ATEC Commissioner Stephen Duckett breaks cover , posting on social media a progress report on creating a new costing model for university teaching.
But hold not your breath for an announcement. A final report and advice, will be published “at a later date.”
Dr Duckett sets out nine months of work by a working group of ATEC officers and university experts* on “approaches to costing and pricing to better reflect delivery costs.”
Key themes considered by the working group include:
- Comprehensive costs: “future costing approaches should … estimate the total cost of university functions, even where individual elements are subsequently analysed or reported separately.”
- Granular is good: “cost structures vary materially across institutions due to factors such as size, disciplinary mix, and regional context. As a result, averages derived from highly aggregated data increase the risk of obscuring important cost drivers.”
- Precision has a price: “cost structures vary materially across institutions due to factors such as size, disciplinary mix, and regional context … averages derived from highly aggregated data increase the risk of obscuring important cost drivers.” There is interest in the results of a pilot exercise testing “mixed models that balance accuracy and feasibility.”
- Calculating cross-subsidies: between teaching and research, domestic and international students. “Pricing advice must avoid creating incentives that undermine quality and distort course offerings.”
- Cohort and institution specific cost-pressures: “future costing and pricing approach should be capable of identifying such variations without assuming uniform delivery models across the sector
And then there are two themes that will attract particular attention:
- What works in other sectors and overseas: For people who fear or are fans of activity-based funding this is one to watch. Dr Duckett’s report states: “hospital and aged-care sector comparisons reinforced the importance of clear definitions and classifications. Additionally, members noted the hospital system highlighted the potential value of employing a mixed model to accommodate services not necessarily suited to standard pricing models (such as regional or low-volume provision). The Working Group expressed interest in exploring mixed model pricing options to support regional universities by incorporating an element of block-funding.”
- “An efficient price tied to quality benchmarks:” linking pricing to quality would be a significant challenge and require careful design … further exploration would be needed to determine the feasibility of this approach (and) further consideration be given to determining how benchmarks are defined, measured and applied to costing data to establish an efficient price.”
Next steps:
The experts will consider ATEC’s pilot pricing project with “substantive issues” including:
- Treatment of indirect and shared costs; and
- Balance between analytical precision and administrative burden, and how to make an “efficient cost.”
And JRG is not – and never was – on the Agenda. The report on the Vice-Chancellors inaugural meeting for the project, last October, states, “It was also clarified that the forum was not intended to consider the balance between Commonwealth and student contribution amounts, or to revisit the Job Ready Graduates (JRGs) package, but to focus on understanding costs.”
Working Group membership:
* Atilla Brungs (UNSW), Liz Burdn(Griffith U), Tyrone Carlin (Southern Cross U) Brad Francis (Edith Cowan U),Lucy Franzmann (Uni Melbourne), Michael O’Shea (Swinburne U), Andrew Parfitt (UTS), Dr. Narelle Pearse (CQU), Luke Sheehy (Unis Aus), Sarah Wenham (QUT)