policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
Education Minister Dan Tehan. Photo: The Australian
‘Perverse’ consequences
Mixed response to minister’s
performance-based university
funding plan.
By Wade Zaglas
F
ederal Education Minister Dan
Tehan’s $80 million pledge for
“performance-based” university
funding will have many “unforeseeable”,
“perverse” and “unintended” consequences
for Australia’s higher education sector,
the National Tertiary Education Union
(NTEU) has warned.
The union’s president, Alison Barnes, said:
“The creation of jobs is beyond the control
of universities and is a function of business
and government.”
Another proposal linked to the
“performance-funding” model includes
diligently tracking first-year dropout rates
and student satisfaction scores. Barnes
argues that such measures “will see
university staff under greater pressure
to improve pass rates and consequently
reduce quality and threaten the reputation
of the Australian education sector”.
She’s also wary of student satisfaction
surveys, believing they tend to not reflect
the teaching practice and are inherently
biased. Barnes’ fear is that the linking of these
discredited surveys to funding will increase
pressure on academics to lower the pass rate
and include “fashionable”, “popular content”
regardless of its academic rigour and merit.
Finally, although passionate about closing
the gap around Aboriginal disadvantage
in education, Barnes argued Indigenous
students’ historically high dropout rates
mean they must be excluded from any
“dropout rate performance measure”.
In a scathing comment about the
proposed performance-driven measures,
Barnes said:
“NTEU believes that performance-based
funding should be tied to real measures of
input and output within the control of the
university that genuinely reflect the quality
of the performance.
“Such measures might include the
level of insecure employment among the
academics who teach students, the depth
and range of student academic and welfare
support services provided, and student
progression rates.”
Meanwhile, the Council of Australian
Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) cautions
that the new performance-based funding
model does not address the funding issues
plaguing universities and, in effect, “tinkers”
around a failing system.
The council also says the $80 million
pledged “is a pittance compared to
the billions of dollars ripped from
undergraduate education, student loans
and research funding in the last two
years”. CAPA also fears that “unethical”
international student tuition fees “cover up”
real government cuts to the sector.
Other questionable, perhaps
unethical behaviour outlined by CAPA
includes: charging extortionate fees to
international and domestic postgraduate
students, collaborations with weapons
manufacturers, and accepting funds
from controversial groups such as the
Ramsay Centre.
“Moreover, not all metrics used in the
performance-based funding model are
well thought out,” CAPA said. “We are
concerned about the ‘student experience’
metric, which is not comparable
across universities. As we argued in our
submission, quoted by the performance-
based funding panel’s report, most
undergraduate students lack a point of
comparison, as they have only attended
one university. Student perceptions of
university are more reflective of their
expectations rather than of the quality of
education provided,” CAPA said.
“We furthermore warn that student
satisfaction with teaching will create
more demands for unpaid labour from
the insecurely employed academic
staff, many of whom are research
students, who undertake the bulk of
teaching work.”
In stark contrast, Charles Sturt University
has greeted the proposal of a performance-
based funding model with enthusiasm.
“Charles Sturt welcomes the federal
government’s announcement, [as] it
will lift a two-year freeze on support for
undergraduate places based on university
performance,” vice-chancellor Professor
Andrew Vann said.
“It is encouraging that universities will
be measured for how well they perform
in graduate employment outcomes,
student success, student experience, and
enrolment of Indigenous, disadvantaged
and rural students.” ■
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