Submission to
the Review of
Higher Education Financing and
Policy
Prepared by
Mark Frankland
Executive and Research Officer in consultation with the CAPA
executive.
Preamble
CAPA is primarily concerned with postgraduate eduction from the students’ perspective. Accordingly the responses to general questions in this submission are skewed to the postgraduate perspective even where this is not explicitly stated. As a result the submission is silent on a number of important issues which mainly affect undergraduates and staff. However, we feel confident that these areas will be well covered in other submissions. Attention is also drawn to the submission of the CAPA Women’s Committee.
Theme one: the role of higher eduction in Australia’s society and economy
What social, cultural, economic and community functions does the Australian higher education sector perform, and how might this mix change over the next 20 years?
Postgraduate education in particular fulfils the function of keeping the national knowledge base current and relevant. Currently this occurs across social, cultural, economic and community functions. However if the trends of the past 10 years or so are extrapolated into the foreseeable future, it is certain that the economic function will become the single dominant in the higher education system. This is not a situation which CAPA applauds.
CAPA’s experience in the market for postgraduate coursework places, which is now largely deregulated, has demonstrated that both equity in access to higher education and the diversity of academic pursuits can not be underwritten by the market alone. Furthermore, Australia’s success in the field of basic research and research training has demonstrated the importance of a stable environment for research provided by the consistent investment of public funding.
Accordingly the Commonwealth Government has a crucial role in ensuring an adequate base level of funding to guarantee access to all qualified students and to maintain current or enhanced levels of basic research. Furthermore, it must also ensure that a balance of course offerings and a diversity of intellectual approaches are maintained.
What are the key social, economic and technological developments shaping the environment in which higher education institutions operate, and affecting the composition of the sector in areas such as private and public provision, globalisation and complementarities with the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector?
The principle external factors framing the future of postgraduate education are:
This means that maintaining the intellectual stock of the nation must become a paramount national priority. As a result both the higher education and the VET sectors will need to concentrate on the skills which underwrite communication and life-long learning.
In such an environment the current trend for graduates to return to higher education after some experience in the workforce for upgrading or retraining, as is evident from the expansion of part-time postgraduate coursework education, is likely to continue at an increased rate. It is also likely that an increased number of VET educated people with substantial work experience and in-service training will be seeking direct entry to postgraduate level courses including, in some instances, research training.
The inverse of this is that full time tertiary students will need access to state of the art equipment and “in-service” skills training in the areas of information and communications technologies and applications, as these will go out of date during the life of a course if taught at the beginning and not updated. This is particularly pressing for those students continuing into research training.
Australia can not rely on the contributions of private individuals, multi-national corporations or new technologies to solve the resource implications of the intensification of the redundancy of knowledge. To remain an attractive site for investment Australia must itself maintain a substantial public investment in higher education. Furthermore, this investment is also required if Australia is to maintain the broad stock of skills and knowledge which will enable it to deal with the benefits and problems of being a part of a global knowledge based economy.
What attributes will higher education graduates need to operate effectively in their personal and professional lives in this emerging environment?
A very sound stock of basic competencies plus higher order skills in self learning and communication will be required. This said, the speed of change is such that graduates can expect to re-graduate several times from high level postgraduate courses after gaining initial vocational qualifications. The recent expansion of postgraduate coursework is evidence of this trend. However, it can be expected to intensify such that research workers and workers with significant research components in their work can expect to undertake the equivalent of second PhDs.
This sort of ongoing learning will require contributions from government, employers, and individuals as it simply will not be able to be accomplished in the individual’s spare time and will be beyond the financial means of small and medium sized enterprises and most employees to support.
What role should government play in ensuring the higher education sector makes the best contribution to Australia’s society, culture and economy?
Despite its faults, the current higher educations system is recognised internationally as highly successful. It is the envy of many of Australia’s competitor countries and trading partners and the source of a billion dollars plus in export revenue. Given this, CAPA can see no need for radical change of the role of government in higher education. Initiatives to further streamline the administration of higher education have already been set in place and universities have been given substantial means with which to raise non-government sources of revenue. Initiatives to enhance greater cooperation between industry and universities and universities and the VET sector should be further expanded.
