Shocked, but not surprised.
Australia's universities are paying external consultants and contractors an estimated $1.8 billion a year without disclosing which firms they are hiring and what the money is being spent on.
Consultancies have been accused of infiltrating universities, wasting scarce public funds on questionable advice about cutting courses and jobs, and undermining the sector's principles of public good.
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When the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) embarked on a process in 2024 to reduce debt and balance its budget, it could have sought advice from its own Business School, which includes some of the finest minds in finance, accounting and economics.
Instead, it called in external consultants from KPMG, which charged about $7 million for what UTS academics have described as "cookie-cutter" advice on how to save money.
After winning the contract, KPMG embedded itself within UTS as it began assessing which courses and academic programs were generating revenue for the university and which were not.
At least 24 KPMG staff, including directors and partners, soon had UTS email addresses, could access the university's Microsoft Teams and SharePoint systems, and were attending staff meetings.
"That is the standard operating procedure: get into a client and look as much like you're a part of the client, infantilise the client, make them think that they can't do things without you," says former KPMG partner turned whistleblower Brendan Lyon.
Mr Lyon, now a professor of practice at the University of Wollongong, said when he was at KPMG, the education sector was seen as an area ripe for revenue growth.
"That was a real focus. They'd recently recruited a former vice-chancellor of an Australian university. From what I saw within KPMG, it was a real growth area and a real growth target," he said.
UTS staff had to use a freedom of information request to access the report KPMG wrote for the university. The document they were given was highly redacted.
Eventually, a handful of staff, including associate professor Paul Brown, were allowed to view a copy of the report under strict supervision.
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Dr Brown said that while there were some suggestions that made sense around working capital, he was shocked to see that one section of the report suggested the university should change its organisational structure to be more triangle-shaped.
"We laughed because it was like a Woolworths-type organisational structure, not a university with all its complexities … where you're going to do serious research and have to do world-leading innovation," he said.
"Just the lack of understanding … was astounding," he said.