The Age Backs OECD's Education at a Glance, Rebukes  Education Minister. (September 21, 2007)

The OECD's report Education at a Glance, 2007 was not at all kind in it's assessment of Australian governmental support for tertiary education and the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, was quick to label it as flawed.

The mean increase on governmental spending for tertiary education by the OECD was 49%. Australia was the only nation where the support declined (-4%). In 2004, the Government provided 47.2% of higher education revenue a drop of 9.8% from 1996. The OECD average,  75.4%. Only six OECD members contributed less to higher education as a proportion of GDP. And Australia was in the bottom half for total spending, public and private.

As for The Age's view of Ms Bishop's rejoinder:

Education Minister Julie Bishop struggled to defend this record. Funding has improved since 2004, as she said, but that is the case across the OECD. As for her complaint that the OECD calculations excluded HECS and full-fee loans, students must repay the loans and hence these are a private liability — the small minority of HECS loans that won't be repaid have only a marginal impact. Her bid to include vocational funding ignores the fact that most of this falls into the category of upper secondary education. Ms Bishop's most audacious funding claim was her inclusion of $6 billion in capital in the new Higher Education Endowment Fund. Universities will not receive the first earnings from this, about $400 million, until 2008-09. Even if one accepts her estimate, surely the highest possible, that federal funding to universities has risen 26 per cent since 1996 (the year that the Government cut funding by $1.8 billion), that is still only half of the OECD increase to 2004.

 But neither does The Age's editorialist let Labor off the hook: "Both sides of politics have presided over a three-decade decline in public funding, so neither is blameless for the current state of affairs. It is the Howard Government, though, that even now has yet to grasp the importance of equitable public education for Australia's future."

It remains to be seen, come November, whether or not the matter is considered of sufficient importance to affect how Australia's voters cast their ballots.