The universities’ monopoly on the right to grant degrees has been an important safe guard on quality and should continue into the future. However, increased competition between universities, the introduction of overseas competitors into the domestic higher education market and competition between universities and the VET sector is likely to require an increased quality monitoring role for government. National guidelines and supervision of Australian universities and overseas competitors seeking to operate in the Australian market will need to be improved to ensure that the public interest is maintained where public funds and resources are involved, to protect Australian citizens from exploitation from unethical overseas providers and to ensure smooth articulation between the VET and university sectors.
The role of organisations like CAPA is also crucial to quality monitoring. CAPA and its affiliates are the only organisations which consistently monitor and articulate the students’ perspective on postgraduate education issues. The tendency for government and university management to too easily overlook the students’ perspective in managing higher education is evidenced by the composition of the team for this review. Conversely, where students and student organisations have been directly involved in decision making processes and have indeed been assisted by universities and government in participating in decision making processes they have produced invaluable contributions to improving the quality of services provided to students by universities. To this end the funding of student bodies should be guaranteed by the Commonwealth.
Trends to part-time study and older students
The figures regarding students, 41% over 25, 13.4% external and 27.9% part-time, back up what has been argued in the preceding points about the need for ongoing education. Much of the growth in the age profile and in the cohort of external and part-time students has occurred at the post-graduate coursework level and much of this in the area of up-front fee paying courses. Unfortunately the government’s targets of cutting government/HECS funded places to 50% of the total in this area and the decision by a significant number of universities to go below this target means that extreme problems of access and course availability can be expected. This in turn is likely to reverse the growth in the above figures and as a consequence severely damage the skills base of vital but low paid professions like teaching.
Impact of information and communications technology
Universities have been leaders in the field of applying this type of technology. A very flexible range of options already exists for most students and more are evolving as universities and individual staff and students apply information and communications technology (ICT) to their particular circumstances. This may mean that the distinctions between part-time, full-time and external are now more blurred (it is doubtful that they were ever clear) and university rules and data collection should be updated accordingly.
Ideally information technology could be used to reduce staff time spent on repetitive activities and increase face to face contact between students and staff, an element of university education which has declined dramatically over the past ten years. This reduction in teaching time per student is in CAPA’s view having a significant and deleterious affect on postgraduate coursework and research training. Where students are not regularly on campus during normal business hours the university needs to ensure access to facilities and resources, for example by longer opening hours for libraries and support services and flexible scheduling of classes. Further, very careful attention needs to be given to off-campus students; this should include a residential component for all courses and arrangements for regular face to face contact between students and students, and students and staff even where this occurs at a university which is not providing the course. Flexible study arrangements, if done properly, are not cheap delivery modes as some might wish to believe.
Industry relevant curricula
While some employers value the skills developed in a well rounded university education others have no idea what skills, aptitudes and knowledge are produced in this process. At the same time, unless university educators understand what is happening in industry they run the risk of arbitrarily creating a divide between industry and academic knowledge. In many instances students are more keenly focussed on the demands of potential employers than academics. What is required is an informed dialogue between industry, students and universities to get the balance right.
However, our comments on the need for skills which will equip the student for life-long learning need to be reiterated here. While it is hard for young people to get into the work force they can also expect to undergo several major career changes during their working life. Universities need to be mindful of this and to resist the overtures of employers who are in effect demanding that universities undertake company specific training on their behalf.
Theme two: factors affecting the demand for and provision of higher education over the next ten to twenty years
What factors are likely to influence the demand for and provision of higher education over this period?
For example:
Perhaps the key factor which will affect demand for higher education is how affordable it is and the levels of income support available to students. Given the likely acceleration of the current trend to shrink the (relative and absolute) size of the publicly supported higher education system it is inevitable that significant proportions of qualified students will not be able to enter or continue higher education at the postgraduate level due to financial constraints. This effect has been demonstrated in the still yet to be published report of the Higher Education Council The effects of the introduction of fee-paying postgraduate courses on access for designated groups. It is also likely that regional and remote universities will be unable to afford to offer a full variety of courses. This will create additional access and equity problems outside the metropolitan area.
The likely impact of demographic and labour market trends are unclear when considered across regions. Capital is likely to be increasingly mobile making the location of employment centres less predictable. Three factors which can attract and help to maintain employment in a region are access to the research and development facilities and experienced researchers available at universities, and the availability of graduates.
