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Sloan added that the average vice-
chancellor now earns close to $1 million
a year, and their contemporaries don’t
earn much less.
“I look at those titles [like pro and deputy
vice-chancellor] and I wonder what they do.”
Referring to attrition as “playing around”,
she said she wouldn’t mind this so much if
students were doing it more on their own
coin. “The estimates on unpaid debt … are
really scary. We’re talking billions of dollars.”
Emerson acknowledged that government
funding has expanded exponentially with
the introduction of the demand-driven
system: from $4 billion to $7 billion. While
dodging Sloan’s managerial wastage claims,
he took issue with the assertion that money
spent on attrition is money squandered.
“Is it a disaster if someone goes to uni
and doesn’t complete a degree?” he asked
rhetorically. He thinks not. He suggested
that university is a “civilising experience” that
inculcates life skills and benefits in students
– whether they attend for one or three
years. For example, domestic violence rates
are lower in more educated families. For
him, spending for these sorts of outcomes
is a high priority.
REMOTE POSSIBILITIES
Sloan would like no mercy shown to
universities in regional areas, which some
say particularly benefit from the demand-
driven system. To support her stance, she
observed that most of the universities that
have seen the largest student population
increases, like Melbourne’s Swinburne
University – aren’t in regional areas.
Grattan’s Norton addressed each of her
points in turn. First, he drew the distinction
between regional students and regional
universities. Many regional students
in fact choose to attend metropolitan
campuses, and if the demand-driven
system is about meeting students’ interests,
then in this sense, it’s working. Second,
he highlighted the difficulty of restricting
demand-driven funding to a certain class
of attrition-resistant university: there’s
uncertainty about who to enrol.
“The only low risk students are young
men with high ATARs enrolling in
professional degrees,” he declared.
“If we adopted this metric, it would take
us back many decades.”
For now, government policy accords
with Sloan’s views. If there’s a change
in leadership, however, Emerson will be
triumphant. At the Universities Australia
conference earlier this month, Tanya
Plibersek, deputy Labor leader and
shadow education spokeswoman, told the
audience that Labor, if elected, will
defrost the government’s demand-driven
funding freeze.
“Under Labor, we were proud that we
oversaw an increase of 190,000 students,
many of whom were the first in their family
to go to university,” she said.
“That’s why Labor is absolutely
committed to the demand-driven system.
And we won’t walk away from it.” ■
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