Making Ends Meet at The University of Sydney. (April 18, 2005)

    Don Wilson is Vice-Principal of Sydney University's "University Relations" which is something of a euphemism as Mr Wilson is in charge of the university's fund raising efforts.

In the April issue of The University of Sydney Gazette he lists some interesting financial statistics for the university which may leave you wondering just how distant is this member of the Group of Eight from being a private university when it come to where it gets its money. Mr Wilson told the Gazette that in 2005 the university will get about 16% of its $1,000 million annual budget from uncontested government funding. Last year private gifts came in at just under $30 million, i.e. about 3% of last years budget.

Wilson says, "There has been a tremendous decline in government funding over the past ten years. We are now government supported but not government funded. Universities have been forced to respond by raising revenue from private sources, from fees, from gifts and bequests."

Wilson, who came to Sydney University a year ago from Colorado College in the US, points out that while the $29.7 million raised as gifts last year is a record, it is about a tenth of that raised by the US' elite private universities where about 50% of alumni contribute to annual fund raising appeals. At Sydney the figure still hovers below 5%. And the Vice-Principal, University Relations is quite blunt about what he sees needs to be done. It seems unlikely that he would have been so without the approval of the Vice-Chancellor, Gavin Brown.

As Wilson sees it the university must look to great philanthropic gestures if it has genuine ambitions to claim a place at the table among the world's great universities.

We need to be unapologetic about seeking private support from alumni and friends. It's one of the most effective ways to support our world-class teaching and research, to hold down student fees and inoculate our budget against shrinking government funding.

 

We must encourage increased and sustained philanthropic support to underpin excellence in the face of a movement towards privatisation among all Australian universities.

In short to be a great university in Australia, monumental charitable support will be required.

One might speculate as to which is the most improbable, a massive increase in sustained philanthropic support, a huge increase in universities' business acumen so incisive as to allow them to remain (or return to?) being centres of fundamental research and learning, or a radical change in course by the federal government towards a constructive rapprochement with the universities.