Universities Australia wants parity of esteem with TAFE; calling on the Commonwealth to commit $493m to fund fee-free university study by disadvantaged students in skills-need areas.
The peak body’s budget submission includes 180,000 UG places, to match some of those the Albanese Government has allocated to TAFE; implicitly suggesting that the market does not consider university study good value. “Higher education enrolments are declining at a time Australia needs more university-educated workers,” Acting CEO Renee Hindmarsh states.
UA also calls for more money for research, arguing that direct government funding (excluding tax concessions) is 0.36 per cent of GDP, “its’ lowest ever share.” It calls for an increase in “direct investment’ specifying research support and grants programmes, “towards” the OECD member average for government investment, (0.65 per cent).
And the lobby renews the common call from HE lobbies for change to the Research and Development Tax Incentive to increase the share going to basic research, “the basis of any subsequent translation and commercialisation efforts.”
This builds on calls for change in the celebrated Ferris, Finkel and Fraser review of the R&D Tax Incentive; perhaps the most enduring and influential tax policy review never implemented. The Review of the Three Fs put more funding for industry-university research and less in the way of corporate tax concessions on the agenda in 2016, but while the Coalition had a couple of goes at change, elections and Senate Committees got in the way.
