Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics - Mark Twain. (July 7, 2004)

    Dr Michael Gallagher, head of policy and planning at the Australian National University is into his tenth month on the job. In the not to distant past he filled the role of First Assistant Secretary, Higher Education Division, Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) during which tenure he suggested to a Senate committee examining the competence of the university system to meet its obligations that Vice-Chancellors who said [that the university system was in crisis] were simply 'looking for an easy way out' and not facing up to their 'management responsibilities.'

Today The Australian's Dorothy Illing reports, that Dr Gallagher told a seminar that "students were now contributing 38 per cent of total revenue to universities, the highest ever."  However, a spokesman for the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson told her, "Students only contributed a quarter of their course costs, which they did not have to repay until their income reached $35,000."

It's all really a question of how you want to massage the figures.

However, to return to Dr Gallagher joining that bunch who aren't facing up to their 'management responsibilities' he went on to tell his seminar audience yesterday, "The recent raft of changes to higher education policy, if implemented, will I believe only be able to operate for a couple of years and at most for four years before they implode."  By which we assume he means "to collapse inward as if from external pressure, i.e. to become greatly reduced as if from collapsing."  However, whether or not he believes there is currently a crisis is not reported.

But more to the point Illing reports he described the increasing cost burden on students, as an outdated and "perverse" agenda that was a "time-warp flashback to the Dawkins era". And he dubbed the full-fee-paying Australian undergraduates "domestic queue jumpers". The answer to appropriate funding for the university sector he believes lies in fixing indexation, a move that would lock in long-term increases in universities' base grants instead of relying on the unsustainable measure of raising student fees.

And as to rejigging Australia's university system Illing reports him as recommending, "a more coherent policy approach across education sectors," but didn't detail what policies should be pursued.