The so called globalisation of higher education should be considered in a balanced way. Australia benefits from globalisation through exporting more than its share of higher education services, exchange programs with other overseas universities as a means of broadening the experience of students, and international research collaboration. On the other hand, in the near future further internationalisation of the domestic higher education “market” is likely to increase the gap between the top and the bottom end of the market.
Elite institutions and elite courses within institutions will offer an international curricula drawing together “star” staff and elements of courses from around the world. These courses will be delivered to those who can afford to pay, usually key employees of large companies. Evidence of this already exists in the MBA type course complied for ICI in Europe and in the provision of research training to some highly valued employees. At the cheap (and nasty) end of the market, multinational communications corporations in conjunction with other providers will offer distance degrees with no unmediated contact and little or no personalised tuition at bargain basement prices. Overseas providers of this type of product (likely to be based in the United States and the UK) will be able to “dump” it on the Australian market for less than its cost of production once it has recouped its initial costs in the much larger overseas market. A precedent already exists for this in the general market for audiovisual products in Australia.
While the age of mass higher education may be truly upon us with access to cheap cable channel university education, elite institutions will be selling the access their students gain to a network of well positioned peers and collaborators by attending their institution. This scenario raises all sorts of questions of access, equity and quality for Australian students. The question to be asked about university education in the future is access by whom to what.
There is also an important qualitative aspect here about the content of what is taught and what is researched and its relevance to students and the communities they live in. For example, while on the one hand postgraduates may benefit from an internationalised curricula, on the other the internationalisation of curricula including the topics for research degrees may prevent the same student from being able to research and study locally specific and relevant phenomena and areas of knowledge. We may then well ask, what relationship should the university have with the local community it is situated in? Clearly local, national and global priorities need to be addressed in a balanced way.
What scope is there to improve the flexibility and responsiveness of higher education providers through systematic, organisational and technological changes?
Despite a number of problem areas Australian universities have shown themselves to be internationally competitive which means they are undergoing systematic and ongoing change and are utilising new technologies. What is now urgently required is a period of consolidation for universities as they move to cement their position in an increasingly competitive field.
Perhaps a more appropriate question to ask is what outputs does the Government wish to see from higher education in the form of an ethical society, a well educated workforce and national basic research capacity. If the answer is that Australia wants a high standard of living for all its citizens and that it wants an open society free of coercion then it is likely to be seeking an increased public investment in higher (all) education as a national priority. Further, given that universities will continue to be substantially government funded into the future, the government should demand greater cooperation between universities rather than increased competition.
Much collaboration does now occur but more on an informal basis and often contrary to the trend of government policy. Best practices in teaching, research and management should be shared across universities. Furthermore, cooperation rather than competition is the logical path to reduced duplication between institutions. Universities should be able to borrow from each other. Students should be able to access courses and research training at universities other than the one they are enrolled in.
What is required to ensure that Australia’s institutions are well placed to compete with their international counterparts on the basis of cost, quality and contribution to community goals?
Australia’s universities are already well placed in this regard. In a period of more intense international competition the monitoring and certification of quality will be crucial as will the requirement for “local content” in higher education. Curricula and research will need to be nationally and locally specific as well as focused on an international agenda. This is vital in translating knowledge to local conditions, in maintaining an autonomous local teaching and research capacity and in ensuring eduction and industry can serve the needs of the Australian population as well as the inverse where Australians modify their own needs and cultural specificity to fit in with global trends.
It should also be remembered that the unique nature of national and local cultures and knowledge is itself an internationally valued commodity.
Theme Three: regulatory and administrative framework for higher education
How effective are the existing accountability and reporting requirements in ensuring that higher education institutions effectively respond to the policy goals underlaying public investment in them? What alternatives are there?
While the overall quality of postgraduate education is not in question CAPA believes that the quality of research training and of up-front fee paying coursework degrees could be improved through better monitoring practices.
While the Quality Committee process attracted some criticism it did force universities to provide attention to the resources provided to research students and to the structure of research training. Universities are funded for providing research training, however the full benefits of this funding do not seem to be flowing through to research students in the form of staff time and resources. This problem is wide spread affecting all types of universities and some areas of all universities. It may well be that universities are cross subsidising undergraduate teaching with funds intended for research training.
