The University of Wollongong has shed hundreds of jobs with leaders claiming financial hardship, despite good cash flow and thriving consultants. Adam Lucas and James Guthrie report.
This week’s Four Corners episode drew attention to the consultancy binge at Australia’s public universities. Severe, arguably unnecessary, job cuts, course closures, and discipline shedding have been the direct result of this transformation in the core mission of Australia’s universities.
While the financialisation of universities and the accompanying consultancy binge have been unfolding with increased vigour over the last decade or so, they have accelerated since COVID. The University of Wollongong (UOW) offers an instructive case study into these closely interrelated processes, hence the Four Corners investigation, and revelations from the current NSW parliamentary inquiry into university governance.
Over the last two years, UOW has slashed 191 full-time jobs – around 10% of its workforce – and cut dozens of subjects and majors, gutting whole disciplines. This is on top of more than 400 positions that were cut in the wake of COVID, along with all the knowledge and expertise that went with them.
However, UOW’S income and expenditure statements reveal it wasn’t a financial crisis that drove the University of Wollongong to make these decisions; it was a strategy. One built on dodgy numbers, concentrated power,
and a pattern of misleading parliament, staff, and the public.
A university cash flow machine
Cash flow records extracted from UOW annual reports tell the real story of significant operating surpluses. Between 2015 and 2016, those surpluses exceeded $90m a year, with minimal debt.
In 2017, UOW shifted its approach, engaging in a debt-fuelled binge and borrowing $175m for its expansion plans. By 2019, it was converting operating cash into assets so aggressively that net liquidity fell $119m in a good year, indicating that UOW’s financial vulnerabilities stemming from its commercial property development strategy predated the pandemic (UOW Annual Reports 2015–19).
This wasn’t a university on the brink – it was a surplus machine, choosing to pump cash into expansion long before COVID.
Conflict denied
Within weeks of the unexpectedly early departure of former Vice-Chancellor, Trish Davidson, in early 2024, UOW’s new Chancellor, Michael Still, appointed former Latrobe Vice-Chancellor, John Dewar, as Interim Vice-Chancellor. Professor Dewar was a partner in the consultancy, KordaMentha, that was hired around the same time to conduct an “enterprise-wide operations review” of UOW.
In September 2024, UOW executives assured the public that Interim Vice-Chancellor John Dewar was on unpaid leave from KordaMentha, and that the firm’s almost $3m review contract was signed before he started. Documents released under GIPA shredded that story.
Dewar’s UOW contract began on 3 June 2024. That same day, Chancellor Still signed off on an arrangement allowing Dewar to keep working one day a fortnight for KordaMentha. The tender for the review closed on 21 June: KordaMentha’s contract was approved on 2 July (Langford 2025a, 2025b). Under oath in December 2025, Still finally conceded: “I have no doubt that he [Dewar] was in touch with them.” Asked if that was a conflict of interest, Still replied: “Possibly. I don’t know.” (Inquiry Transcript, p. 41*). The university had given the NSW and federal parliaments statements that were, at best, misleading.
KordaMentha’s flawed advice
One of the most consequential and arguably damaging actions taken by the UOW executive was its implementation of the so-called “discipline viability” model that arose from KordaMentha’s advice. The model was used as a blunt instrument to legitimate the axing of more than 130 academic jobs, even though the data on which it was based was admitted by KordaMentha in its final report to be seriously inadequate. Garbage in, garbage out:
it was a sham by any objective measure.
The model measured teaching revenue against all academic staff – including researchers – so research-heavy disciplines were automatically deemed “unviable”. It also relied on only one year of enrolment data, automatically punishing disciplines with staff on study or long service leave. Even when staff repeatedly pointed out the numbers were unrepresentative or simply wrong, nothing was done to change the underlying methodology.
Staff who raised concerns were sent a notice claiming their professional experiences “remain the sole property of the University”. Chancellor Still later confirmed 27 staff exits in three years came with gag clauses (Still Answers 2026, p. 8*).
Governance failure
When the axe came down at the end of 2024, Chancellor Still chaired five of Council’s most powerful committees: Finance, Performance & Remuneration, and the board overseeing the restructure. Key decisions could be made by just three appointed members, with elected staff and students locked out.
During the NSW Inquiry hearings last December, the Chancellor explained that after deciding the former Vice-Chancellor’s performance was wanting, and that he needed to discuss this with Council in early 2024, he called a meeting of “independent members” only. One of those was the Deputy Chancellor, a partner in KPMG, who explained that elected representatives were employees, so informing them about the situation and hearing their views was deemed “inappropriate” (Inquiry Transcript* 17 Dec 2025, pp. 57–58).
That’s not governance: it’s a closed shop.
The final butcher’s bill: 191.4 full-time positions gone – 92 academic, 100 professional – saving $36.8m a year. Meanwhile, UOW’s own annual report showed international student revenue grew in 2024. The Community and Public Sector Union called the whole exercise “corporate spin”.
And then there was the $6.6m underpayment to 5,340 staff. The Fair Work Ombudsman pinned it directly on “deficiencies in governance processes” (Lu Answers 2026, pp. 7-8). The same governance that now sits unchallenged.
This wasn’t a tough call made in good faith. It was a financialised fantasy, sold with flawed metrics, executed by a board that concentrated power and excluded scrutiny, and defended with statements that didn’t hold up.
The rot started at the top. The stench and its source remain.
ICAC investigating University of Wollongong as chancellor grilled at Inquiry