A New Conservative Centre for Independent Studies' Report Rejects that Responsibility for the Running of Universities Should be Shifted fully to the Federal Government. (March 24, 2005)

Toward the end of last year the Minister for Education Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, put in a "bid" that Australia's 37 public universities should come under the full control of the federal government. He claimed the changes would reduce red tape and make universities more streamlined, transparent and diverse.

Currently most government funding comes from the federal government with the states contributing only marginally. However, the universities remain for the most part responsible to their states for accreditation and the oversight of their governance.

Now Andrew Norton, a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, argues in an 11 page analysis that transferring power over universities from the states to the Commonwealth would be a mistake.

While Mr Norton has shown in the past that he is all for a deregulation of universities' tuition and has praised a number of Dr Nelson's initiatives in his 2003 education reform package, he shows in this report that he is firmly against a federal governmental monopoly on regulating the nation's universities.

     The media release from the Centre states: The Commonwealth has a history of bad higher education policies. Legislation could be identical for all states but still hopelessly flawed, turning consistency into a curse.

    An advantage of a federal, potentially inconsistent, system is that not every jurisdiction needs to be dysfunctional at the same time.

   Another important advantage of state-based policy making is that it allows for experimentation and policy learning.

   State governments are better able to monitor universities than the Commonwealth, and have less clustered legislative agendas to make necessary changes.

   Centralised power over universities creates threats to academic freedom.

    Andrew Norton concludes, "Centralising decision-making in Canberra would put key decisions in the hands of the government most deaf to feedback, with the weakest incentives to fix problems, and the least flexibility in dealing with them.

    "Over the long-run, federal – as opposed to federal government – policy results are likely to be superior, even if in specific places at specific times state governments make a mess of things.

     "Given current limits on state taxing powers, we can’t go back to the individual states funding universities. But we can avoid making the policy system any worse, and reject this Commonwealth claim for still more power."

And Mr Norton told The Age, "The right response is not to try to prevent [mistakes made under state control] from ever happening, but to ensure that there is feedback alerting us to problems, incentives to fix them, and the flexibility to do so.

    "The danger in giving the Commonwealth full Constitutional control over universities is that there would then be no constraint It could control everything universities do. Academic freedom would be at the discretion of the Minister."

It will be remembered that New South Wales' bookish Premier, Bob Carr is a strong advocate of ceding his state's responsibilities to the federal government contrary to the wishes of his peers.

Click on the image at the right to download the complete report.