Universities must be “a policy priority instead of a political pawn,” David Lloyd chair of the peak university lobby announces in a speech for the National Press Club to be delivered today.
Professor Lloyd calls on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to “follow the lead and examples of leaders like Menzies and Hawke in their support of, and investment in, universities for the greater good of the Australian nation.”
And they will have a choice at the next election, “between providing bipartisan support and encouragement for higher education or treating universities as political footballs in the electoral game.”
Professor Lloyd points to this week’s announcement of international student quotas from next year as bad for universities and bad for the economy, calling it an “extraordinary intervention,” an attempt to “neutralise the perceived political damage it is suffering from high migration rates.”
“In wilfully weakening our economy by capping international student numbers, the government needs to consider how many businesses it is wilfully putting at risk and how much damage to the economy it is knowingly prepared to do at the very time when our economy is stalling,” he says.
However, Professor Lloyd attributes bi-partisan blame for the caps, stating, the government is acting “under pressure from the Opposition.”
And in making the case for a unity ticket on university teaching and research, he focuses on past and present Labor policies as setting directions the coalition should continue.
He points to HECS, the Demand Driven Funding system, which the Coalition cancelled, as Labor past Labor achievements and cites conservative failures, ministerial vetoes of research grants and the cost of the Job Ready Graduates packages, which the Coalition created to penalise arts, business and law students with high study fees.
Above all, Professor Lloyd looks to the future, calling the government commissioned Universities Accord, a “solid policy blueprint to build from” and calling on the Opposition to support “pro-student” support measures in the Accord, now before Parliament. And he urges the Opposition to follow Labor’s commitment to “growing investment” in research and development.”
And lest anyone miss the point, he adds, “the last seven years, the majority under a Coalition Government, have been particularly difficult.”
International student caps aside, Professor Lloyd’s plan for bipartisan policy on higher education focuses on the Coalition following Labor’s lead, in past times and Accord present.
But as he says as the start of his text, “hope is not really a strategy.”
