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POLICY & REFORM had led to a tendency to over-generalise and over-simplify the experience, allowing the media to have something that’ s palpable and masked as newsworthy for their audience’ s digestion. There are good arguments supporting reform, but there has been no opportunity to bring all stakeholders along with the process.
A proper sounding of the needs for and repercussions of fee deregulation could well have resulted from looking outside our shores to others who have set the bar and raised the agenda on deregulation. The US and UK have lessons for us in terms of the settings for sector reform. However, the near absence of reasoned and informed debate has not allowed these lessons to be identified and taken on board.
The second issue that has led us to our current situation has been the failure to adopt the Bradley reform package in full since 2009. In particular, the uncapping of undergraduate places without the recommended associated rise in Commonwealth funding, or any form of alternative funding arrangement, put us on a path to a situation that was ultimately unsustainable.
When a series of austerity-driven funding cuts to the sector followed, as instigated by successive governments, the unsustainable nature of our current situation became even more apparent.
Vice-chancellors are continually being asked why they support the deregulation of undergraduate tuition fees. Professor Sandra Harding, chair of Universities Australia, stated the answer clearly soon after the May 2014 budget announcement. Quite simply, in the absence of an appetite by either side of politics to increase public investment in higher education, deregulation is the best option on the table for creating a sustainable high-quality higher education sector.
The declining level of funding per student and cuts to research by the Commonwealth, with threats of a continuation of this trend in a transitional Australian economy, persuaded most vice-chancellors that further deregulation was inevitable. Even so, the Coalition’ s Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill( HERRA), linking deregulation with even further funding cuts – amounting to a 20 per cent efficiency dividend that students are obliged to make up even before deregulation kicks in – represents a major tactical error on the part of government.
Not only has this made the introduction of structural reform so much harder to achieve by further raising cost pressures on students, it has also created an aspect of reform that vice-chancellors have not been prepared to embrace. Universities Australia has consistently stated support for deregulation with amendments to other aspects of the government’ s reform plan. But this is far from unconditional support for the government’ s reform agenda.
The deregulation being proposed has its faults but it is not without its merits. Maintaining the demand-driven system is essential for the sector to grow and even more necessary if we are to extend the opportunity of a university education to those who ordinarily might never have the chance for tertiary study.
Bearing in mind that deregulation does not necessarily mean fee increases as market forces and consumer-led competition establish equilibrium, university leaders have to balance their return on investment against quality, excellence and employer needs.
We are all stakeholders in Australia’ s future and sometimes some pain is necessary if the gain is to be highly educated graduates and research outcomes most nations envy.
The third, and arguably most damning problem with the current reform process, is that it is not occurring within the context of a broader discussion of the kind of higher education system Australia needs in the next 10, 20, 50 or even 100 years.
There has been some discussion of maintaining our competitiveness in global university league tables, but otherwise the reform process has centred mainly on issues relating to costs and funding without a broad vision of the form our sector should take.
In addition to the importance of research and innovation to Australia, major considerations also include the demands and opportunities the Asian century creates, massive and rapid technological change, and changing graduate employment needs created by Australia’ s transitional economy. These considerations demand a strong vision that will inevitably involve a diverse higher education sector. Such a vision is not being articulated in a meaningful way.
If anything, the debate during 2014 has highlighted that the sector has not yet even come to grips with the most basic implications of mass higher education. There remain any number of commentators who appear to yearn for a return to an elite university sector that promotes privilege rather than the mass higher education sector required to fuel the changing Australian economy. There is also continued promotion of a single model for a university, rather than recognition of the importance of genuine diversity.
Unless we take on a vision for the future, the current state will be plagued by commentary, discussion and analysis mired in a morass of perplexity, predicament and political muddle heavily influenced by ideology about the degree to which higher education is seen as a public good versus a private benefit.
Let the market decide; let the career paths of our graduates dictate Australia’ s service to generations to come and let the soothsayers look back at this time as a watershed moment, rather than the speed bump it has become.
Based on the long experience of fee deregulation in the postgraduate sphere, there is every reason to believe that undergraduate fee deregulation can work. However, the complexity of the HERRA bill and the multiple deals being struck means that there is now every risk of a compromise patchwork reform that is a multifaceted administrative nightmare whose costs outweigh the very benefits it hopes to deliver.
We are also yet to count the reputational cost to the sector. Despite the optimistic feeling the government may have that it is just two Senate votes away from victory, a real chasm has been created. There is the general public’ s loss of confidence in university management, a perceived schism with staff and students, and a sector severely divided. And we are yet to see the worst-case scenario of what could occur if deregulation – or an alternative strategy for ensuring a sustainable higher education sector – is not achieved.
Deregulation, despite all its critics, remains the best hope for securing a sustainable higher education sector. The post-war era of the Menzies government, which brought the expansion of tertiary education away from the cities and into the regions, set the path for deregulation.
The next few months represent a critical time for higher education in Australia. The impact of whatever outcome transpires will be felt for many years to come. ■
Professor Jan Thomas is vice-chancellor of the University of Southern Queensland.
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