News & Views item - September 2007

 

OECD Publishes Education at a Glance 2007: Australia Awarded a Curate's Egg. (September 19, 2007)

There are currently thirty full members; of these, 25 (marked with *) are described as high-income countries by the World Bank in 2006.

Toward the end of January this year TFW published an opinion piece Those Pesky Selected Statistics Keep Poking Through Like Weeds in Fallow Soil which commented: "Ms Bishop [the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training] seems to have trouble in developing the variations and her counters to the data produced to hold her and her government to account for their decreasing support for public education, and specifically tertiary education, and research are dismissive and insubstantial... In the past Ms Bishop has accused the OECD of producing misleading data and assessments with regard to Australia, the implication being that we are at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the OECD. She has yet to make a compelling case for her charge."

 

The implication that we are being discriminated against by the OECD in its evaluations needs to be weighed against the possibility that Ms Bishop is hardly an objective commentator.

 

Today the minister in responding said the OECD analysis was flawed because it counted HECS and government full-fee loans as money paid by students, and did not include the majority of vocational and technical education funding.

 

It also did not include funding increases since 2004, including the $6 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund — part of $7.9 billion provided this year.

 

However, higher education analysts have challenged her claim. The Age reports that Barry McGaw, a former OECD education director and now head of the Melbourne Education Research Institute, said most vocational education was considered high school equivalent, and counted in the analysis of upper secondary, and not tertiary, funding.

On the plus side the OECD pointed out that charging students fees had not reduced university access for the less advantaged. It found Australia led the developed world for access to a degree.

 

On the other hand the report's assessment suggests that in the intervening year since its last report under the Coalition government had not improved its support.

 

The Age's Adam Morton and Farrah Tomazin summarise the findings: "Australia was the only developed country to cut public spending on tertiary education in the decade to 2004, according to a new world comparison.

"The funding reduction — down 4 per cent compared with an average OECD rise of 49 per cent — resulted in private spending on higher education, including students' tuition fees, surpass government funding.

"By 2004 the Government paid 47.2 per cent of university revenue in Australia, compared with an OECD average of 75.4 per cent.

"The OECD found private spending soared mainly due to students leaving university with a greater debt after the Federal Government lifted maximum HECS fees in 1997.

"Only the US, Japan and Korea charged students more for a public university degree. Australians paid an average $US3855 a year for university study. Conversely, one in three members of the OECD, all of them European countries, offer students free university tuition.

"Across all levels of education, the OECD report found Australia devoted a lower proportion of GDP than the developed world average, though the proportion increased under the Howard Government, up from 5.5 per cent in 1995 to 5.9 per cent in 2004.

"Most of this growth was from private sources. About 27 per cent of total education funding was private, more than twice the OECD average of 13 per cent."