Jan Hext was Professor of Computing at Macquarie University for 17 years, retiring in 1999.

 The recent federal budget puts on a great display about increased funding for the universities. Leaving aside that the devil is in the detail, it is worth pointing out that the same budget has given a much larger increase to the private schools. In fact, for the first time the federal budget is allocating more funds to private schools than to public universities.

According to the report by Linda Doherty in the Sydney Morning Herald Budget Supplement (15 May, p2), the non-government schools will get federal grants of $4.37 billion in 2003-04 compared with $4.31 billion for the 38 public universities. The figure for the private schools is up by one-billion dollars from three years ago and is estimated to go up by another one-billion within the next three years.

The government keeps very quiet about these figures. For example, when Dr Brendan Nelson was interviewed by Fran Kelly on the ABC’s 7:30 report last year, he argued that more funds for universities would mean less for hospitals and social services. And yet it seems he has no trouble finding huge increases for private schools. In terms of overall policy, perhaps we should not be too surprised After all, the government has been pursuing a similar strategy in the area of health. It has spent billions to prop up the private system while systematically squeezing the public system. In particular, by allowing the Medicare rebates to fall in value, it forced doctors to find further sources of income. Then, when protests became loud enough, it announced a series of “reforms” to address the problem. This was its technique for implementing the philosophy that it had held all along.

It has used the same strategy with the universities. Unfortunately, academics have less political clout than doctors and so the noose around the universities has been tightening for much longer. If the same decline in funding per student were to occur in the schools, there would be a major public outcry.

We need to appreciate that the federal government is squeezing the universities, not for lack of funds, but because of its underlying philosophy. When it gives more to private schools than to public universities, our society is surely in trouble.