campusreview. com. au
POLICY & REFORM
it’ s a population of about 300,000 people. If you go to smaller communities, you’ re not going to have a university campus unless there are online providers like Central Queensland or Southern Queensland or UNE or Southern Cross. [ People there ] wouldn’ t be able to study at degree level at all because there’ s no local university and they certainly can’ t afford to go to a capital city. Those universities making that provision available, making sure it’ s of high quality, making sure their students are supported so they can afford to complete tertiary education is a vital thing for the future of Australia.
Do you think the diversity among regional universities and the contributions they make to the local communities in Australia as a whole are overlooked or are they sufficiently acknowledged? It varies. At a political level, for better or worse, governments have tended to have a bit of a flat-earth policy, [ acting as if ] universities are universities. One of the things RUN has been able to do is emphasise that there are differences between the challenges universities in regional locations and capital cities face. Within the regions themselves, there’ s a high appreciation and understanding of what regional universities do. Invariably, we’ re loved and wanted and cherished by our communities and that’ s a good thing. In terms of the sector as a whole, we need to keep emphasising that things aren’ t the same in the regions – or in outer metropolitan Australia for that matter – as they are in the capital cities.
Do you believe, then, that there’ s a need to push for greater awareness in big cities of what regional universities do? There probably is. The university industry is a highly competitive one. Certainly, if you look at my part of the world in southeast Queensland, the Sunshine Coast is an important source of students in the big metropolitan universities and we accept that’ s just the way it is. We’ d like to think we offer an equal if not better service to students who come to us. It’ s quite different. One of the key things going on here is that most politicians have this idea that there’ s got to be greater diversity in the university sector and everyone shouldn’ t be offering business degrees.
I can remember [ when ] a former education minister tried that line on me. [ I told him ] that most students in my region can’ t afford to go to Brisbane to go to university. They just cannot afford the extra 20 grand a year to go there and live. If they can’ t do it at home, they’ re not going to do it at all. If you go to the Sunshine Coast,
You say you want to maintain RUN’ s current direction. In that light, how would you rate the performance of your predecessor, Jan Thomas? Jan’ s done a great job and all of the VCs who’ ve served a term have done that; David Battersby started it off, Peter Lee, then Jan. We’ ve been out there backing her. It’ s not just the Regional Universities Network, it’ s regional education in general. There are other regional universities that aren’ t part of this network. Some of them are totally independent. Some of them belong to other university networks, but we’ ve got a common cause in promoting what regional institutions do. There generally isn’ t an appreciation of just how diverse Australia’ s regional universities are.
Another big challenge for us, something else I did want to mention, is the issue of sub-degree loans. Most of the bridging programs that lead to degree-level study are done by regional universities; having bridging programs is an important component of what we do. It’ s also a major component of what many other regional universities do, for example the University of Newcastle. As you’ d appreciate, the number of funded places in sub-degree load has been frozen for years. Most of us are providing bridging programs to students with no income at all. We do that for two reasons. First, students do bridging programs so they can go on and study degree-level education, but it’ s also a recognition of the realities of living in a regional community, where fewer kids finish high school. You’ ve got a much higher proportion of mature-aged students going to uni. If they’ re going to get there, they can’ t go by the traditional pathway of simply going from Year 12 straight to university. That doesn’ t happen in the regions. For us, gaining greater recognition of being able to provide sub-degree places is an important challenge. It’ s one I think education minister Simon Birmingham is sympathetic to but the government needs to sort out how to fund it. I’ ve heard some interesting arguments of late about how providing more places at the sub-degree level would lead to budget savings down the track. That’ s one to be explored.
With a funding impasse, if government doesn’ t do anything, what could a possible solution be? Individual universities need to find their own way through that. We do what we can do within our budget envelope and that balances our commitment to our local communities with the financial wellbeing of the university. Once again, if you look at universities in regional locations, they’ ve got a much closer tie to their local community than the big end of town. [ Those metro-based universities ] don’ t have that same local connectivity. So there’ s an expectation in our communities that we’ ll provide the sorts of things the community needs and wants, and to a large extent we do that. ■
13