CAPA believes that these inputs to research training should be spot audited by the ARC in consultation with postgraduate associations and research students (not hand picked by university management) and institutions should be penalised for non compliance with basic standards.
In the area of postgraduate coursework, students should be assisted in making a choice between courses by a standardisation of course length and nomenclature. Furthermore, the quality of courses needs to be verified perhaps though an external auditing body. This should apply to all courses available in the Australian market not just those provided by Australian universities. The equity impacts of fee-paying should also be monitored on a university and a national basis.
How should considerations concerning institutional autonomy and flexibility in adapting to change be balanced with monitoring performance in relation to the broad goals of government?
CAPA believes in an open form of accountability which allows for input from students both in terms of university governance and in the management of the higher education system. Institutions already have significant autonomy and flexibility and they also provide significant amounts of data to Government. Universities negotiate an overall position with government in the universities profiles process. Institutions already have significant autonomy and flexibility and they also provide significant amounts of data to Government. Universities negotiate an overall position with government in the universities profiles process. The profiles process and the DEETYA data collection should then be made fully public.
In respect of postgraduate education CAPA believes that it should be directly represented on the Commonwealth’s main advisory bodies, the ARC and the HEC. More broadly quantitative measures of university performance need to be balanced with qualitative measures. The correct mix of monitoring should be achieved after consultation with all parties in the sector and other relevant bodies such as those representing industry, the community sector and the other parts of the education system.
How should the quality of higher education courses and teaching be assured, having regard to:
As already indicated, ensuring the quality of Australian higher education is essential if it is to retain its current strong position in the global higher education market. CAPA’s experience of the market for postgraduate coursework degrees indicates very clearly that students have great difficulty in assessing the quality of the course they intend to study because the variety of offerings for apparently similar courses and the variety of fees for these courses mean that the student cannot compare apples with apples.
Is the student paying for snob value, is a course from one institution better regarded by employers than another, is the content of the course all that it is cracked up to be in the glossy promotional material? What level of teaching and facilities will the university actually be providing? Does the university alter its standards for different categories of students? If I pay more will I be more likely to pass? Will I be taught by properly qualified staff? Is the course material and the knowledge base of the staff up to date? Will adequate resources be provided? Will I have to pay extra to access them? Are the teaching methods used first rate? Will the course allow me admission to professional practice? Will it allow me to practice at a standard of competence which will prevent me from being sued for negligence? These are just some of the questions that students struggle to answer when choosing an institution. Not withstanding this, students are still more likely to enrol where it is most convenient for them to do so.
So far, but with unfortunate exceptions in some areas, universities have by and large acted responsibly in using their right to grant degrees. The need to preserve the reputation of the university, the professional competence and integrity of university staff, and the vigilance of student associations have helped keep a check on overall quality of university teaching. However, increasing pressure on universities to be more productive has led, in CAPA’s experience, to a very large decline in the resources available per student. This indicates that the Commonwealth should monitor the level of university inputs made available to students as well as the outcomes of the teaching and research training process. Furthermore the quality of education imports should be certified by an Australian authority or at least an international quality control body to which Australia is a party.
What processes and mechanisms should be in place to ensure that there are effective interfaces between higher education, vocational education and training, and the secondary school sectors?
Greater consideration should be given to the role that higher education plays in secondary education. The training of teachers and educational research occurs in the main in universities and this is one area where the two sectors need to be very closely coordinated. For example, it is likely that a decline in HECS funded coursework masters places will increase the in-service training costs of secondary teachers. Cuts to university budgets are also affecting educational research. CAPA has recently been informed of a large Education faculty who, through downsizing as a result of budget cuts can no longer provide supervisors for two hundred theses.
In so far as the VET sector is concerned a national credit transfer and recognition of prior learning body should be a major priority. The failure of the previous government’s efforts in this area is to be lamented. A new body should have a much greater input from the VET sector and CAPA and should provide both recognition of prior learning and access to advanced standing in courses on a free or very low cost basis. This initiative will reduce the cost of providing education for both the states and the commonwealth as students will be relieved from the burden of learning what they already know and the availability of places in places in universities and TAFEs will be increased. It will also encourage greater cooperation between the university and the VET sector.
