The sparkling Australian wine corks would have been popping in Jason Clare’s Ministerial Suite last night as his latest Accord Bill finally made it through the Senate and again through the House yesterday, following 43 amendments.
The legislation formally ushers in a new funding system for Australian higher education.
Mr Clare’s team borrowed from an interesting array of door opening moments in popular culture to share their excitement with the world and stated that an extra 230,000 places would be made available at university over the next 10 years.
The Bill establishes the Managed Growth funding system, by which the Minister will dole out places to universities via their ATEC compacts, and the Needs-based Funding system, so that ‘young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and the regions get the support they need to succeed at uni’.
As previously noted in Future Campus the Needs-based Funding system doesn’t actually help one of the four groups highlighted as under-represented in the Accord – people with a disability – and also doesn’t help people young or old in regional areas who are unable or unwilling to enrol in a regional campus. The Needs-based Funding system helps two important cohorts – Indigenous students and low SES students and an important structural component of the university system (regional universities) but falls short on the other two cohorts highlighted by the Accord Final Report.
Improving outcomes for two out of four under-represented cohorts is a distinctive improvement, but needs-based or equitable it is not – and delivering the Accord it certainly is not.
Nonetheless, Mr Clare said the legislation meant, “an extra $3.6 billion in funding for universities and an extra 230,000 commencing students over the next decade.” There is a really important semantic point here. It is funding for additional Commonwealth Supported Places – and not a guarantee of extra domestic enrolments occurring to fill those places. That work is now up to the universities.
The announcement also clarified the origins of Mr Clare’s incorrect statement last week that total domestic enrolments had risen by 30%. The second paragraph of yesterday’s triumphal Open Doors Media Release amended the claim, stating that if medicine and demand-driven places (eg for Indigenous students) were excluded, domestic enrolments had risen from 274,000 in 2022 to an expected 354,000 next year by 30%.
While the clarification is welcome, this reliance on selective statistics only available within the Department really undermines what could have been a stronger narrative for the Minister – based on publicly-shared all-inclusive data. Why would the Minister not be celebrating and including enrolments of Indigenous people or medical students in his headline number? Why would we not talk about the major drop in enrolments from 2021-2022 and get a clearer view of trend data by looking at the 2021-2027 growth rate – the number that really matters to Australians?
Where this leaves the claimed 230,000 growth in additional student numbers over the next 10 years is unclear and how we can be trying to focus attention on numbers that don’t include Indigenous students (and for that matter, our future doctors) is just baffling.
Andrew Norton welcomed many of the amendments to the Bill, which included establishing a more secure floor for CSPs, a higher over-enrolment limit for larger universities and removal of an ATEC power to control numbers for specific courses.
Universities Australia welcomed the new legislation, and CEO Luke Sheehy said that the focus would now shift to locking in the funding required to make wider access a reality.
“Opening the door is important. But doors only create opportunity if people can walk through them,” Mr Sheehy said.
“If we want more teachers, nurses, engineers and other skilled workers, we need more funded university places.
“The ambition of the Accord can only be realised if growth is matched with funding.”
The 2050 Alliance, RUN, Go8 and ATN all welcomed the passage of the Bill, and referenced the importance of amendments to make it fairer.
As far as FC can tell, all the door openers in the Facebook video from Mr Clare’s Ministerial account yesterday happened to be Caucasian. Whether a complementary slamming doors compilation is created to trumpet keeping out students who are a political liability remains a matter of interest.