Dear colleagues,
On Tuesday more than 2000 of you joined our October all-staff town hall where we discussed the international student caps and our 2025 budget, our strategic priorities, the employee payments review, and how we can collectively create a civic campus.
It’s clear the uncertainty about the international student caps and their impact on our budget is extremely challenging, particularly for colleagues whose contracts are due to conclude at the end of the year. This is front of mind for the University Executive and we are committed to sharing more information with you as soon as we can.
International student caps
Preparing for the implementation of legislation that has yet to pass the parliament is complex, particularly when there is concern about the Federal Government's modelling and data accuracy. We couldn’t replicate the Commonwealth Department of Education’s preliminary estimate of the number of new international students we enrolled in 2024 until we met with them recently to understand their methodology. In that meeting, they also confirmed the University of Sydney number they provided to Parliament last month was a significant over-estimate.
The Department’s published estimate of 17,247 new international student commencers in 2024 overstated our actual new overseas student commencements by more than 3000 students. In fact, in 2024 we expect to have enrolled about 14,050 new international students as defined by the Department, up from 12,790 in 2023.
The Department’s estimate incorrectly indicated a year-on-year growth rate of 35 percent in 2024, compared to an actual growth rate of less than 10 percent. The widespread use of these incorrect estimates means that the public debate about the growth of our international student cohort has given a misleading picture of our actual rate of enrolment growth this year. The cap legislation is expected to come before the Senate in the final two sitting weeks of the year, which commence on 18 November. I’ll continue to keep you updated as that progresses.
A safe and welcoming campus for all
Ensuring we are a safe and welcoming University for all members of our community remains an absolute priority, while upholding our steadfast commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech. Earlier this semester we convened a working group to focus on this task.
As part of that work, we are considering the appropriateness of the policies and procedures we have in place, including reviewing the Campus Access Policy as we committed to doing when it was introduced in July. There have been mixed responses to this policy with some in our community welcoming it while others are firmly opposed, and we are listening to all that feedback and will continue to balance the diversity of views our community holds. We encourage you to share your views on the policy via the online form by 30 November.
Unacceptable behaviour
Like many of you, I was shocked and disappointed to hear reports of unacceptable behaviour at St Paul’s College. While affiliated residential colleges are independent, as always we are working closely with the College to respond to this incident with the welfare of our students being our top priority. Support and wellbeing services are also available and we urge anyone who has experienced or witnessed inappropriate behaviour to let us know via the Safer Communities Office so we can provide support, investigate, and take appropriate action.
With the end of Semester 2 rapidly approaching, I want to thank colleagues for the work that is ahead of us in the remainder of the year – marking final exams and assessments, processing grades, and preparing for our 2025 domestic student intake when HSC results come out. I hope you’re all looking forward to a break in just seven weeks.
Kind regards,
Mark
Professor Mark Scott
Vice-Chancellor and President
