“Don’t go to university next year.” What was Jenna Price, a columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald said. On the surface, it sounds like poor advice in our current knowledge-based economy. How else to move up the sky-high career ladder without this rite of passage? Yet in 2026, this sentence reflects a growing worry among not just Australian students fresh out of high school, but anyone looking for a job in the future. Once seen as a guaranteed pathway to stability and upward mobility, universities are now struggling with budget cuts, poor managerialism, and a deteriorating student experience, which begs the question: is the degree still worth it?
Australia’s global(isation) financial crisis
At a glance, many can agree that Australian universities are facing a funding crisis, from the hundreds of faculty job losses to pausing university student enrolments. Over the past two decades, while globalisation boomed, international students studying in Australia surged rapidly. Universities are now increasingly becoming dependent on international student fees for income, amid stagnating public funding. However, this has led to institutions being exposed to economic volatility, especially during crises such as COVID-19, with losses of over $1.2 billion in 2020 alone.
With the fluctuation of these balances, the immediate consequences include budget cuts, hiring freezes, and widespread job losses throughout the university. More recently, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has decided to restructure programs by scrapping direct entry in an attempt to address its $80 million debt. Additionally, funding per Commonwealth-supported student in Australian universities has been falling, with a 6% to 8% decline in real terms since 2017, exacerbating cost difficulties, which resulted in the financial crisis.
The rise of the corporate university
Moreover, this financial fragility is closely linked with poor managerialism. Policy choices, such as leadership reforms to increase the number of university managers, have pushed universities towards a corporate-style hierarchy. Most blatantly, executive salaries have risen while the faculty face wage stagnation and job insecurities, yet there is no significant improvement in student outcomes, as one Australia Institute report notes.
As a result, more and more universities are beginning to operate as a competitive business for profit, rather than focusing on expanding their educational horizons. After the boom in university students due to globalisation, when universities began taking in more students, the same number of resources were stretched thinner over a larger area; hence, the importance of providing quality teaching fell when compared to the profitability of schools.
Yes, the reasons above sound abstract in theory, when they take years to concretely show any evidence in statistics of the crises Australian universities face. At the grassroot level, the consequences are much more directly felt for those who attend these universities.
How do students feel?
A slew of problems faces incoming university students: the high cost of living, the severe housing shortage in big cities, and an uncertain job market has made university life not just unaffordable, but even undesirable for a few. At the same time, university funding cuts and staff reductions mean that students are paying more for a less holistic university experience; less support and fewer opportunities now pave the way to the expensive degree.
As of late, students’ concerns extend beyond financial means into their wellbeing and safety in university. UTS has also come under fire in March of 2026 for having “effectively silenced” a student who reported sexual harassment through the university’s confidential processes, yet was investigated for misconduct, and offered little support by UTS throughout.
Beyond campus, the rise of large language models or generative AI has created massive retrenchment waves in an already oversaturated job market, making traditional career pathways much less predictable than it was a decade ago. As mentioned above, Price certainly considers it a reason not to go to university and encourages students instead to focus on “trade jobs” which require apprenticeships rather than degrees.
“A crisis that’s decades in the making”
Historian Hannah Forsyth, however, believes that this educational crisis is not an unforeseen stumbling block for Australian universities. Rather, it is the result of previous long-term structural changes, from declining public funding to the increasing reliance on international markets. Over time, these shifts have caused universities to morph into market-oriented institutions, where financial stability takes precedence over educational goals.
Addressing this crisis will require more than just government intervention. While proper funding and policy restructuring would be beneficial, universities themselves must also re-center their focus on providing quality education rather than chasing an ever-rising revenue. This starts with listening to student feedback, ensuring accessible support services, and connecting academic staff with university managers to plan out a cost-effective curriculum without compromising academic quality. Ultimately, rebuilding trust in universities will be the reason why students continue to see higher education as a worthy investment – not only to climb the career ladder, but to gain a sense of clarity with the society they live in.