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Gillard’ s budget hits hard
The federal government has offered the tertiary sector some small budget painkillers in an attempt to offset the hurt caused by its pre-budget funding cuts.
In his budget speech the treasurer, Wayne Swan, announced that $ 97 million will be put into higher education to increase the number of commonwealthsupported university places and a further $ 186 million for research infrastructure.
There is also new funding of $ 84.6 million over four years for additional postgraduate and diploma places including teaching, nursing and Asian languages. However the budget papers confirm that the government will proceed with planned cuts to the sector, part of which will go towards funding the Gonski school reforms.
Universities Australia( UA) welcomed“ positive new higher education initiatives” in the budget, but said they were insufficient to offset the impact of the cuts to higher education announced over the last six months.
UA chief executive, Belinda Robinson, said the government’ s reaffirmation that it intends to go ahead with the pre-budget cuts to higher education, makes the university sector one of the“ hardest hit” in this budget.“ These reductions will challenge the ability of universities to maintain the quality of education and research. And by compromising the role that universities play in lifting national productivity and securing long-term economic prosperity. They will also make it more difficult to put the nation’ s budget back in black.”
But UA acknowledged the positive initiatives announced in the budget“ including $ 186 million to extend the funding of nationally significant research facilities for a further two years and $ 135 million to extend the future fellowships program for the rising stars of research”.
Robinson said UA is also pleased to see that the government is committed to further consultation with universities before introducing the recently announced $ 2000 cap on tax deductible expenses for self-education.
Universities Australia said the extra $ 346 million for university places reflected the increases in student enrolments.
The Group of Eight too welcomed further funding of these programs, which GO8 director Mike Gallagher said are important for Australia to“ keep pace with world leading research”. But Gallagher added that while these budget measures are welcome, they will not undo the“ harm” of the billion dollars worth of cuts which will be made to the sector.
Innovative Research Universities said the government’ s confirmation on previously announced funding cuts to the sector“ puts at risk the success of its higher education reform through reducing the value of funding for university education …”
The University of Southern Queensland vice-chancellor professor Jan Thomas said it’ s a“ shame” that the budgets focus on giving school students equal opportunity to education hasn’ t translated into the university sector.“ We need to be making it easier for students to access tertiary education – making it more difficult is a step in the wrong direction.”
The budget also announced revenue set-backs to skills funding, with no mention made of the frozen $ 500 million in Education investment Fund Regional Round grants from 2012, affecting 12 TAFE / VET applications.
Martin Riordan, chief executive of TAFE Directors Australia( see article, page 22), said skills policy has ranked far too low in commonwealth priorities, with various projects from last year cut. n
See‘ Federal cuts bite hard’, page 16
www. campusreview. com. au May 2013 | 5