The annual summary report of university finances has been released. Overall, it shows that university finances continue to be in reasonable shape, especially compared to the period up until 2004 (2008 was the writing down of asset values due to the global financial crisis). The operating surplus in 2014 was $1.9 billion, or about 7 per cent of revenue. It peaked at 9 per cent of revenue in 2010.

Of course, aggregate figures like this can hide trouble at particular institutions. In 2014 compared to recent preceding years there was an increase in the number of institutions reporting deficits from one to three, although this is much better than in earlier years.

The three universities with deficits in 2014 were Victoria University, University of Tasmania and University of Canberra. The latter two had small deficits, but VU lost $16 million. Most of that was due to its TAFE division, suffering from the general turmoil in the vocational education market. Of the three, only VU has been on the deficit list before in the last 5 years.

Things might be a little worse for 2015, with government grant and student contribution indexation rates low and an efficiency dividend being applied to some grants. However, the international student market will be likely be adding to its already significant profits, which will ease the pain.