EDUCATIONAL EFFECTS
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic forced massive changes on almost every workplace across the country and has wreaked unprecedented damage on the Australian economy, with experts in mid-May predicting the largest budget deficit in history and unemployment tipped to soar to 10 percent in the June quarter – the highest rate since the recession of the early 1990s.1
Australia’s $38 billion per year tertiary education sector was certainly not immune to these difficulties; in fact, even among the carnage, it stands out as a sector that – despite structural vulnerability to international crises and global economic shocks – was woefully unprepared to weather the Covid storm. Peak body Universities Australia has projected a loss of revenue between A$3 billion and A$4.6 billion this year, with more than 21,000 jobs at risk in the next six months. With all of these losses happening at the macro scale, how
