Catching Up To the OECD? -- Place Your Bets. (July 22, 2009)

The Chairman of the Group of Eight, University of Western Australia vice-chancellor Alan Robson, was in hand wringing mode when he spoke with The Australian's, Bernard Lane the other day: "If we're going to have a really smart country, a clever economy, we're going to have to spend a lot more money on higher education, on education generally, than has been pledged in this year's budget." And citing the stats on educational public funding, 1995 - 2004 -- OECD on average up 49%, Australia down 4%. "So", Professor Robson said, "we gave up a lot of ground, and that's reflected in very high student-staff ratios in Australian universities."

Margaret Seares, an arts and university administrator and former senior deputy vice-chancellor of UWA believes with Richard Larkins that "Either the government has got to get right out and let the market prevail or it's going to have to fund, but we're in this uneasy truce now which is neither one thing nor another. It's unsustainable. We are so far behind ... our OECD competitors in research -- and it's going to take us at least 10 years to catch up."

Now is there really any university administrator who believes that his or her institution could go it alone, i.e. be financially viable and remain a university worth the title if told: "Right, you're own your own, no state funding and charge whatever you like." If so I'd suggest that he/she examine the financial spread sheets of the private US universities with the top endowments and note how much public funding actually is received by, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, etc.

On the other hand:

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