The Government’s Needs-based Funding plan aims to address rural disadvantage by removing education choice from rural students and giving funding to regional campuses – a starkly different route to that proposed for the other three under-represented groups that the Accord seeks to assist.

There is no stated reason for singling out rural students in this way, while at the same time providing a mechanism for additional funding that would flow to the institutions chosen by any individuals from the other under-represented cohorts (Indigenous students, students with disabilities and low SES students). However, the proposed policy does offer the advantage of addressing the long-ignored evidence that HE provision is more expensive to deliver per student in regional areas, and economies of scale harder to achieve.

It could be argued that the policy addresses a systemic inequity in CSP funding allocation through a back-door allocation of funds which would otherwise be allocated to additional support for an under-represented cohort. Funds for extra support essentially evaporate to address the higher price of service delivery and regional students are left without support allocated to the other under-represented cohorts.