campusreview.com.au
POLICY & REFORM
DAVID LLOYD
VICE-CHANCELLOR
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
‘IT’S A FINE BALANCING ACT’
Deregulation has been put on the back
burner and one vice-chancellor says this is
welcome for the sector.
Professor David Lloyd, from the University
of South Australia, says deregulation polarised the sector and
stalled any other reforms that may have been needed. Stakeholders
struggled to agree on almost anything, Lloyd says, and the debate
highlighted a perception that vice-chancellors were disconnected
from their students and staff.
While deregulation may still happen, Lloyd says the arrival
of Simon Birmingham as federal education minister has
de-polarised debate.
“The new minister, very cleverly, has said that he is going to
take soundings and he’s going to take inputs and then from that
he’s going to draw not only his policy pieces but also how he
implements his policy,” Lloyd explains. “That’s what we didn’t
get in the budget of 2014 and the legacy of that budget was felt
throughout this year. There was no pre-consultation about the fact
that this was even on the agenda before it appeared in that budget
and the reaction to that was what caused all the destabilisation.”
Lloyd says the new focus on innovation is where Australia needs
to be – though some universities are exploiting this to show off.
He cautions against over-funding universities, as graduate outputs
need to be balanced against the number of actual jobs.
“Higher education should be resourced for anybody who’s able
to succeed,” Lloyd says. “On the flipside of that, we need to make
sure we don’t overproduce cohort students in areas where there’s
no employment and no prospects for employment. So it’s a fine
balancing act to be done on a national skilled agenda basis. Yet there
has not been a clear articulation from either side as to what they’re
going to do.”
JEANNIE REA
PRESIDENT
NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION
UNION
‘WE WANT FUNDING THAT’S
SUSTAINABLE’
Jeannie Rea, president of the National
Tertiary Education Union, says the group
proudly takes some of the credit for the delay of the government’s
proposed reforms.
“Students coming into universities next year are not facing a
deregulated market in domestic undergraduate fees,” Rea says. “We
are not facing a 20 per cent cut in funding across the universities
and we are not facing the handover of public monies to private
[providers]. Those are pretty big wins.”
Moving into what will probably be an election year, Rea says she
will continue to campaign to make it clear it would be “really stupid”
for the government to take its reforms into the next election.
She also plans to drive home the importance of funding certainty.
“We want funding that’s sustainable, and that stays there and doesn’t
just get knocked out at the next whim of government,” Rea says.
Rea also points to highlights from the completion of the current
round of enterprise bargaining.
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