In the area of fee-paying postgraduate courses it is CAPA’s experience that universities are keen to recognise prior learning to accredit entry to such courses but are reticent to grant advanced standing in them. This situation could also be addressed by a credible credit transfer agency.
What implications should the national competition policy have for the higher eduction sector, in areas such as:
As already discussed in relation to the preceding themes CAPA believes that public funding is necessary to underwrite the sort of university system that Australia needs. Furthermore, cooperation within and between universities is essential to maximise the value of the public contribution to university education. However, funding the level of activity required in universities fully from the public purse is an ongoing problem. For this reasons the government has sought additional contributions from students, in the form of HECS and up-front fee-paying and has encouraged universities to generate income from other sources. These other sources include:
The key aspect here is not how universities raise these funds but how they are used. The net effect is to increase the amount of teaching and researching universities can do without increasing the call on the public purse. For these reasons CAPA can see no reason to include universities within the net of competition policy. However, some monitoring of universities should be maintained to ensure that all funds generated by universities or by the use of university resources are returned to the universities’ core activity of providing, on a public service basis, teaching and research.
Theme four: financing higher education teaching and research training
Recognising that higher education provides a mix of private and public benefits, what should be the balance between the private and public contributions? To what extent should the public contribution vary in terms of the financing of different levels of award and types of courses?
CAPA believes that postgraduate student contributions to the funding of higher education is now too high for students paying fees or accruing HECS and is likely to become too high for HECS exempt research students.
The HECS system was initially a relatively just method of increasing funding for higher education that has been distorted into a cash cow for successive governments. Further, HECS funding flows into general revenue and is accordingly deficient as a policy tool for the management of higher education.
Full-fee paying at the postgraduate coursework level when it existed at a relatively low percentage of places still had a significant impact on the equity of entry to these courses. These effects have been well monitored by CAPA in the area of postgraduate coursework and have been proved beyond doubt by recent research conducted for the Higher Education Council. Unfortunately the introduction of fees shows how the policy logic of the public provision of university education has been undermined by economic expediency. The ability to charge fees has now been used as an excuse to withdraw up to 50% of the public funding for postgraduate coursework. Yet , these courses are essential to allow some students to either qualify in professional areas, to upgrade skills and to move into research training. Furthermore, a market does not necessarily exist for these courses, despite their importance. In the absence of government funding some of these courses will fold. It should also be remembered that except for a few nursing and education places postgraduate coureswork students are excluded from income support either in the form of AUSTUDY or scholarships. (See Appendix A for further comments on the blockages to career paths being created by full-fee paying for postgraduate coursework.)
While Australian research students are in the majority of cases not charged HECS or fees CAPA maintains that the public contribution they make in terms of the research they produce means they are already contributing more than their fair share. Indeed the benefit that accrues to individual research students for the time and work committed to research training is so marginal that CAPA believes that any attack on the funds provided to research students will have a significant disincentive effect. The loser here will not be the students who can opt for better remunerated careers elsewhere but the nation. This situation is well illustrated by the recent debate over the taxation of postgraduate scholarships. Accordingly CAPA’s submission to Government on this matter is reproduced below to illustrate the more general point.
Australia’s efforts in research training ensures that it continues to maintain a position at the leading edge of global intellectual production. As part of a knowledge based global economy Australia must extend its efforts in research training if it is to keep pace with the rest of the world.
In recent years the number of research students has increased leading to greater demand for scholarship funds. This demand can not be fully met through public sources and has been supplemented by contributions from industry. Currently all scholarships are treated as tax exempt, which maximises the funds available for scholarships.
This situation has proved to be a very efficient and effective way of increasing: the quantity, quality and relevance of the basic research produced in universities; and the number of research trained graduates available for employment in universities and in industry.
In its commissioned report for the British Treasury on The relationship between publicly funded basic research and economic performance the Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex made the following key findings in relation to government funding of basic research. The Unit found that research trainees are the vital link between university research and industrial development. Their report states that,
“the skills developed by those involved in carrying out basic research, especially graduate students, ... lead to substantial [national] economic benefits as individuals move on from basic research, carrying with them both codified and tacit knowledge” (p. 51)
Recent Australian government policy recognises these benefits and has sought to promote them. In particular the Government’s 1996 budget statement increased funding for university research infrastructure, a development which was long overdue, and increased scholarship funding for postgraduate research students. Furthermore, the Coalition in its Higher Education Policy Statement Quality, diversity and choice called for increased research collaboration between industry and universities. This however can not happen without the involvement of research students and research trained graduates.
