ATEC has released a model to fund universities for the specific costs of teaching all their courses, seeking consultation on an issue which has confounded the sector for decades.
But the agency ducks a big issue; how universities use funding for teaching to support research. And it again excuses itself from answering the question of what students should pay, stating it is a matter for ministers.
The Commission yesterday released a paper on estimating “the efficient price of delivering teaching and supporting scholarship” at public universities as a foundation for future Commonwealth funding.
While ATEC Commissioner Stephen Duckett is not mentioned, the paper is shaped by his work on activity-based costings in hospitals, applied by an ATEC-appointed working group he led.
The new paper calls for an eight-stage process to create a cost dataset, based on unit-of-study outlays and support for teaching at 15-20 universities. Variables can be added, adjusted for delivery mode and relative efficiencies of scale to establish a price for each course.
“Moving from costing to pricing requires consideration of the efficient cost levels within the proposed pricing model to account for avoidable or unusually high expenditure and system sustainability,” ATEC announces.
“Provider-specific choices will generally not be reflected in the pricing approach, unless they represent a material difference and efficient cost of provision.”
ATEC now invites comments, with one expected to be regularly raised; whether the government will assume “efficient price” is a synonym for “lowest.”
The Higher Education Research Group have already warned that research is cross-subsidised by funding for education – and argues it should continue to be so, because of the contribution of research to curricula. HERG accordingly argues the cost of teaching should not be based solely on surveys of teaching time, but also a share of research costs.
Which would create a problem that ATEC is assiduous in ignoring – what students pay for courses, especially under the hated Job Ready Graduates Model.
If it turns out (as it will for law) that students in it, HASS and bized are paying way more than the efficient price for teaching, surely the $20,000 a year they now pay would have to come down – at no cost to the Feds.
ATEC is now accepting submissions on the Costing and Pricing paper but it appears to announce concessions it will make, if asked nicely, notably; “Should the ATEC recommend a mixed model of funding? Should this be applicable for all universities, or only to 'smaller' universities (to be defined)? If a mixed model of funding were pursued, how should the proportion of fixed and variable funding be determined and what evidence can be used in this consideration?”
What it does not ask is whether it will be possible to “estimate efficient costs and establish base prices” for Government by September. A likely response will be “no” with a preferred date of “never”.