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News & Views item - October 2010 |
Minister
for Tertiary Education Proclaims "Expert Panel for Higher Education Base Funding
Review". (October 27, 2010)
The Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, and Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Chris Evans yesterday announced the appointment of "an expert panel to conduct a review into higher education base funding". Chairing the panel will be Dr Jane Lomax-Smith, former South Australian Minister for Education and Tourism.
Other members of the panel are:
Emeritus Professor Dennis Gibson, former Chancellor of RMIT University,
Dr Louise Watson Principal Researcher in Lifelong Learning, University of Canberra and
Professor Beth Webster, Principal Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research.
Senator Evans noted that demand driven funding for teaching and learning is to commence in 2012 as is the intention to "establish enduring principles to underpin public investment in higher education, including the appropriate balance between public and private contributions towards the cost of undergraduate and postgraduate education [and] will identify and articulate the principles that should underpin the appropriate distribution of funding by discipline, the share of funding from Government, students and other sources and the best funding model to deliver increased teaching quality."
The minister went on to say: “In response to the Bradley Review, the Government committed to lifting caps on undergraduate university places for domestic students, at an estimated additional cost of $2.1 billion over five years from 2010, and a new indexation approach will mean that Universities will have an additional $2.6 billion over five years from 2011 to provide top quality education. We are also making a substantial investment in higher education infrastructure. Already, more than $4.1 billion has been committed from the Education Investment Fund for strategic infrastructure in the tertiary and research sectors".
The review was promised to independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott as part of the inducements to secure their support in Parliament. However, according to the ABC: "Critics of the plan say it will hurt regional university campuses because they will not be able to offer the same breadth of courses as those in the cities."
The executive director of the Group of Eight, Michael Gallagher, in welcoming the Government's honouring its commitment said the Go8 hopes that a broad approach will be undertaken to ensure all options are canvassed.
This review needs to provide a framework for the sustainable financing of
Australia's universities. It will be disappointing if this opportunity is missed
and only minor modifications result from the review. The terms of reference need
to be interpreted broadly to permit consideration of differential government
funding rates and price point differences across the system. The current model
of the same funding rate for all courses at all institutions regardless of
differences in costs of delivery and quality is no longer appropriate for
sustaining a diverse system. Given the broader student population to be catered
for it will be essential that enabling funding is included in the review, not as
a top-up but as an integral element in the funding base.
We know from the 2003 higher education reforms that within two years of
legislation allowing universities to charge up to 25% more than the base level
of HECS, all universities were charging the maximum amount.
This review does not release the Government from its responsibility to students
already in the system and those who enter university in 2011 and 2012.
[Finally,] the review's timeline means that it will be the 2013 academic year
before any funding increases can flow to universities. Current students will
continue to suffer funding inadequacies unless the Government addresses the
issue in the 2011 Budget.
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Terms of Reference – Higher Education Base Funding Review
Context: Australian Government reforms and commitments
In response to the findings of the Bradley
Review of Australian Higher Education, the Australian Government introduced a
comprehensive package of reforms to Australian higher education in the
2009 Budget. The reform plans were articulated in ‘Transforming Australia’s
Higher Education System’, which stated the purpose as
enabling Australia to participate fully in, and benefit from, the global
knowledge economy. ‘Funding that meets student demand—coupled with ambitious
targets, rigorous quality assurance and full transparency—is the only way
Australia can meet the knowledge and skills challenges it faces. In that process
the nation must provide educational opportunity for all, not just the few’.
The Government response is designed to
support high quality teaching and learning, improve access and outcomes for
students from low socio economic backgrounds, build new links between
universities and disadvantaged schools, reward institutions for meeting agreed
quality and equity outcomes, improve resourcing for research and invest in world
class tertiary education infrastructure.
The Government’s package of measures is
designed to transform the scale, potential and quality of the nation’s
universities and open the doors of higher education to a new generation of
Australians.
The review of base funding will take place
in a rapidly changing higher education environment. Demand driven funding
for teaching and learning will commence in 2012. Postgraduate courses are
becoming a much more common entry into the professions, rather than a form of
professional upgrading. The proportion of the population participating in higher
education is increasing.
As announced in its response to the Bradley Review, the
Government is now commissioning a review of base funding levels and cluster
funding. This review is the next element in the Government’s commitment to
delivering on its reform package.
Terms of Reference
This review is to deliver the Government’s commitment to:
‘commission a review of the base funding levels for learning
and teaching in higher education to ensure that funding levels remain
internationally competitive and appropriate for the sector, together with work
on options for achieving a more rational and consistent sharing of costs between
students and across discipline clusters as recommended by the Bradley Review.
This review will report in 2011.’
The review will establish enduring principles to underpin
public investment in higher education, including the appropriate balance between
public and private contributions towards the cost of undergraduate and
postgraduate education. The review should identify and articulate the principles
that should underpin the appropriate distribution of funding by discipline, the
share of funding from Government, students and other sources and the best
funding model to deliver increased teaching quality.
Benchmarks
The review will identify international benchmarks and trends
for undergraduate and postgraduate coursework education and the level of base
funding required for Australian universities to deliver competitively. Without
limiting the matters considered by the review, it should identify international
benchmarks for course quality and student engagement.
In identifying benchmarks the review should have regard to
the future development of a standards framework by the Tertiary Education
Quality and Standards Agency.
Cost relativities
The review will examine the cost relativities of
undergraduate education for different disciplines and compare this with the
funding relativities of the Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding clusters.
The review will examine the cost of delivery of quality
postgraduate education and whether it is higher than undergraduate education
and, if so, whether this is in general or is a feature of particular disciplines
or teaching methodologies.
Student contribution amounts
The review will consider the relative maximum student
contribution amounts for different disciplines and propose options for setting
maximum student contribution amounts to reflect a fair contribution to the cost
of delivering high quality courses and the level of public and private benefit.
In developing options the review should ensure that they are
consistent with the Government’s equity agenda of increasing access and
participation of disadvantaged groups by providing financial incentive to enrol
low socioeconomic status students. It should be consistent with the Government’s
agenda to ensure that fees should not be a barrier to participation in higher
education.
Access
In considering matters related to undergraduate student
places at public universities, the review should be conducted on the basis of
the Government’s commitment to abolish full fee places for domestic
undergraduate students at public universities.
Options
The review will provide advice and make recommendations to
the Government on:
what is needed to ensure that Australian Government funding for Australian undergraduate and postgraduate coursework education remains internationally competitive and appropriate for the sector
options for achieving a more rational and consistent basis for:
funding across discipline clusters
he student contributions for different disciplines
and for undergraduate and postgraduate coursework study
options to ensure that universities are provided support
on the basis of the cost of delivering courses of high quality while
students make a contribution which bears some relation to the private return
for their education
options for funding models that give all institutions a
strong incentive to focus on investing in and delivering high quality
teaching and maintaining strong academic standards
options to maintain the substantial financial incentive
for institutions to enrol low socioeconomic students as the system grows.
Completion of report
The review will provide a report to the Government in
October 2011.