Completing a research PhD or Masters Degree requires an enormous time commitment. Completion times average a little over four years despite the fact that scholarships normally go for only three and a half years. The research process is continuous and does not start and stop with university terms. Students are also expected to publish papers, attend conferences and be active in activities within their departments. To gain a scholarship a student will almost certainly have first class honours or its equivalent and will have completed at least four years of university study. Undertaking a research degree is a very full-time commitment which simply can not be properly conducted without a guaranteed basic level of income. Furthermore, undertaking postgraduate research training is only one of a number of options for such high quality candidates.
These factors are already acknowledged in the current structure of scholarship rates. It is likely that universities seeking to attract the best students into research careers will increase scholarships to compensate for any reduction in take home income resulting from taxation. This will have the effect of reducing the amount of research conducted by universities and the number of research trained graduates.
Alternatively students will either have to spend more time working and less time researching, thus lengthening the term of their candidature, or drop out of their courses to seek full time employment. The cost of a failed or extended postgraduate research project to the public is considerable.
Postgraduate research is however essential if the quality of the higher education system is to be maintained. University courses will rapidly go out of date if universities fail to maintain their current levels of basic research. The quality of Australian universities is crucial in attracting overseas students. Australia’s income from overseas students was about 1.8 billion dollars in 1996.
In summary the effects on students of taxing postgraduate scholarships will be: increased attrition rates for current research students, less students undertaking research training and less highly qualified students undertaking researching training. This in turn will lead to a drop in the amount of basic research done in Australia, a weakening of university/industry links, a weakening of the science and technology base, a decline in the quality of Australian universities and shortages of research trained graduates in some industries.
The two main categories of scholarships, Australian Postgraduate Awards (with stipend) and university scholarships are substantially funded by the Commonwealth. The annual amount paid to students is predicated on the understanding that they will be tax exempt. Given that it is unlikely that a reduction in scholarship payments is viable, if scholarships become taxable the Commonwealth would have to either increase the budget allocation for scholarships or reduce the number of scholarships.
In the first instance this would simply add extra administration costs as money would be handed out only to be taxed and handed back again. In the second the Government would be arbitrarily undermining its own higher education and science policy.
In the case of industry funding of scholarships it needs to be borne in mind that university research is in the main basic research. Basic research is, in all countries with an adequate research infrastructure, substantially funded by the state. Where industry can be persuaded to contribute to funding basic research, in this case through a simple and transparent system with virtually no additional administration cost, (as industry scholarships are administered by existing university scholarship offices) this is a benefit to the Commonwealth and to the nation as it adds to the national basic research effort at little or no additional cost to the Commonwealth. Taxing these scholarships would reduce and probably endanger this source of additional funds. It is also worth noting, that few if any cases of tax avoidance through misuse of scholarships have been identified.
Relative to the existing higher education financing framework, what are the costs and benefits of different approaches to the financing of higher education, including:
The current system already includes aspects of all of the above except for a voucher system. Given the mix of funding options and the high level of performance of the current system the need for further funding options must be seriously questioned. In particular CAPA is opposed to introduction of a voucher system as it will undermine the stability and quality of universities. Universities are complex institutions engaged in long term projects. They need stable core funding to carry these out efficiently and effectively.
A voucher system will not deliver this stability. In the area of university research and research training a voucher system will make it impossible to plan even relatively short term research projects. The difficulty of predicting student numbers will mean that staff will almost all have to be on short term contracts and that retaining key supervisors and researchers in a particular area for the length of a PhD will become increasingly problematic.
In the area of coureswork CAPA’s experience with the deregulation of postgraduate coursework does not bode well. Course offerings have been structured increasingly according to effective market demand. This means that growth has occurred in business studies and law, areas which are seen as cheap to teach and which are also seen by students as offering the best returns in the labour market. The introduction of voucher system will only exacerbate this trend as all students will be similarly mobile. The opportunity for universities to offer a balanced set of course offerings within and across disciplines will be slim in these circumstances.
