| Gideon Polya: Extension of the Capital Development Pool Funding to Private Tertiary Institutions |
Recent senate inquiries
and media reports provide a wealth of evidence that all is not well in the
publicly-funded Australian university system – pure research is grossly
underfunded, teaching quality is highly variable, academics are generally
perceived to be intimidated and some very dodgy things have been happening such
as soft marking, plagiarism, scholarly fraud, corruption and embezzlement.
However the latest
report of a Senate Committee inquiry into universities has raised the spectre of
a further departure from ideality, namely taxpayer-funding of "teaching-only",
religiously-affiliated tertiary institutions in Australia.
For details of this
report (including the Majority Report, and additional reports from the Labor
Opposition and the Australian Democrats as well as Submissions to the Inquiry)
see the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee Inquiry
into the Provisions of the Higher Education Legislative Amendment (2005 Measures
No.1) Bill 2005 at:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/highed_measures/report/index.htm
Let me quote at the outset the final conclusion and recommendation of the Senate Committee Majority Report:
The committee concludes that the bill before the committee will enable the Government to maintain its commitment to Notre Dame University and provide consistent treatment to other higher education providers listed on Table B (Bond University and Melbourne College of Divinity). The amendment in this bill, which is consistent with current funding arrangements under HESA, will ensure consistency and fairness in the provision of Commonwealth funds across theprivate higher education sector.
Recommendation: The committee commends this bill to the Senate and recommends its passage without amendment.
The Senate Committee
Inquiry was principally concerned with legislation allowing "Table B"
universities, namely Bond University, Melbourne College of Divinity and Notre
Dame University, to access a large pool of taxpayer funds.
Remarkably, the Inquiry
attracted only 7 submissions. Bond, Divinity and Notre Dame naturally enough
said "give us access to the money". The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee
(AVCC) and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) essentially said that in
the light of extremely constrained government funding of universities, any
available funds should go to the cash-strapped "Table A" public universities.
The Department of Science, Education and Training's submission simply detailed
the background to the proposed legislation. My submission was concerned with the
implications of tax payer funding of private tertiary institutions which served
special interests and whose quality wasn't assured.
The Senate Committee
report was released in May 2005. In short, the Majority Report supported the
proposed extension of access to further Federal funding for "Table B" private
universities including several religion-based private universities.
The Opposition Labor
Party report said in part, "While Labor senators will not oppose this bill which
includes a range of necessary amendments to the HESA legislation, they take this
opportunity to express their continued disquiet about the policy directions of
the Government in higher education. In particular, Labor senators have grave
concerns about the lack of transparency in the process of consultation leading
to introduction of this bill, and more generally in the pursuit and application
of the Government's ideologically driven agenda. The discussion documents
released by the Minister do not present open questions, nor do they canvas
genuine alternative policy directions to the Government's chosen ones."
Their report stated that
despite their agreement to recommend adoption of the amendment nevertheless they
were “disquieted” by this extension of funding to private universities and
raised some specific concerns, notably the precedent for further funding to 28
higher education providers "which fall outside Tables A and B and which, at the
time of tabling of this report, have been directly approved by the Minister for
access to various public subsidies" i.e. to additional tertiary education
institutions already having access to Government subsidies but not necessarily
satisfying requirements for "minimum levels of quality and standards;
non-discriminatory admission and exclusion policies; open governance structures;
commitment to free and open inquiry; and curriculum which exposes students to,
and tolerates, a variety of perspectives".
The Opposition Labor
Report expressed concerns that the Government might be attempting to expand
subsidies to private tertiary education providers "by stealth" and was expanding
public subsidy to such institutions in the absence of the stringent quality,
reporting and accountability requirements currently placed on public
universities.
The Australian
Democrats' Supplementary Report endorsed the concerns of the Opposition Labor
Report but went further by explicitly recommending omission of an item of the
Bill which "amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to allow the
institutions listed on Table B access to funding from the Capital Development
Fund".
Finally, the Opposition
Labor Report gave examples of unacceptable private educational institution
constraints, namely discriminatory entrance requirements involving applicant
endorsement "by a pastor or equivalent religious leader" and college demands
that it be informed of events occurring "which bring the Christian integrity of
a student into question ... so that the situation may be evaluated with regard
to student's continuing in a Christian course of study".
Dr Gideon Polya retired as Associate Professor in Biochemistry from La Trobe University in 2003 and is the author of the pharmacological reference Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. He is currently writing a book on global mortality. His website is found at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html