La Trobe Universities Vice-Chancellor Makes a Cogent Observation - Will the Bradley Review Take Note? (August 27, 2008)

The vice-chancellor of La Trobe University, Paul Johnson, gave an extensive interview to The Australian's Andrew Trounson which may be summarized as Professor Johnson railing against the Go8 universities' drive for deregulation of tuition fees.

The fundamental fact is that the funding mechanism for the Australia's universities and the research undertaken by their staff is irrational, i.e. if the concern is to attract and retain staff that will perform at the top levels.

What is needed according to Professor Johnson is "splitting teaching and research funding, and doing those on a sort of fully funded basis... That would be an important move. And I think that can be achieved without any change to the existing structure of teaching funding, in terms of either the price currently charged or the way the places are allocated to universities. I suspect a move along those lines would significantly reduce the intensity of the pressure from Go8 universities to move toward differential funding of teaching."

Mr Trounson concludes:

According to Professor Johnson, the failure of government to more fully fund the cost of research has encouraged universities to maximise international student teaching revenue so as to cross-subsidise research.

"This results in the unfortunate and unsustainable position that Australia's higher education research capacity is to an uncomfortable degree being financed by teaching fees paid by students from developing countries, particularly India and China.

"It is an odd way for an OECD country to be building its research base," said Professor Johnson, who joined La Trobe last year from the London School of Economics, where he was deputy director.

Surely obvious moves of the government should be to provide increased incentives for philanthropic donations to universities and research programs, such as a 200% tax deduction, as well as erecting an infrastructure refurbishment and development fund which will truly rebuild university infrastructure.

Assuming the figure published in The Australian of expressions of interest submitted to the Higher Education Endowment Fund of $2.4 billion while the sum available will be $304 million, we are looking at a differential of 12.7 fold.