This form of instability has a number of negative impacts. Universities will be far less likely to fulfil a public service function by researching and teaching in areas that don’t offer apparent short term economic benefit to students. Even in labour market terms the undermining of core curricula and research in universities will be a disaster. As already noted above, in the rapidly changing workplace of the future general skills in learning, communications and indeed ethics will be essential to effective private and public enterprises. School leavers and even graduates who opt for courses by gambling on which courses will provide the maximum entry salary may be sadly disappointed by the time they graduate, either because the hoped for job does not eventuate or because the narrow range of skills learnt to acquire it become redundant after a few years and the former student does not poses the skills necessary to retrain.
To what extent should private providers have access to public funding for higher education?
CAPA believes that integrity of the public university system needs to be preserved and strengthened. Allowing private providers access to public funding will come at the price of weakening the public university system. If access to funds is extended to institutions which are not universities then the issue of accreditation of university degrees is raised. The international reputation of Australian universities for quality is underwritten by the current mechanism of public funding. Allowing non-universities to grant degrees or allowing universities to grant degrees which they do not teach will undermine the reputation of universities and devalue the degrees that they now confer and have conferred in the past.
The current integrity of the university system also supports the university’s role in public service functions, in particular the freedom of inquiry which is essential not only to scientific creativity but also to the quality of public debate. Time and money to support these activities is unlikely to be available where university education is contracted out to the lowest priced tender.
Scarce public funds should then be directed to the existing national network of public universities.
What implications do alternative funding mechanisms have for higher education:
As noted above the only alternative funding mechanism in the list provided is the voucher system. However within the current balance of funding arrangements fees are already having a substantial impact on the ability of those in designated equity groups to enter these courses. CAPA questions the need for excessive competition between institutions and believes that the way to the most efficient allocation of resources from the students’ perspective lies in cooperation between universities. This also goes for institutional specialisation and innovation.
The actual practice of university researchers and research students illustrates this point. Researchers are encouraged, indeed expected to develop networks of research collaborators. This means that researchers need not all be collocated in a few centers of excellence to be effective, rather they can and do draw on different ares of expertise as the need arises. This system of informal collaboration is formalised in activities like conferences and by the express networking functions of Key Centres. It should be noted that research centres within universities are already acting in this way. It has been estimated that over 56% of Australian university research now occurs in over 880 research centres and that the majority of research is published across disciplinary boundaries. (Using basic research, part 1, p.46)
This type of collaboration could be extended to university teaching with greater cooperation between universities allowing more cooperation between discipline areas in different universities and more multi-disciplinary study. In such an environment innovation is a benefit to all and specialisation does not mean, for example, denuding one region of resources in a particular field to establish a centre of excellence in another region.
While a role already exists for the allocation of resources with merit, equity and competitive models and indeed some aspects of the current system for the allocation of research funding can be seen as a form of competitive tendering, collaboration will work best where a diverse group of universities are guaranteed sufficient core funding to underwrite their basic teaching and research load. The voucher system will exacerbate current inequalities between institutions to the point where the larger and stronger overpower the smaller and weaker. It will ultimately have a homogenising influence on the nature of universities with only few large institutions with similar course offerings remaining in the system. Lateral cooperation will also be limited due to the hyper competitive nature of the system it will engender.
How effective is the existing system for allocating public funds for higher education research?
While some problems exist with the current system CAPA supports the concept of a combination of formula allocation and competitive peer review system for the distribution of research funds to universities. Research funding is currently skewed towards a few institutions. The current system could be improved by ensuring a more balanced allocation of research funds across universities and across disciplines and supporting this with further funding for collaboration and networking across universities. Such a system would obviate the need for research students and researchers to be geographically mobile. It would make optimum use of new communications technologies, maintain regional diversity and the role of regional universities as catalysts for local employment and innovation.
The strength of this system could be further facilitated by allowing cross university consortia to bid for competitive research grants and rewarding cooperative activity in the formula for the allocation of the Research Quantum and the research training component of operating grants. Because research training is such an important part not only of university research but of the dissemination of the tacit knowledge generated by university research, spot auditing of universities is required to ensure that research training resources are flowing to research students. The information provided to CAPA by its affiliates indicates clearly that this a problem across all institutions including those at the top of the research funding table. Conversely some of the worst funded universities (in terms of research) are much more efficient in distributing research resources to research students.
