A Touch of Smoke and Mirrors Accompanies the $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund. (May 16, 2007)

    Michael Gallagher, Soon to be the executive director for the Group of Eight, knows a thing or two about the workings of the political mind. This past Saturday he told The Australian's Samantha Maiden:

[The Higher Education Endowment Fund is] a very welcome initiative. But it's about the same amount of money - $300 million - that was committed by the government in 1992 to the capital roll in. That's an annual amount they get for annual maintenance. But we don't know what the rules of the game are yet in terms of what you have to comply with to be eligible. It's unpredictable. This is a bidding process so it will be volatile. The risk is downstream the Government may cut some of the other infrastructure funding pool.

Today the broadsheet's Catherine Armitage reports the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, "confirmed the $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund (HEEF) would eventually supersede existing commonwealth funding sources for university capital works."

And as for the reduction of red tape -- "...the issues of governance, quality and data collection would all be 'negotiating points' for the new funding arrangements, because 'they are three areas where universities still have some challenges ahead'".

Ms Bishop demonstrates a complete lack of understanding or interest as to the role of the university in a nation's heritage or culture,  by saying the budget reforms are "very much designed to free universities from the shackles of the past 30 years" by allowing them to focus on areas of strength and move away from courses that were unpopular with students.

So much for equipping students to move into modern research in quantum physics, modern statistics, or classic languages.

And to return to the HEEF, Ms Armitage indicates that the the rose tinted shades are being replaced by some critical insights:

Universities have also pointed out that even if the HEEF performs to the highest expectations, generating as much as $300million a year initially and up to $1.2billion a year eventually, it will pay for only a fraction of universities' capital needs.

The cost of a backlog of urgent capital works for deteriorating facilities identified by individual vice-chancellors at just 13 universities this week amounted to $2.1billion, suggesting a much greater total for all 39 universities in the sector.

Dear me, who could ever have imagined that!

By this Wednesday the vice-chancellor of Sydney University, Gavin Brown's euphoria about the budget had diminished somewhat, "...the budget is not any form of financial bonanza, it's not actually giving us a lot more money; [the suggestion that extra funding would be tied to university compliance with governance changes was a] sting in the tail that may actually cause a lot of wasted energy."

The vice-chancellor was referring to a vision of yet another wrapping of red tape around the funding package.

However, Ms Bishop wanted all to understand that she was open to negotiation. Although how open one suspects may be dependent on how well or badly the Coalition travels in the polls in the next several months.

Ah, well, to think that that would worry them, if just a bit, may be considered something of a win.