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Noonan’ s plan for smarter money |
Peter Noonan |
Mitchell Institute analyst’ s report argues the tertiary education sector needs a new funds-management body.
Tertiary education needs a transparent and independent federal financing body to ensure funding is allocated on the basis of solid evidence, a new report from Victoria University’ s Mitchell Institute has argued. A New System for Financing Australian Tertiary Education, by professor Peter Noonan, stated this body would co-ordinate with state and federal governments to manage university and VET teaching funds. This is needed, Noonan said, to help prevent Australian tertiary education funding from descending into“ ad hoc incrementalism”.
“ The prospect is that [ tertiary education funding ] will continue to look more like a junkyard than a new building,” Noonan wrote in the report.
Noonan also said federal data from 2010 to November 2015 showed that the majority of Australia’ s employment growth was in occupations that required
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qualifications from tertiary education. He argued this trend was likely to continue and, therefore, a fix is essential.
Martin Riordan, chief executive of TAFE Directors Australia, supported Noonan’ s findings.
“ The Mitchell study illustrates why an overhaul of federal tertiary funding is urgently required, and how certainty and balance can be restored to help industry and students make informed choice when choosing courses,” Riordan said.
Rod Camm, chief executive of the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, called on the federal government to“ recognise the need for an overhaul of the tertiary education system funding, as highlighted by the Mitchell Institute”.
The different methods for financing tertiary education in Australia, especially in light of the different state and territory arrangements, and the division between university and non-university, or VET, funding has been a constant point of friction over the course of the Abbott and Turnbull Coalition governments. ■
Read the report at: goo. gl / f2Yo74
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