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Universities will not be able to continue to support activities that don ’ t pay for themselves .
On the brink
Are Australian universities reaching a tipping point ?
By Richard Middleton
We all know things are tough . Bushfires , floods , pandemic , aged care , wars and military tensions , racism and sexism all clamour for our attention , and 2020 saw plenty of this .
Meanwhile , longer term matters , including how we prepare the next generation of innovative , creative , diverse and free thinking people are actively ignored in favour of ‘ Job Ready Graduates ’. The JRG reforms are substantial cuts per student to government grants to universities , which comes on top of governments denying the tertiary sector any access to JobKeeper or JobSeeker .
There are many sectors clambering for government attention , so what is the picture for tertiary education in Australia and what does the data show ?
FUNDING PER TERTIARY STUDENT IS SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE THAN FUNDING PER SCHOOL STUDENT
My starting point is government grant per student figures , thinking of ‘ public ’ universities and schools . The most recent data immediately available from the government DESE website gives total domestic tertiary numbers in 2018 of 1,084,551 ; and total Australian Government Grant revenue of $ 11,986m which equates to approximately $ 11.1k per domestic tertiary student .
For a public high school , ( again 2018 data from DESE ) commonwealth support is given as $ 2,914 per student , using a figure ( estimated from other data ) of commonwealth support being 19 per cent of total government support . The overall support at public high schools was approximately $ 15k per student .
OK , maybe we should really be including other sources of university income , including the major contributions students make to their education ( various forms of HELP loans , donations etc ) and then compare that with independent schools .
The ACARA report for 2019 data gives independent schools a gross revenue of $ 15,021m with total student numbers of 584,262 , or $ 25.7k per student . 2018 university gross revenue comes in at $ 33,742m and total student numbers ( domestic and international ) of 1,5620,520 or $ 21.6k .
On either count , universities are way behind . And to further aggravate matters , based on 2018 data , expenditure on academic salaries comes in at 28 per cent of revenues from continuing operations , dropping slightly from earlier values .
WE CONTINUE TO RANK VERY LOWLY ON OECD FIGURES
The OECD publishes a range of data , the most recent being 2017 . Some that stand out to me are : government expenditure on tertiary education as 0.7 per cent of GDP ( one of the lowest figures , most are around 1 per cent or higher ). There are also figures on the fraction of tertiary funding that comes from government sources . Again , we are one of the lowest at 36 per cent . These figures are prior to the effects of the JRG .
SO YET FURTHER ROUNDS OF RESTRUCTURES
Having been unable to grow enough student load for success in the past , and particularly for universities with past dependence on international student fees , we are now in the process of trying to cut our way to success . In my own institution , cuts are being demanded without transparency on the assumptions behind financial predictions , and despite a small surplus being reported for the ‘ unprecedented ’ year 2020 . It becomes hard therefore to be clear where necessity and opportunism meet in this .
FUTURE POSSIBILITIES Research , engagement , innovation and free thinking are largely done by academics in their spare time already . Universities will not in general be able to continue to support activities that don ’ t pay for themselves . Many academics won ’ t be able to find time for research , and therefore will not be able to generate the funding needed to give them the time to research .
Teaching will be increasingly casualised . ( Yes , at first , casual or contract staff are let go in a restructure . Then we ’ ll discover that casual teaching is cheaper overall – though quality can be variable .) Courses and programs will be increasingly ‘ job ready ’ focused ( rather than jobs of the future focused ).
I believe there is great value in academics that think deeply , engage locally and globally , and pass on their passion for discovery and analysis to their students . Most in my experience are dedicated , smart hardworking people who want to contribute to society .
The potential value of tertiary education can be achieved in a few ways . There is the obvious call for restoring government funding per student to a level competitive within the OECD . Alternatively , private funding would need to be expanded ( eg expanded HELP , increased student fees ) to recognise that we essentially have a private university system at the moment , though with heavy government regulation .
Any of these options will cost , but can we as a nation really bear the cost of not having a viable tertiary sector ? ■
Richard Middleton is a professor in the school of Electrical Engineering and Computing at The University of Newcastle , Australia .
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