policy & reform
Queensland University of Technology vice chancellor professor Peter Coaldrake and principal policy officer Dr Lawrence Stedman argue that the golden days of universities may be over.
Public funding is not unlimited and the sector cannot be quarantined from tough economic decisions.“ All universities will need to take hard decisions about the range of programs they can sustain in teaching and research. We cannot afford to sustain mediocre programs, but decisions need to be taken in the local and national context about supply and demand, and prospects for the future matter as much as does past performance.
“ Universities can and will continue to make invaluable contributions to the economy even with these cuts. It is not, however, a magic pudding, and the gamble we are referring to in our book title is the idea that we can keep squeezing universities indefinitely while expecting all the benefits,” they said.
The government says public investment in Australian universities has increased substantially in recent years and that universities are not underfunded.
“ Even with the efficiency dividend, universities will receive an additional $ 2.5 billion in revenue between 2011 to 2015 due to improvements in indexation,” Emerson’ s spokesman said.
Coaldrake and Stedman believe public funding has been steadily withdrawn as a share of total university funding over the past few decades.
They said for the most part, the balance has been transferred to students via debt, while government control via audit, regulation, strings attached to its remaining funding, and overall price control, remains as strong as ever.
“ We cannot point to any particular level of funding per student and say‘ below this mark quality will fall’, but we cannot continue indefinitely to operate at the high standards we do at present with ever-declining unit resource.”
National Tertiary Education Union( NTEU) national president Jeannie Rea disputes the government’ s claim that the efficiency dividend is merely a temporary slowdown in the rate of growth of university funding.
She said because indexation of funding from 2016 will be from a lower base than it would have been without the funding cuts, they represent an ongoing and permanent reduction in the level of public investment in universities.
This comes on top of the $ 500 million over four years slashed from the Sustainable Research Excellence scheme as announced in October last year.
Universities will still be deliberating on how to manage the drop in their income. For some leading universities, the contribution to their budget from the commonwealth is relatively
18 | May 2013 low. Other universities will feel the cuts more keenly.
“ Our priority is for budgetary adjustment that doesn’ t impact on staff or the student experience,” Rea said.
“ Universities have previously responded with staff cuts but students want more contact with tutors, not less, and they don’ t want to spend the time queuing for student administration or IT support.”
Rea said a sustainable workforce was vital for universities especially with an ageing academic workforce.
“ There is already a staff crisis across both academic and general staff. We don’ t want to treat the next generation of academics as a casual workforce, and just expect them to hang around between contracts.”
Professor Lynne Bennington, from the Australian Catholic University’ s faculty of Business, said there were management approaches that large organisations could adopt when faced with budgetary problems.
They include revisiting the organisation’ s mission and objectives to identify what activities can no longer be performed.
“ In the business world you could choose what you offer and what you don’ t offer. If it is going to cost more to service some customers then you can turn them away.
“ In universities however, we can’ t just delete programs when there are contractual commitments with our student base. If we have students enrolled and need new facilities, then you can’ t defer capital works.”
She said even the content of teaching programs was often constrained by the accreditation requirements of professional organisations. Universities were also expected to continually do more with less.
“ Academic staff are expected to show up at lectures as well as prepare notes for students who don’ t show up, and audio and video tapes of lectures for online students. Expectations have dramatically increased. Most big businesses aren’ t subject to that same level of control.”
Bennington said the easy savings would come from wish lists where no commitments had yet been made, and that would be different for every university.
“ Businesses typically do what is within their ability and timeframe. Given the lead times, many universities won’ t have the opportunity to look closely at their strategic programs and go through processes such as organisational analysis, quality mapping or blue printing.
“ Theoretically, there are many different ways of becoming more efficient but not much room to move within the context we operate in.”
She said most universities have been looking at boosting their non-government funding for years, so any new income streams would only be at the budget margins.
She added well-established universities may have large reserves to help cope with the funding cuts, but younger universities tended not to have those buffers. n
NTEU national president Jeannie Rea
ACU professor Lynne Bennington
Professor Peter Coaldrake
Dr Lawrence Stedman