AFAIK the background is the 'big 5' universities in Australia have a fat loan due which they took out 10 years ago and can't pay. Their primary income source was foreign exchange students and that demand has fallen off a cliff. So they're shedding academics and puffing like crazy right now. It seems in the near future Australian tertiary education will be highly corporatized and move to a more American model than our European-style history.