A cooperative approach could also further benefit the innovation system. Investigation should be funded into the development of clusters of research based enterprises around universities.
How should the higher education research and research training funding framework and program structure be developed to:
As already noted CAPA favours a cooperative approach in university education and research because it is the most effective in achieving the educational, research, social, cultural, knowledge creation and skills formation goals required of the university system. This approach rather than some form of prescriptive and hierarchical management of research and research training would also seem to be the best suited to maximising the contribution of university researchers to the national innovation system.
Considerable evidence for this proposition is provided in the most recent study of the relationship between the Australian innovation system and university research, Using Basic Research. In Part 2 of this report the authors identify four types of linkage between basic research and industry. These are:
1. Science-driven linkages built around a leading edge in a specific area of science. This type of linkage requires a fertile environment of scientific knowledge and an appropriate socio-economic or industrial environment within which to make the connections between basic research and basic research application. Nurturing structures that can link existing basic research knowledge to a wide range of applications ”would seem to be the best way of supporting such links.” CRC’s and a history of co-operation between industry and basic researchers are examples of existing practices in this area.
2. Science-driven linkages built around a leading edge in a specific area of science. This is what the authors see as the classic case of “bridging the innovation gap” where a new industry is dependent upon scientific discovery. They argue that, while winners can not be picked from the basic research investment end, longer term planning can be introduced to assist in realising the potential of basic research in this category. Examples are maintaining an international scientific edge in newly emerging industry areas and consolidation of recent innovation by reinforcing the research training infrastructure in that area. Postgraduate programs linked to some CRC’s are examples of existing practice in this area.
3. Industry driven linkages built around a leading edge in a specific area of science. This category is less dependent on a science base in a particular field of research. Industry links draw from a range of scientific fields are important. The links here are driven by a company’s need to develop complex products in a short time frame. A diverse range of university based experts act as consultants to solve complex problems. What is important here is the availability of creative and skilled experts (within universities) employed in organisational structures conducive to creativity and entrepreneurial flair. Individual scientists provide these links.
4. Industry-driven socio-economic linkages built around maintaining a leading edge core technology. This requires new knowledge to achieve a breakthrough in technology or process development and an appropriate pool of graduates with research training in areas of particular interest to the company. Policy intervention to target support for such infrastructure is appropriate here. CRCs and other long term formal collaboration are examples of existing practice in this area. In this situation research users need to identify knowledge gaps ahead of time so research trained staff are available to fill them.
Crucially, specific direction of basic research was seen as counterproductive for three out of the four categories. What is much more important is maintaining a broad base across a range of areas in basic research and the process of two way communications between industry and universities. Where some kind of future workforce planning is seen as advantageous, this could be accommodated through the ARC working with industry groups to identifying critical knowledge gaps. Where a convincing case can be made in this regard the Government and industry should negotiate the cost of providing additional research training in a particular field. Crucially, strengths in one area should not be robbed to prop up another as this will leave other gaps which may not be able to be filled in the future.
In this context research training should be recognised as one of the major ways in which basic research contribute to innovation objectives. It not only produces graduates with particular disciplinary knowledge to work in industry but provides a learning environment for further developing specific skills and knowledge. (Using Basic Research Part 2 pp. 99-113)
CAPA argues that the productivity of the research training system could be increased by better access to resources for research students. This would lower completion times which in turn would free up the time of supervisors and allow better access to university research infrastructure. Better access to resources for research students could be achieved through spot auditing of universities to ensure the resources which universities are funded for are provided to students. Completion times would also be reduced and the quality of research training improved by providing students a structured program of study throughout their candidature. A number of very good programs have been developed in some areas, however too often the training aspect of research training is totally absent. A structured program should also enhance skills in networking and communications as well as basic research skills meaning that research students are industry ready before they graduate.
References
NBEET, ARC Using Basic Research Parts One and Two
NBEET, HEC The Effects of the Introduction of fee-paying postgraduate courses on access for designated groups Forthcoming.
University of Sussex, Science Policy Research Unit The relationships between publicly funded basic research and economic performance.