ academics, known as Public Universities Australia, accused universities of “soft marking” and passing poorly performing students, which they claimed is “dumbing down the entire country”.
“Universities … tend to pass and graduate most students irrespective of the level of education actually achieved”, Public Universities Australia said in a scathing submission to the Senate education committee.
“There are manifestly worsening gaps in graduates’ basic knowledge and skills”.
“This is nothing less than a dumbing down of the entire country”.
Last week, University of Canberra law lecturer Andrew Henderson told a federal inquiry into university governance that community-run preschools faced tougher scrutiny than Australia’s public universities.
“It seems remarkable that a group of parents of young children at a small Canberra preschool could be subject to a more detailed [regulatory] regime, backed by criminal offences and provisions making them personally liable, than the council of a multi-million dollar educational institutions with thousands of students”, Henderson wrote.
“That seems even more remarkable considering recent events in Australian university council rooms”.
Labor Senator Tony Sheldon announced the federal inquiry into governance in January, describing the university industry as “lawless”. He cited excessive vice chancellor pay, wage theft, and poor student experience as instances of systemic problems.
The above criticisms of Australia’s higher education system are well founded.
Vice-chancellor salaries in Australia are the highest in the world, far exceeding those of other educational professions.
Over 300 Australian university vice-chancellors earn more than state premiers.
The surge in major corporate nominations to university boards and CEO remuneration has coupled with more precarious work, wage theft, and bad governance.
Prior to the pandemic, Australia had the world’s highest concentration of international students, dwarfing other advanced nations:
Source: Salvatore Babones (2019)
The number of international student enrolments has climbed even more since the pandemic, surpassing one million for the first time in 2024.
Pedagogical standards have been eroded, with academics forbidden from failing international students because it would undercut their high-volume business model.
Local students have been forced to carry internationals through their courses via group tasks, and cheating by international students is common.
The situation became so ludicrous that some tutorials at leading Australian universities were held in other languages.
We should also acknowledge the many bogus ‘ghost colleges’ set up as migration schemes.
The bottom line is that vested interests have degraded higher education in Australia.
Policymakers collaborated with universities to develop a system that rewards university administrators with enormous salaries for successfully transforming their institutions into low-quality, high-volume immigration mills.
- The Australian government provided generous student visa work rights and the opportunity for permanent residency.
- Australian institutions lowered admission and teaching standards.
The cash windfall from ballooning international student numbers was spent on research aimed at propelling Australian universities up the global rankings, rather than on areas that benefited Australians.
Policymakers aim to recruit a much smaller pool of high-quality (authentic) students, rather than lowering standards to attract more international students of doubtful quality to Australia.
Such an objective could be accomplished by the following types of reforms:
- Significantly raising English-language requirements and requiring prospective students to sit entrance exams before being admitted to study in Australia.
- Significantly rising financial requirements, including the obligation to deposit monies into an escrow account before landing in Australia.
- Limiting the number of hours that overseas students can work and removing the direct link between study, job, and permanent residency.
- Allowing only the best graduates to obtain graduate visas.
- Allowing only postgraduate international students to bring family members.
- Because Australian universities are non-profit corporations that do not pay taxes, place a levy on international students to ensure that Australians benefit financially from the trade.
To alleviate pressure on the private rental market, universities should also be obligated to provide on-campus housing for international students in proportion to the number of enrolled students.
In summary, we must force Australia’s education sector to prioritise quality over quantity. It is time to drain the swamp.
