Three years into a Labor government the coalition’s Job Ready Graduates student funding model for Commonwealth Supported Places is still in place. There is a problem with that – Mark Warburton warns it has never been fully implemented and is “unintelligible to most.”
It will be a problem for the imminent Australian Tertiary Education Commission as it works on allocation CSPs for the government’s new managed growth system and for universities given processes will likely be “complicated and opaque.”
Mr Warburton sets out the opacity in a new paper for Melbourne University’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education and advises up-front that universities should not try to protect themselves in “back-room negotiations.” Instead they should advocate for “open public debate” on the big policy-picture, based on national objectives, hard data and transparent planning.
He points to the Government’s intent to fund a maximum number of places rather than handing over specified amounts as now. But on the basis of information to hand, does not hazard a guess on whether it will work where JRG doesn’t. He similarly points out that funding for places does not guarantee the government’s target of 84% of people with a Certificate III or above by 2050, what with people having lives that get in the way of study.
Ands he sets out where we are now, with a detailed explanation of what JRG has and has not done to date and why we cannot know what CSPs will be in 2027 (and thus in following years) , because whatever the government has in mind is not public.
As a guide to questions universities will ask about their CSPs, his paper should help ATEC and DoE, but it also demonstrates that, for now, no-one outside the agencies has clue on funding to come.
As to the question that HASS leaders continue to press – will the JRG cost of arts degrees be cut, Mr Warburton stays silent. After a long explanation of how the new funding model is not explained, he could do nothing else. But unless the Government wants to spend more money without an increase in funded places, it seems any cut to JRG rates for arts would have to be offset by an increase in fees for other students.