While thousands of staff are being made redundant across Australia’s public universities due to the coronavirus pandemic, Sydney’s New York University campus is receiving JobKeeper payments.
The Morrison government has received a tonne of backlash form higher education staff for their decision not to include public universities in the JobKeeper program. But while public universities have been forced to lay off thousands of staff, four private universities *and* the Sydney branch of NYU are all receiving the funding.
According to National Tertiary Education Union president Alison Barnes, more than 11,000 jobs have been lost already as a result of the pandemic, with more cuts still to come.
“The Morrison government changed the rules three times to prevent these universities from accessing JobKeeper,” she told SBS on Friday.
“Yet four private universities in Australia and even the Sydney campus of New York University, have been able to access JobKeeper.
“How can the government allow this to happen? The higher education sector is being decimated daily. Most of these job losses could have been prevented if universities were able to access JobKeeper.”
But while many have claimed that the system has been unfair, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg asserts that all universities – both public and private – are eligible for the scheme, provided they met the criteria.
Universities with an annual revenue of less than $1B were required to prove a 30% drop in revenue, while those making more than $1B had to prove they’d lost 50%.
For all of you playing along at home, New York University recorded a total of $17 billion in revenue last year, so it is unclear how they qualified for the scheme.
However, when asked about their eligibility, Frydenberg gave SBS News the ol’ “no comment” comment.
“With respect to individual JobKeeper recipients, the Government does not comment on the tax affairs of any individual or entity,” he said in a statement.
Understandably, Frydenberg can’t just give details on specific business’ earnings willy nilly, but many people are finding it hard to believe that NYU has halved their revenue as a result of the pandemic if other universities didn’t qualify.
The news comes just a day after the Australian National University announced 465 redundancies as part of their plan to stay afloat and recoup the losses from the coronavirus pandemic.
