Three-hundred pages and forty-six recommendations constitute the Review of Australian Higher Education published in the middle of this month by the "Expert Panel" convened by the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard.

Chaired by Professor Denise Bradley, AC it also included Mr Peter Noonan, Dr Helen Nugent, AO and Mr Bill Scales, AO. Their assessment of Australia's higher education sector should be alarming in that it bodes consequences far beyond the immediate shrinking of the nation's economy.

Nevertheless, the reviewers are fearful of a top down structural renovation imposed by government.

The panel is not drawn to recommend a formal process to restructure higher education in line with any prescribed model. Such a process would be a prescription for increasing levels of government intervention in the affairs of institutions. Instead the panel's preference is to establish a national framework which allows progressive change in the structure of the sector to occur over time as institutions and governments respond to emerging trends in the environment. Such a framework should permit a diversity of approaches by institutions while also encouraging excellence, innovation and accountability. It should also encourage institutions to both work together and compete with each other, while meeting the nation's needs for high-quality, tertiary-educated citizens.

The review recommends an injection of an additional $5.75 billion over the next four years but adds what is a frightening observation:

However, because other countries have already moved to address participation and investment in tertiary education, the recommendations in this report are likely to do no more than maintain the sector's relative international performance and position.

[O]ver the long term, substantially greater public support and funding will be required than recommended in this report. Other countries have already chosen to increase their investment in tertiary education so that their people can use their knowledge to help create national competitive advantage. Australia should make a similar choice.

While the review in common with the popular media focuses on the interactions of students with the universities and more particularly with undergraduates, it doesn't neglect the functions of universities as seats of scholarship and research. Professor Bradley and her fellow reviewers make the following points:

 
Competitive research grants in 2006                  = $946 million
Research Infrastructure Block Grants in 2008   = $208 million
Institutional Grants Scheme in 2008                  = $308 million
Research Training Scheme in 2008                    = $585 million

The original logic of the dual funding arrangements in universities was that the research granting agencies would pay the direct costs of the projects they supported, while the universities met from their operating grants the costs of salaries of the chief investigators and the general infrastructure needed to sustain research.

In submissions to the review and in consultations, a number of universities expressed significant concern about the inadequacy of block grant funding, and stated that they had been forced to cross-subsidise research projects gained from national competitive grants from other funding sources.

This under-funding of the indirect costs of research, which has led to cross-subsidisation from teaching funds, has affected the quality of teaching...

In 2006 universities received 21 cents in Research Infrastructure Block Grants support per competitive grant dollar earned.

In its recent report, The Allen Consulting Group (2008)... reported that the international benchmark for funding indirect costs of research projects was 50 per cent of the value of the original grant.

The review also observed: "it seems that the general uncertainties about gaining research funds, combined with the under-funding of the direct and indirect costs of research, have had a negative impact on staff in terms of lack of employment security, excessive workloads and high levels of workplace stress."

What is particularly disturbing is that these matters of disquiet have been raised with governments time and again with little positive response. Will this time be any different, especially with the gloom of economic contraction poised like the Sword of Damocles.

The columnist Paul Wiseman writing in USA Today comments: "In a matter of weeks, Australia's boom has gone bust. Now economists at Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, among others, are forecasting that Australia's economy will shrink this quarter and next, tipping the land down under into a recession for the first time since 1991. JPMorgan sees the jobless rate — a record low 4% just 10 months ago — rising to 9% by 2010."

But The New York Times' columnist and Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman referring to the US economic downturn writes: "What can be done? Ted Strickland, the governor of Ohio, is pushing for federal aid to the states on three fronts: help for the neediest, in the form of funding for food stamps and Medicaid; federal funding of state- and local-level infrastructure projects; and federal aid to education. That sounds right — and if the numbers Mr. Strickland proposes are huge, so is the crisis."

Isn't now an appropriate time for Australia's tertiary educational infrastructure to receive powerful stimuli thereby looking to long-term gains.