Higher education peak lobby Universities Australia tells the feds to consult first and then come up with improvements on their present plans for new student funding models.
UA has responded to Department of Education proposals to implement key Accord ideas, to manage student growth and increase participation rates from low SES cohorts.
While the lobby deals in detail with operational specifics, it sets its core position in commenting on the managed growth proposal, which; “implies a significant degree of central control will be exercised over the sector and assumes an ability to influence student choices and predict student behaviour in ways that are unlikely to be borne out in practice.”
And UA illuminates the elephant still in the funding room, the still-in-place Job Ready Graduates model, under which Commonwealth contributes next to nothing to the costs of humanities, business and law degrees. “It is time for a new approach to accurately measure university costs and to map the path to more appropriate funding settings, including an affordable contribution system for students,” the lobby urges.
The DoE’s proposed growth formula replaces the existing allocation of places by campus location, which it states does not reflect student demand. The replacement model will include government negotiating with individual institutions but, and is quiet a big but; targets, “would be informed by national objectives set by the Government, for example, to promote a productive economy and society and equitable opportunity for all Australians.”
And once set, that is it – apart from an exception for First Nations Students in demand-driven courses. Otherwise, over-enrolments would be banned, as in no Commonwealth funding and no money from students. But providers would be allowed to move places between courses and levels of study to meet ”the demand from students and industry,” – as assessed by officials – “this flexibility … would be monitored through negotiation to manage significant shifts in courses that do not align with national priorities and university missions.”
DoE has the same model in mind for changed equity funding, announcing existing programs “are complex and no longer for purpose.”
The core of the equity approach is funding equity cohorts as a whole, not individual students. Regional universities would also qualify, “recognising the higher costs regional providers face to deliver courses.” Funding would not be allocated from a system-wide total but distributed according to an institution’s numbers of students in equity groups.
